17. KAISEN
KAISEN
Two weeks
Fourteen days since Winston pulled me out of that concrete tomb. Three hundred and thirty-six hours since I’d heard Truth’s voice. Twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty minutes since I’d known if she was okay. If the baby was okay.
If they were even still alive. Which I knew they were because Amai would be losing his shit.
I paced the length of my living room for what had to be the hundredth time that day, my phone clutched in my right hand like a lifeline I was too afraid to use.
The hardwood floor creaked beneath my feet—a rhythm I’d memorized over the past two weeks.
Seven steps to the window. Turn. Nine steps to the kitchen doorway. Turn. Repeat.
My left side still ached where Amai had buried the knife.
The wound was healing—Dr. Arceneaux had done good work stitching me up after Winston’s men extracted me—but it was tender.
Painful when I moved wrong. A constant reminder of what my brother was capable of when someone threatened what was his.
Or who he thought was his.
Because that baby Truth was carrying? That child growing inside her?
That was mine.
I knew it the way I knew my own name. The way I knew the sun would rise tomorrow. The way I knew Amai would never forgive me for pursuing her.
It was mine.
And I hadn’t heard a goddamn thing about either of them in two weeks.
I stopped at the window and stared out at the manicured lawn, the perfectly trimmed hedges, the fountain in the center of the circular driveway. Everything about this house screamed success. Wealth. Control.
But I felt like I was suffocating.
The not-knowing was worse than the concrete hole. Worse than the darkness. Worse than the fear that Amai would leave me there to rot.
At least in the hole, I’d known where I stood. I’d known what I was fighting against.
But this? This silence? This absence of information?
It was torture of a different kind.
I’d tried to distract myself. Went to the office. Sat through meetings I didn’t give a fuck about. Reviewed contracts I couldn’t focus on. Smiled and nodded while board members droned on about quarterly projections and market expansion.
But every thought circled back to her.
To Truth.
To the baby.
To the fact that Amai had her and I didn’t.
My phone buzzed in my hand, and I nearly dropped it. Just a notification—some bullshit email about a charity gala I had no intention of attending.
I tossed the phone onto the couch and resumed pacing.
Call her.
The thought had been circling my mind for days. A constant loop of anxiety and need.
Just call her. Hear her voice. Make sure she’s okay.
But every time I picked up the phone, every time I pulled up her contact, I froze.
What if she didn’t answer?
What if she did answer and told me to fuck off?
What if Amai had gotten to her? Convinced her I was the villain in this story?
What if she’d chosen him?
That last thought made my chest tighten, made it hard to breathe. Because I’d seen the way she looked at him at the clinic. The confusion. The hurt. The betrayal.
But also the pull.
She felt something for him. I wasn’t blind. I wasn’t stupid.
And Amai—Amai was relentless when he wanted something. He didn’t just pursue. He consumed. He took and took until there was nothing left to give.
And if he’d had two weeks alone with her?
Two weeks to work his particular brand of manipulation?
I might have already lost.
I stopped pacing and pressed my palms against the cool glass of the window. My reflection stared back at me—dark circles under my eyes, jaw tight with tension, a man who looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
Because I hadn’t.
Not really.
Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in that hole. Back in the darkness. Back in the suffocating terror of not knowing if I’d ever get out.
And mixed in with that terror was Amai’s voice. His taunts. His cruelty.
“I made love to her last night, Kaisen. Right there in front of the fireplace. She said my name over and over while I was inside her.”
The memory made rage flood through me, hot and vicious.
He’d touched her.
He’d claimed her.
He’d done exactly what I’d been too careful, too respectful, too afraid to do.
And now she was his.
Or was she?
Because the Truth I knew—the woman I’d spent time with, the woman who’d opened up to me about her divorce and her pain and her dreams—she wasn’t the type to just fall into someone’s arms because they were persistent.
She was stronger than that.
Smarter than that.
She had to be.
I turned away from the window and grabbed my phone off the couch. My hands were shaking slightly as I unlocked the screen and pulled up her contact.
Truth Renois.
Just seeing her name made something in my chest loosen and tighten at the same time.
I could do this.
I had to do this.
Because the alternative—spending another day, another hour, another minute not knowing if she was okay—was unbearable.
I pressed the call button before I could talk myself out of it.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.
Please answer. Please—
“Kaisen.”
Her voice hit me like a physical blow. Relief, fear, and need all tangled together in a knot I couldn’t untangle.
“Truth.” My voice came out rougher than I intended. “I—”
“I’ve been waiting on you to reach out.”
The words stopped me cold. Not angry. Not hurt. Just… matter of fact. Like she’d been expecting this call.
“You have?”
“I want answers, Kaisen. Now. But not on the phone.”
There was an edge to her voice. Something sharp and demanding that I’d never heard before. This wasn’t the woman who’d sat across from me at the park, laughing at my terrible jokes. This wasn’t the woman who’d opened up about her ex-husband’s betrayal with tears in her eyes.
This was someone else.
Someone harder.
Someone who’d been through hell and came out the other side with steel in her spine.
“Okay,” I said carefully. “Where do you want to meet?”
My phone buzzed with an incoming text. I pulled it away from my ear and looked at the screen.
1234 Mimosa Ct. Get here now.
Mimosa Ct.
I didn’t recognize the address. It wasn’t Amai’s place. It wasn’t her mother’s shotgun house.
“Is this—” I started to ask, but she cut me off.
“Now, Kaisen. Not later. Not when it’s convenient. Now.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone for a moment, my mind racing.
She had her own place.
The realization hit me with unexpected force. She’d gotten her own space. Her own address. Her own territory.
She wasn’t at Amai’s lakehouse. She wasn’t hiding at her mother’s. She wasn’t dependent on anyone.
She’d claimed her own ground.
And that—that changed everything.
Because a woman who could do that? A woman who could stand on her own two feet in the middle of a war between two brothers?
That woman wasn’t going to be controlled by anyone.
Not by Amai.
Not by me.
Not by anyone.
I grabbed my keys off the kitchen counter and headed for the door, my side protesting with every step. The pain was manageable. Tolerable.
Nothing compared to the need driving me forward.
I had to see her.
I had to explain.
I had to make her understand that everything I felt for her was real. That the baby—our baby—mattered more to me than anything else in this fucked-up world.
The drive to Mimosa Ct. was a blur of anxiety and anticipation. I plugged the address into my GPS and followed the robotic voice’s directions through the city, my mind spinning with everything I needed to say.
I didn’t know about the sperm swap initially. I swear I didn’t.
But when I found out—when I realized there was a chance that baby was mine—I had to know you.
I had to be close to you.
Everything I feel for you is real.
The words sounded hollow even in my own head. Rehearsed. Desperate.
Because how do you explain to someone that you pursued them under false pretenses, but your feelings are genuine? How do you make them understand that the foundation was built on lies but the structure is real?
You can’t.
Not really.
All you can do is tell the truth and hope they believe you.
The GPS announced that I’d arrived at my destination, and I pulled up to the curb in front of a modest brick two-story. It had a small front porch, a fenced backyard visible from the street, and a potted plant beside the front door.
It was perfect.
Simple. Clean. Hers.
I killed the engine and sat there for a moment, my hands gripping the steering wheel, my heart pounding.
This was it.
This was the moment when everything either fell apart or came together.
I thought about the baby. About the life growing inside her. About the possibility—the certainty—that it was mine.
I’d spent a night in that concrete hole thinking about it. Imagining it. A son or a daughter with Truth’s eyes and my smile. A child who would grow up knowing they were wanted. Loved. Protected.
A child who would never feel like a disappointment.
A child who would never have to prove their worth to a father who saw them as a failure.
I would be better than Winston.
I would be better than the man who’d raised me to believe I was worthless unless I was useful.
I would be a real father.
But first, I had to face Truth.
I had to walk into her anger and hurt, her justified rage, and tell her the truth.
All of it.
Even the parts that made me look like the villain.
I opened the car door and stepped out onto the street, my side protesting with a sharp spike of pain. I ignored it and walked up the pathway to the front porch.
My hand was shaking slightly as I raised it to knock.
But before my knuckles could connect with the wood, the door swung open.
And there she was.
Truth stood in the doorway wearing jeans and a loose sweater that did nothing to hide the small swell of her belly. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her face free of makeup, her eyes sharp and assessing.
She looked tired.
She looked angry.
She looked beautiful.
And before I could say a word—before I could apologize or explain or beg for forgiveness—her hand came up fast and connected with my face in a slap that made my ears ring.