Page 149 of Velvet Corruption

“No, Rosie—” Ruby stepped in, voice too fast, too brittle.

“Seven and a half!” Rosie beamed, bouncing on her heels. “We’re having a princess party.”

“Cool,” I said, trying not to let my voice shake. “When’s your birthday?”

Ruby's silence said everything.

“March first,” Rosie chirped. “I like my birthday ’cause it’s also a sentence!”

The ground dropped out from under me.

March first.

I did the math in my head and felt the world tilt.

Julian wasn’t her father.

I was.

Iwas.

She’d kept my daughter from me.

All this time. All these fucking years.

“Go get Carty, Rosie. Right now. Through the front door,” Ruby said, her voice shaking—not with fear. With something closer to panic. “I don’t want your dad to worry.”

“Okay. Nice to meet you!” Rosie said, waving. “You can come to breakfast! Daddy said the more the merrier—”

“Now, Rosalia.”

Her tone turned the girl quiet. Rosie nodded, padded away up the stairs. I stood there, frozen.

“You have a very polite kid,” I said.

Ruby’s jaw locked. “Yes,” she said flatly. “My kid.Mykid is very polite”

The room narrowed around us. All I could hear was the rush of blood in my ears.

“Don’t you mean our kid?” I hissed.

Ruby stared at me.

She didn’t deny it.

The world tilted and shook and oh my fucking God…I was a father.

“Eight years,” I said quietly. “You kept this from me for eight fucking years.”

Ruby didn’t so much as blink.

This…this was the secret she’d kept, the whisper that seemed to tease the corners of her lips every time we got close.

“I kept nothing from you. You disappeared. You ghosted me,” she replied. “You didn’t want to hear from me. Nothing made me think you would’ve wanted to hear about that.”

I clenched my jaw, anger rolling through my body like lava. “I bailed on a situationship. Not on a child,” I said. “You didn’t get to make that choice from me.”

She tilted her head up to look at me. “You left, Kieran,” she said. “You didn’t call, you didn’t text. You blocked me everywhere. There was no explanation. You just…left my life. How long should I have kept chasing you? With news that could’ve ruined your life?”