Page 55 of Falling for Mr. Ruthless (The Rules We Break #1)

JAKOB

It’s midnight, and I can't sleep.

Not because of deals, deadlines or the weight of empires. Not because of threats, weaknesses or the ghosts that once haunted every decision.

I can't sleep because my wife is gone.

Her side of our bed remains untouched—the hollow where her body belongs empty and cold. The absence aches beneath my ribs, a hunger deeper than bone. I've grown addicted to her warmth, her weight, the sound of her breathing in darkness.

I check my watch.

Three hours since her message: Landing soon. Don't wait up.

But waiting is exactly what I'm doing, stretched across sheets that smell faintly of her perfume, pretending I'm not counting heartbeats until her key turns in the lock.

Four days apart shouldn't matter after everything we've survived.

Yet it burns.

The bedroom door opens with a soft click.

"You're supposed to be asleep," Chanel says—silhouette carved against hallway light.

"I don't sleep well without you."

Naked truth. No armor. No walls. Just the raw admission of what she does to me, even after all this time.

She drops her bag. Kicks off her heels. "That makes two of us."

The bed dips as she crawls across it, still in her travel clothes, hair pulled back in that severe knot that makes me ache to unravel it. She straddles me without hesitation, palms flat against my chest, eyes holding mine in the darkness.

"Did you conquer Tokyo?"

"Thoroughly." Her fingers work my shirt buttons open with an urgency that betrays her control. "They never saw me coming."

My hands find her waist, digging into the curves I've memorized like salvation. "You're devastating."

"You taught me well."

Her smile carries nothing of pretense—just the primal satisfaction of a woman who knows her power and wields it without apology. A queen returning to claim what's hers.

I pull the pin from her hair, watch it tumble around her shoulders. The transformation tears something open inside me—warrior to goddess in seconds flat.

"I missed you," I tell her, voice scraped raw with a need I once feared would destroy me. Would leave me bleeding. Would expose the hunger I'd spent years burying beneath silence and distance.

"Show me how much."

Challenge in her voice, in the arch of her eyebrow, in the deliberate rock of her hips against mine.

I do.

With hands that map her body like territory worth dying for. With mouth that draws sounds from her throat no one else will ever hear. With body that moves with the singular focus of a man reclaiming the only heaven he's ever believed in.

Later, when we've marked each other with teeth and touch, she lies draped across my chest. Her heartbeat echoes against mine, sweat cooling on skin I can't stop touching. Can't stop tracing with fingertips that know every scar, every sensitive spot, every place that makes her breath catch.

"I have something for you," she says, shifting to reach for her discarded jacket.

"I thought you just gave me something."

I can't help the smile, the satisfaction of watching her roll her eyes even as color stains her cheeks. "Not that."

She places a small envelope in my palm. Plain white paper that somehow weighs as much as destiny.

"What's this?"

"Open it."

Inside, a grainy black and white image that takes a moment to understand. An ultrasound—shadowy proof of life forming in darkness. Creation from destruction. Renewal from what was once thought lost.

My hands go still. Heart suspended between beats. "Chanel?—"

Her name escapes like prayer, like curse, like every emotion I've ever buried beneath control.

"Twelve weeks," she says, voice steady but eyes watching mine with the wariness of someone offering their heart without guarantee of safe return. "Strong heartbeat. Due in February."

I press my palm against her still-flat stomach, feel nothing but warmth and possibility beneath skin that's memorized every touch of my hands.

Yet knowing now what grows there—evidence of connection that transcends contract or convenience.

That creates life from what was once thought irreparably broken.

"You're pregnant."

Not a question. A revelation whispered like confession, like the most sacred and terrifying truth I've ever acknowledged.

She covers my hand with hers, holding me against the place where our child grows. "I am."

Two words that rewrite everything. That shatter final walls between past and future. That make every sacrifice and wound and betrayal worth the blood paid.

I move down her body without conscious decision, press my forehead against the flat plane of her stomach.

My hands grip her hips not in passion now but in prayer—in reverence for what can be created from wreckage.

From two people who tore each other apart and found ways to rebuild from broken pieces.

"I've been thinking," she says, fingers threading through my hair. Anchoring me against her. Claiming me as completely as I've claimed her. "About the house in the Berkshires. The one we looked at last month."

I look up, find her watching me with eyes that still see through every defense I've ever constructed. That know me better than boardrooms or battlefields ever could.

"The one with the lake."

My voice sounds foreign to my own ears. Rough with emotion I once believed weakness. With vulnerability I once thought fatal.

"I want to build it," she says. "Not buy something already standing. Build something that's ours from foundation to roof. Something Jaden can grow up in when we're not here. Something this baby will know as home."

The significance isn't lost on me. The penthouse we share now was mine before it was ours—space she moved into with careful boundaries and negotiated territories. Even after Vegas, after reconciliation, after legal documents made us one on paper again, she never fully claimed it as her own.

The penthouses in Tokyo, in London, in Singapore—all existed before we reunited. All carry history we've had to navigate. To overcome. To rewrite with new memories laid over old scars.

"You want roots."

I say it not as accusation but realization. Understanding of what she's asking without demanding. Offering without requiring immediate response.

"I want foundation," she corrects, thumb brushing across my lower lip. "Not escape routes. Not temporary solutions. Something we build together that outlasts us."

I sit up, bringing her with me. My hands frame her face, hold her steady as I search for hesitation. For compromise. For the flicker of uncertainty that might suggest decision made from pregnancy hormones or temporary emotion rather than bone-deep certainty.

Find nothing but absolute conviction.

"When do we break ground?"

Her smile unfolds slowly—transforms from surprise to victory to genuine pleasure at having been understood without explanation. At being chosen without condition or reservation.

"I've already called the architect," she admits, hint of defiance in her voice.

The reminder that while she may share my name again, she's never surrendered her autonomy.

Her right to move through the world on her own terms. "But I told him we'd finalize plans together. That it's our vision, not just mine."

The concession matters more than the initiative. The acknowledgment that what we build now isn't hers or mine—but ours. A family carved from pain and persistence and the stubborn refusal to stay broken.

"Jaden will love it," I say, thinking of our son who's adapted to penthouses and hotel suites and the transient existence we've given him without complaint. Who deserves earth beneath his feet and trees he can watch grow alongside him. "He's been asking for a dog."

"I know."

The laughter in her voice feels like victory. Like permission to want things I once denied as unnecessary luxury. As weakness that might be exploited. "He's negotiated very strategically. Said a brother or sister would be acceptable alternative if a dog was out of the question."

"Got both instead." I can't help the pride that surges at our son's inherit understanding of leverage. Of timing. Of the careful dance between desire and demand. "He's definitely your child."

"He's definitely ours," she corrects, the emphasis deliberate. The reminder that some bonds transcend time and distance and legal documents designed to sever. "Stubborn and calculating and too smart for his own good."

I pull her closer, eliminating what little space remains between us. Between bodies still humming from earlier connection. From pleasure given and received without restraint or performance.

"And this one?" My hand returns to her stomach, to the barely perceptible curve that will soon become undeniable evidence of what we've created. "What will this one be?"

"A girl," she says with certainty that brooks no argument. That needs no medical confirmation or technological verification. "I've known since the beginning."

"Poor world," I murmur, already imagining daughter with Chanel's fierce determination and take-no-prisoners approach to obstacles.

With her beauty and brilliance and bone-deep refusal to be diminished or defined by others' expectations.

"Lucky us," she counters, the slight correction speaking volumes about what matters. About where true value lies. About the difference between the man I was and the man I've become under her unrelenting demand for authenticity rather than performance.

My mouth finds hers with a certainty born from years of knowing—from first kisses stolen between lectures to reunion vows whispered in Vegas to midnight reconnections after days apart.

The kiss contains nothing of question or doubt. Just absolute certainty of belonging. Of rightness. Of home found in flesh.

"I have something for you too," I tell her when we break for breath.

Reach for nightstand drawer that holds what I've been waiting to give her. What I've carried like a secret, like promise, like proof that some things refuse to die even when buried.