Page 16 of The Enforcer (Damn! #2)

LILY CHOKED on her food.

Not delicately. Not with a ladylike cough or an embarrassed flutter of fingers.

No, it was a full-on, eyes-watering, throat-clenching struggle not to die on a mouthful of molten calzone while Zane Dante sat across from her, calm as anything, watching her flail like he hadn’t just dropped a verbal grenade on the table.

Her hands fumbled toward the glass without thought, a reflex born of sudden panic and the desperate need for something solid.

Something normal. Zane nudged it toward her with one knuckle.

Cold condensation met her fingers as she wrapped her hand around the glass, lifting it to her lips with a shaky breath.

The liquid didn’t help, not really, but it gave her a second to collect herself, to hide behind the motion, to pretend she wasn’t unraveling from two words she hadn’t expected to hear, birth control.

“I’ll take that as a no. You’re not on birth control.”

She gulped half the glass down before slamming it back onto the table, coughing once more for good measure.

“You, what— Are you serious?”

“Always.”

“Birth control?” Oh. God. Birth control.

Lily leaned back slowly, the words rattling around in her head like loose change in a dryer. She stared at the remains of her meal like it might offer some kind of answer. Her brain, still wired from adrenaline and emotional fallout, couldn’t quite keep up.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t considered it. She was meticulous with protection, usually. But nothing about the last twelve hours had been usual. And with Zane? Her body had overruled her brain more than once.

She tried to think, count days, backtrack her cycle, do the math that might calm the wild flutter in her chest. But nothing lined up perfectly. It was close. Too close.

Her stomach twisted.

“I was on something,” she said quietly. “I mean, I’ve been on something. But I’ve missed a few doses. Maybe more than a few.” Maybe a few dozen. “And I didn’t think, I wasn’t expecting…”

Zane didn’t interrupt. Didn’t press. Just watched her, his attention heavy but not unkind.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, barely above a whisper. “I don’t know what the odds are. I just—”

She fell silent again, twisting the dangling arm of the black silk robe tighter around her fingers. Panic clawed at her chest, but she fought it down, forcing herself to focus. Think. Breathe.

She was good at puzzles, brilliant under pressure. She just had to apply rationale. Step through the variables like she would a breach in a system. Wasn’t that what happened? A breach in her system. So, all she had to do was strip away the emotion. Look at the facts.

She started counting backward. Dates. Milestones.

Her last cycle. Had she skipped one? Delayed it?

She thrust her fingers into her damp hair.

She wasn’t sure. The weeks had blurred together, especially with the pressure of this last project, the one that had landed her in Zane’s crosshairs, the one that had upended everything.

The days had bled into nights, stress compounding with every keystroke, and self-care had been the first casualty. But she hadn’t completely lost track.

Had she?

She squeezed the silk harder, composing herself. This wasn’t like her. She was methodical. Careful. She didn’t make stupid mistakes. She spared a glance across the table. Except when it came to Zane. When it came to Zane, her body had gone rogue. Her reasoning had fractured.

And now? She wasn’t sure if that moment of recklessness had left a permanent mark.

She didn’t even know if she’d ovulated yet, if the timing had been right. Or wrong. Everything felt wrong now.

Her stomach churned.

“I mean… I think it’s unlikely,” she said, trying for logic, for calm. “We only… it wasn’t like we were careless more than once. I think.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You think?”

There was a flicker of something behind the sarcasm, something dry and just slightly offended.

As if she’d implied it had been forgettable.

As if the way they’d come together, raw and heated and reckless, hadn’t burned itself into both of them.

And Zane, apparently, wasn’t above being a little insulted.

Which added amusement to his insult.

She waved one hand vaguely in the air, the sleeve of the black silk robe flapping with the motion. “Fine. I know we only made... had sex once.”

The correction stumbled out of her mouth, awkward and unfiltered. She couldn’t say the word, made love, not to Zane, not now. Because whatever it had been between them, love had nothing to do with it. Lust. Fire. But not love.

Her face heated even as she corrected herself, but she pressed on. “And even if the timing was close, there’s still a chance I’m not. Right?”

She didn’t know why she asked. He wasn’t a doctor. And the hard line of his mouth didn’t exactly scream “comforting reassurance.” But she asked anyway, grasping for reason, for any foothold in the mess they’d made.

And instead of comfort, he gave her silence.

The kind of silence that pressed down on her chest and made the room feel smaller.

She watched him, waiting, hoping for something.

A flicker of softness. A hint of reason.

But he just stared, unreadable as ever. No reassurance, no panic, no anything.

Just... Zane. Hard. Unmoving. And somehow that was worse than a reaction. It meant he’d already made up his mind.

She dragged her eyes back to his face, still reeling from his silence. She didn’t expect warmth or sympathy, not from Zane. But a nod, a breath, something that hinted he wasn’t made entirely of stone?

She didn’t know why she wanted that. Maybe because the thought of doing this, of facing a maybe-baby and a future she didn’t understand, one that felt less like a choice and more like a sentence, felt like too much to shoulder alone.

She didn’t want comfort. Not really. She just didn’t want to be the only one in freefall.

“What do we do,” she asked, her voice thin, “if I am pregnant?”

He didn’t speak right away. Just looked at her with that unblinking calm that never gave away what was coming.

“Marriage,” he said at last.

Unequivocal. Absolute. No discussion.

The word slammed into her like a brick. Not because it was shocking, though it was, but because of how calmly he said it.

Like it was already decided. Like it had always been the plan.

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Her brain scrambled to catch up, to find footing, to file the word into something manageable.

But there was no compartment for this. No defense ready.

Only the echo of that single word reverberating through her chest.

Marriage.

There were a hundred ways she’d expected this to go. Denial. Insults. Maybe even a muttered curse about their recklessness. But marriage? That was not in the script.

“Let me get this straight,” she said slowly. “You think I might be pregnant, so your answer is to lock it down with a wedding ring?”

Zane tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable. “You think I’d put a ring on your finger to trap you?”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “Wouldn’t be the first time a man used a wedding band as a leash.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. Just studied her for a long moment. “If you’re carrying my child, it’s not a leash. It’s a shield.”

“A shield?” she echoed.

“A promise,” he said. “One I’m willing to back with my name, my influence, and every goddamn resource I have.

You might not like the terms, but you won’t find a safer place to land.

And if you wear the Dante name, that protection becomes real.

Anyone coming after you will have to think twice, because taking out a Dante isn’t just dangerous, it’s suicidal.

” He let that sink in for a beat, then added, “They wouldn’t be targeting a hacker anymore.

They’d be targeting a Dante wife. And no one’s stupid enough to make that mistake twice.

They know we’d go to war over that. No one wants to be the idiot who lights that fuse, because once it’s lit, we don’t stop until there’s nothing left standing. ”

That threw her. Not the protectiveness, she’d seen flashes of that already. But the quiet certainty beneath his words. The lack of apology.

She opened her mouth to argue, but then he added, low and final:

“I don’t lose things that belong to me.”

Her jaw dropped. “Things?”

The word snapped something in her, shock, outrage, disbelief.

She couldn’t even decide which. Was that how he saw her?

Some asset to be claimed, protected, locked down?

Not a partner. Not a person. A possession.

Except… no. That wasn’t it. Not really. Because Zane didn’t hoard things, he bled for them.

Killed for them. Would die for them. And some broken, dangerous part of her believed he’d already folded her into that category.

Which meant everything he’d said before, about promises, about war, about shields and names, wasn’t just rhetoric. It was real. It was Zane.

“Fine. Not things. People.” He met her glare with one of his own. “I don’t care how you phrase it. If you’re carrying my kid, we’re getting married. No exceptions.”

The chair scraped back as she stood, too fast, the black silk robe she wore cinched tight around her waist. She paced to the window on bare feet, each step a frantic attempt to shed the weight of his words.

The city lights blurred behind the glass, glittering and distant, but her thoughts were louder than the skyline.

She rubbed at her arms, fighting the chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.