Page 64 of Made for Vengeance (Dark Dynasties #3)
GRACE
T en Weeks Later
I hadn’t meant to tell him. But that’s how everything happened with Rafe—not in careful timing or planned moments, but in impact. Pressure. Friction. The truth, for us, never arrived gently. It always hit like a second heartbeat. This wasn’t any different.
He had me stretched across the bed, shirtless, lazy with heat.
My legs tangled in his, his hand splayed warm across my stomach.
We’d been like this for over an hour, moving between silence and sex and silence again, not because there wasn’t more to say—but because neither of us quite knew how to say it.
I’d been carrying the truth like a shard of glass for days. Turning it over. Trying not to bleed.
I should’ve told him in a different moment.
When we weren’t slick with sweat and stretched across ruined sheets, when my body wasn’t still aching from the way he’d just taken me like he was afraid someone might steal me if he didn’t mark me enough.
But Rafe Conti didn’t believe in timing. He believed in ownership.
And so, finally, I just said it.
“I’m pregnant.”
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. He didn’t smile.
Just stared at the ceiling like he’d known it already and was waiting for me to catch up.
His hand didn’t lift from my belly. If anything, his fingers curved tighter, anchoring to the skin just below my ribs like he could already feel the truth of it shifting beneath.
There was a beat of silence. Two.
Then: “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
His voice came slower this time. Deeper. “Is it mine?”
I turned my head toward him, my brow twitching. “Are you joking?”
He blinked once. “I don’t know. Am I?”
I shoved his shoulder. “Who the hell else do you think had access, Rafe? You think I’ve been sneaking out of this fortress in the middle of the night to cheat on you with a barista?”
He grinned, finally, sharp and wolfish. “You’ve had that violin tutor here twice.”
“That guy’s eighty.”
“Age is just a number.”
“You are the most insane person I’ve ever met,” I muttered, and when I rolled onto my back and covered my eyes with one arm, he took it as an invitation to press closer—his mouth brushing against my jaw, his hand still protective and heavy over my stomach.
“So,” he said, tone shifting, dragging the words out like he was savoring them. “If I fuck you again tonight and come inside you, does that mean we get, like… a backup heir?”
I groaned, dragging my palm down my face. “That’s not how it works.”
“You sure? I’ve seen weirder things happen in this house.”
“Jesus Christ, Rafe—no, you don’t get twins from enthusiasm.”
“You get everything from enthusiasm,” he murmured, and then rolled on top of me before I could protest, pinning my wrists to the mattress like I hadn’t just confessed something permanent. His mouth hovered over mine, breath warm and possessive. “You said you’re already pregnant.”
“I did.”
“So I can’t make you more pregnant.”
“That’s not a green light to go feral.”
His lips twitched. “It’s not a no.”
I hated that I was already arching toward him. Hated the heat building between my legs again. Hated that even now—even with this truth between us—he still had the power to make me feel like I’d never be full enough of him.
“You’re unbelievable,” I whispered.
“I’m yours,” he said, and thrust slow and deliberate, just once, like a promise. “You started this.”
I wrapped my legs around his hips, my mouth catching on a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Finish it then.”
He moved inside me like I was already his legacy.
Like he wasn’t just building a family?—
He was building an empire.
Inside me.