Page 3 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 2

Just looked at him with all the fury I’d been carrying since 4:47 AM.

“We need to talk,” I said.

Winston stepped aside.

“I thought you might say that,” he replied. “Come in.”

I stepped through the doorway into the foyer—marble floors, crystal chandelier, the kind of wealth that whispered instead of shouted. The house smelled like coffee, old money, and the faint trace of my mother’s perfume.

Winston closed the door behind me with a quiet click.

“Office?” he asked, already turning toward the hallway.

I nodded.

We walked in silence—his footsteps relaxed, mine tight with barely contained rage. The hallway was lined with family portraits: Our parents on their wedding day, young and beautiful and full of promises neither of them kept. Me and Kaisen as boys, dressed in matching suits we hated. Elias and Silas frozen in time, forever seventeen, forever smiling.

I looked away from that one. We didn’t talk about the twins.

We were halfway down the hall when the scream tore through the house.

High-pitched. Agonized. The kind of sound that bypassed your brain and went straight to your spine.

“Odette!”

Daddy was already moving.

I was right behind him.

We took the stairs two at a time, my heart hammering against my ribs. The scream came again—louder this time, more desperate—and I felt something cold and sharp twist in my chest.

Not again.

Please, God, not again.

Daddy burst through the bedroom door, and I was right on his heels.

Mama was on the floor.

She’d collapsed between the bed and the bathroom, her silk nightgown twisted around her legs, one hand clutching the doorframe like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the world.

Her face was contorted in pain—eyes squeezed shut, mouth open in a silent scream that was somehow worse than the ones we’d heard.

“Odette!” Dad dropped to his knees beside her, his coffee cup forgotten, shattering on the hardwood floor. “Baby, I’m here. I’m right here.”

“It hurts.” Her voice was barely a whisper, broken and raw. “Winston, ithurts.”

I stood frozen in the doorway.

Watching.

Helpless.

Her hands were swollen—joints red and inflamed, fingers curled into claws she couldn’t straighten. The butterfly rash across her cheeks and nose was angry and raised, the kind of flare that meant her immune system was eating her alive from the inside out.

Lupus.

The disease that had been killing my mother in slow motion for the last fifteen years.