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And if he could do that with a cabin, what could he do with a relationship?

I opened my eyes and stared out at the lake.

I didn’t have answers yet. I didn’t have proof of anything. But I had a feeling—a deep, unsettling feeling—that there was more to Amai than what he’d shown me.

And I needed to figure out what that was before I let myself fall any deeper.

Because my mama was right about one other thing too.

I needed to lock in.

I needed to stop floating through this man’s world like I didn’t have a say in what happened to me.

I needed to pay attention. To ask questions. To demand answers.

I needed to protect myself.

And I needed to protect my baby.

Even if that meant protecting us from the man I was starting to fall for.

And then it hit me.

Like a ton of bricks dropped from the sky, crushing the air out of my lungs.

I didn’t know whose baby I was carrying.

Not really.

I’d been so caught up in everything else—the violence, the power struggle, the way Amai looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered—that I’d let that fundamental truth slip to the background.

But it was there. It had always been there.

Two specimens. Two brothers. One baby.

And I had no idea which one was the father.

My hand moved to my stomach instinctively, pressing against the slight swell that was just beginning to show. My baby. Mine. But also… whose?

The question terrified me.

Because the answer mattered. It mattered in ways I didn’t want to admit.

I’d fallen for Amai. Hard. Harder than I’d ever fallen for anyone, including Phillip. What I felt for Amai was consuming, overwhelming, dangerous. It was the kind of feeling that made you forget who you were, made you lose yourself in someone else’s gravity.

But there was a part of me—a small, quiet part that I didn’t want to acknowledge—that felt safer thinking about Kaisen.

Even after everything.

Even after what I’d seen Amai do to him.

Because Kaisen didn’t feel like the mastermind behind this. He just didn’t. I’d met him. I’d talked to him. He’d been charming, yes. Manipulative, maybe. But he didn’t feel like the kind of man who could orchestrate something this elaborate, this calculated.

Two specimens. Two brothers’ DNA used without my knowledge or consent.

That wasn’t the work of one jealous younger brother trying to one-up his sibling. That was bigger. That required resources, connections, access to a fertility clinic’s internal systems.

There had to be a bigger player.


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