PAIGE
The silence in my apartnt had taken on a new, heavy quality. It wasn’t just the absence of noise anymore; it was a presence, a thick fog filled with the one question Leon and I were ticulously avoiding.
What next?
It hung in the air between us, unspoken, a ghost at every al. We talked about everything else. The weather. The bizarre new reality show Mark was obsessed with. The progress of my solo war against my family—the creditor calls I’d orchestrated were starting, the first tremors of the earthquake I was building.
But we never talked about the thing. The two blue lines. The life growing inside that felt less like a miracle and more like a complication of nuclear proportions.
My hand would drift to my stomach, still flat, still normal. But it didn’t feel normal. It felt like a countdown clock had been activated, ticking away silently beneath my skin. My mind was a war zone. One side, the cold, strategic planner, saw it as the ultimate liability. A chain.
A tether to Reon that would forever undermine my independence. How could I destroy my family if I was busy building a new one? How could I be a weapon if I was also a cradle?
The other side, a part I was desperately trying to silence, whispered terrifying things. It wondered if the baby would have his eyes. That intense, dark, focused gaze. The thought sent a confusing jolt through —part fear, part sothing else, sothing warm and treacherous that I refused to na.
Leon, saint that he was, tried to keep things light. He’d slide a cup of tea toward , his eyes soft with a worry he tried to hide. Then he’d crack a joke, his voice a little too casual.
"You know," he’d said just this morning, while I stared blankly at a spreadsheet, "for a man who runs a tech empire, his phone number is probably pretty easy to find. Just saying. A quick call. ’Hey, Tanuki, minor update. You’re going to be a daddy. K, bye.’" He’d mid hanging up a phone.
I’d thrown a couch pillow at him. "Don’t."
He’d raised his hands in surrender, but the look in his eyes was clear. He needs to know, Paige.
And he was right. I knew he was right. This wasn’t just my secret. It was a fact that would alter the course of another human being’s life, a man I might hate but couldn’t seem to erase from my DNA.
The justice of it, the sheer, brutal irony, was not lost on . In trying to free myself from one man’s control, I’d potentially bound myself to him for the rest of my life.
The guilt was a slow poison. Keeping this from him felt wrong, a betrayal of a different kind. But the fear was stronger. Telling him would open a door I wasn’t sure I could ever close. It would give him a claim, a right, a say.
It would make this real in a way I couldn’t take back. What would he even say? Would he see it as a transaction? A rger? A problem to be financially managed? The thought of his cold, analytical eyes assessing this, assessing in this new, vulnerable state, made want to vomit.
So I did nothing. I was paralyzed, trapped between the unthinkable choice of ending a life and the terrifying reality of bringing one into this ss. I was stuck, and the weight of it was crushing .
My phone vibrating on the coffee table was a violent shock to the system, jolting out of the toxic spiral of my thoughts. The screen showed a New York number I didn’t recognize, but it had the distinct feel of a business line. An ally, perhaps. Or another vulture slling blood in the water around the Ristone empire.
I took a steadying breath, forcing my voice into a professional, neutral tone. "Paige Isumi speaking."
"Ms. Isumi." The voice was male, middle-aged, laced with a nervous tension he was trying hard to conceal. I recognized it—Mr. Ishikawa, one of the short-term lenders I’d anonymously tipped off about my father’s over-leveraged position. "Thank you for taking my call. I... I have information. I felt you should know."
"I’m listening," I said, my planner’s mind snapping to attention, grateful for the distraction from my own personal hell.
"It’s your father," he said, his voice dropping, as if afraid of being overheard. "He’s... he’s panicking. The losses from the Daki Tech short are catastrophic. The banks are closing in. He’s being cornered."
I felt a grim sense of satisfaction. Good. Let him sweat. Let him feel the walls closing in. "That was the general idea, Mr. Ishikawa."
"Yes, but... he’s not reacting like a businessman anymore." A pause, heavy with aning. "He’s called in a favor. A very old, very dark one."
A cold trickle of dread, entirely separate from my pregnancy fears, began to trace a path down my spine. "What kind of favor?"
"The Okubo Group."
The na landed in the quiet of my apartnt like a physical blow. The Okubo Group. Even I, who had been kept deliberately sheltered from the grimier aspects of my family’s dealings, knew that na. It was a whisper, a legend of sorts.
They weren’t just a rival corporation; they were a specter. Yakuza. They operated in the shadows, in the spaces between laws and borders. They were the final, brutal solution for when money and influence weren’t enough.
My father wasn’t just trying to win a business war anymore.
He was trying to have Reon killed.
The air left my lungs in a sudden, sharp gasp. The world seed to tilt, the spreadsheet on my laptop, my pregnancy fears, everything fading into a dull roar. All I could see was Reon’s face. Not the smug, arrogant billionaire, but the man in the shower, washing with a shocking tenderness.
The man who looked at with a raw, unguarded need that had nothing to do with gas. The man who was, like it or not, the father of my child.
A violent, protective instinct I didn’t know I possessed surged through , so fierce and imdiate it stole my breath. It was primal, a lioness’s snarl in the depths of my soul. No. Not him.
"You’re sure?" I managed to ask, my voice strangely calm despite the hurricane inside .
"I heard the conversation myself," Ishikawa whispered. "He’s desperate. He sees Daki as the root of all this. Removing him is his only path to survival now. He believes without Daki, the alliance against him will collapse, and you... you will have no protection."
The pieces clicked into place with horrifying clarity. My father’s arrogance had finally curdled into sothing far more dangerous. He was no longer playing chess; he was setting the board on fire.
I ended the call with a terse thank you, my mind already racing, the planner, the strategist, taking over from the terrified woman.
I had to warn him.
The question was how.
My first, instinctive thought was to call him. To hear his voice. To tell him everything. The threat. The pregnancy. All of it. To scream into the phone, They’re coming for you, and I’m carrying your child, so you damn well better stay alive!
But the fear returned, colder this ti. If I called him, I would be opening a door I couldn’t close. He would have questions. He would want to see .
He would know I still cared enough to warn him, and he would use that, he would feel that, and the delicate, shattered balance of power between us would be gone forever. I would be vulnerable. I would be asking for his protection, and in doing so, giving him all the power back.
The alternative was the shadows. An anonymous tip. An email from a encrypted server. The Okubo Group has been contracted by Shunsuke Ristone. Target: Reon Daki. Be careful. It was clean. Impersonal. It protected him without sacrificing my hard-won distance. It was the smart move. The move that kept in control.
I picked up my phone, my thumb hovering over his na in my contacts. I could feel the phantom weight of his t-shirt I’d slept in, the ghost of his scent on my skin. I rembered the broken look in his eyes when I’d walked away from him at the gala."Please, Paige."
This wasn’t just about protecting the father of my child. This was about him. Reon. The infuriating, brilliant, vulnerable man I was so desperately trying to hate.
Telling him anonymously was the safe choice. The smart choice.
But calling him... calling him was the human one.
A fresh wave of nausea, unrelated to the pregnancy, washed over . The two crises of my life had just collided, and I was standing at the epicenter. I could protect my heart or I could protect his life. I couldn’t do both.
With a trembling hand, I finally made my choice. I opened a new, blank email. My fingers were cold and clumsy on the keys. I would protect him. But I would do it from the shadows. It was the only way I knew how to survive.
For now.
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