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The second I rise to my feet, she seems to snap out of it, a shadow passing over her features as she turns to rinse her mouth. A few minutes later, as I’m leading her into bed, both of us silent and fucked out, I cast my eyes to the ceiling—to where I know the camera is watching. I settle into my side of the bed, arm wedged up beneath my head, and wonder how I’m ever going to sleep.

I wonder if Pace feels this responsibility, too—that whatever is in her belly is worth killing for. Maybe that’s why all he does anymore is watch. Maybe this fear gripping my chest has been chasing him for weeks.

This fear that we’re not enough.

* * *

The next afternoon,I walk back into her room without knocking. “Father wants us down in his office. He’s requested that we draw the blood—” I stop in my tracks. “What the hell are you wearing?”

“I’m attending the home game,” she says, grabbing a scarf off the coat rack. Her color is better this morning. After the initial round of milk exorcism, she seemed to sleep well enough, unbothered by my own fitful tossing and turning. “I’m just playing the part of the perfect, doting Princess.”

She’s nailed it—decked out in Forsyth colors, wearing one of Wicker’s oversized practice jerseys, tied into a little knot at the small of her back. It’s not my number, but seeing the name Ashby spread across her small shoulders sends a surge of blood right to my cock.

“Right,” I say, dragging my eyes from her bare legs. “Like I was saying, Father wants to be present when I draw the blood for the paternity test.”

She pauses with her bag raised halfway to her shoulder. “In his office?”

“Did you think he was going to go all the way to the basement?” I snort. “It’s just a blood draw. I’ve already set up my supplies.”

She grabs a knit cap with a fuzzy ball on the end and pulls it over her head. The beanie has the letters FU on the front, surrounded by crossing hockey sticks. I think about what it would’ve been like to have this girl sitting in the stands for me all those years while I tended goal. What it would have been like to come home to something soft rather than my father’s incessant criticism and disappointment.

“What?” she asks when she sees me staring at her.

“Nothing.” I swallow and nod at her jersey. “Wick’s going to lose it when he sees you in that.”

She rolls her eyes. “He gets mad about everything.”

Mad isn’t the right word, but I’m not about to tell her how it’s really going to make him feel.

I lead the way downstairs to Father’s office instead. I learned long ago to keep my composure in this room, holding my emotions close. Being here with Verity, knowing she’s carrying our child, feeling the all-consuming need to protect the fetus as both a physician and potential father, it’s hard not to feel an extra layer of stress.

Sweat beads up on the back of my neck. Everything must go perfectly.

Father rises from behind his desk, greeting, “Daughter.” The word sounds foreign and awkward on his tongue as he pointedly assesses her outfit, his mouth pulled into a considering moue. I stiffen, expecting him to be upset. A Princess has a strict dress code, which is why, when he grins approvingly, I breathe a sigh of relief. “Supporting Whitaker today,” he says. “I see you took my advice.”

“What girl doesn’t like diamonds?” she responds coyly.

What. The. Fuck?

“We don’t want to be late to the game,” he says, looking at me expectantly. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, sir.” I gesture for Verity to sit in the leather armchair. It faces the fireplace, the spot where my knees have pressed into the floor too many times to count. She sits, crossing her fur-lined boots at the ankles. “Push up your sleeve.”

Father watches my every move. The way I secure the tubing that attaches the needle to the vial. The way I fill out the label that sticks to the side. How I touch her arm, the way we interact. I know one thing for certain: he can’t know the way I covet her.

He can’t know how this process arouses both of us.

Because most of all, he can’t know that I care about anything other than the health of the fetus.

Standing over her, I remind myself that Verity and I have done this blood draw a dozen times now. Maybe two. There’s no surprise when I wipe the crease of her arm with alcohol or the way her nose wrinkles when I find her vein in one quick punch. I know her body inside and out, differently than my brothers. I know how the needle pinches when I’m taking blood. How her nipples rise when I stroke my thumb over her pulse. As much as this girl likes to be taken hard and fast, she gets turned on by the tiniest of touches. I know that when her eyes dilate, she’s thinking about what could come next: release.

All of this knowledge should have my cock drilling into the seam of my pants, but in this room, I am in absolute control.

“Excellent work.” Father hovers, watching the blood trickle into the tube. “How long until I receive the results?”

My eyes flick to hers, wondering if she catches the word he uses. Not us. Just him. “The lab said we’d have them back by next week.”

It hits me. In less than ten days, we’ll know who the father is. There’s nothing I hate more than a mystery, and right now, this one is clawing at my insides. Whose child am I protecting here? In the end, Father will still be in control. It’s his heir—he saw to that when he made his daughter Princess. A bone-deep urge to take her out of this room tightens in my gut. There’s a part of Rufus Ashby I never thought I’d be able to relate to, but here I am, thinking unreasonable things. Like the three of us running away, but taking her with us, all the while knowing with complete certainty that Father would track us to the ends of the earth to get her back.