Page 45 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless (The Rules We Break #1)

My mind races, calculating times and arrangements. "But he should be. My friend Latanya was picking him up from school and bringing him directly."

"No one has brought him in today, ma'am."

My heart slams against my ribs, a trapped bird battering for escape. "Thank you. I'll call you back."

I end the call, fingers already moving to find Latanya's number. Jakob watches my face, reading the shift from confusion to the first tendrils of fear.

"What's wrong?"

"Jaden isn't at karate." The words come clipped, precise. "Latanya was supposed to take him directly from school."

I press the phone to my ear, counting rings. One. Two. Three. Each stretch into eternity.

"Chanel!" Latanya's voice comes through too bright, too high. Something in her tone sets my nerves on edge—a wrongness I can't immediately name. "I was just thinking about you."

"Where's Jaden?" I cut through pleasantries, maternal instinct sharpening my voice to a blade's edge. "The karate academy called. He never arrived."

"Oh..." A pause, too long. Her voice drifts, disconnected from urgency. "Everything's fine. Why are you yelling?"

Jakob has gone still beside me—predator stillness—catching the shift in my posture. I press speaker so he can hear, my hand steady despite the terror building beneath my breastbone.

"Latanya." I control my voice with effort. "Where is my son?"

A laugh filters through the line—quick, wrong, too high. "My house. You said I could take him, remember? He's been asking about my place for weeks."

"I said karate," I correct, fighting to keep my voice even. "He has a tournament next week. He needs to practice."

"He can practice here." The dissonance in her tone grows, a stretched wire about to snap. "We're having so much fun. He's such a good boy, Chanel. So much like his father."

Something slides through my veins at her mention of Jakob. The comparison carries an edge I've never heard before.

"I need to see him, Tanya." I force warmth into my voice, desperation hidden beneath performance. "Put him on the phone."

"He's napping." The words come too quickly. "Tired from school. I don't want to wake him."

Jaden hasn't napped since he was four.

"I'll come pick him up then," I say, careful to keep accusation from my tone. "Let him rest while I drive over."

"You know what I don't understand?" The sudden shift in subject is whiplash. Her voice drops, intimate and wounded. "How you could even think about going back to him after what he did to you."

Jakob stiffens. My eyes meet his. A silent message passing between us. Something is deeply wrong.

"Tanya, this isn't?—"

"I was there." Her voice rises, riding an emotional current I can't track.

"I was the one who held you when you couldn't stop crying.

I was the one who helped with Jaden when you could barely get out of bed.

Not him. He left you broken, and now what—you're just running back like none of it happened? "

My heart stops. This isn't my friend. This isn't the measured, logical Latanya who's been my rock for years. This is someone fractured, words spilling through cracks of an obsession I never saw forming.

"You don't understand how much I love you." Her voice drops to a whisper, raw with emotion that chills me to the bone. "How much I would do for you. I've always been there. Always. When he wasn't. When no one else was."

Fear crystallizes into certainty: my son is with someone I no longer recognize.

"I know you have," I say, keeping my voice gentle, steady. The way I'd speak to a startled animal. To a bomb that might detonate. "You've been my closest friend. That's why I need to see you both. To explain everything."

"You were going to choose him again." The accusation lands like a slap. "After everything."

"I'm coming to get Jaden," I say, standing. Jakob rises with me, already moving toward the exit. Steps matched without discussion. Partnership formed in crisis. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."

"No rush." Her voice floats, disconnected from the gravity of the moment. "We have all the time in the world. He looks so peaceful sleeping. Just like his pictures from when he was a baby."

Ice in my veins. She’s been looking at Jaden’s baby photos—photos kept in albums in my bedroom closet.

"I swear to God, if you don't—" The threat rises unbidden, maternal rage breaking through careful restraint.

"Then come get him." She cuts me off, voice suddenly, chillingly precise. All pretense of confusion gone. A challenge issued with perfect clarity.

I end the call, white-hot with rage and fear. Jakob is already holding the museum exit door, car keys in hand.

"I'm coming with you." Not a question. Not an offer. A statement of absolute fact.

Our eyes meet in perfect understanding. Whatever lies unresolved between us as man and woman, as husband and wife, dissolves in the face of what matters most: Our son. Our blood. The life we created that transcends whatever broke between us.

We move through the museum in perfect synchronicity, strides matched, purpose aligned. Past artifacts and relics, past history and art, toward the only future that matters.

For the first time in four years, we aren't ex-husband and ex-wife, divided by silence and betrayal.

We are Jaden's parents. United. Lethal.

And God help anyone who stands between us and our son.