Page 44 of The Endless Want

Stress, I tell myself. Overwork. Flashbacks. Trauma. Exhaustion. But the symptoms have been too consistent. Too persistent. Five weeks since the safehouse. I know the number without counting, which tells me something about how long I’ve been not-counting it. And one thought—one impossible, terrifying thought—keeps scratching at the back of my mind.

It passes, the way it always does. I rinse my mouth, dry my hands, and walk back down the corridor past two of Liam’s men, nodding at them like a woman who has never once been sick at work.

I shut my office door. Then I pull open the bottom drawer of my desk, where I hid it this morning.

Getting it took me four days and more planning than the Midtown proposal. I couldn't go alone; nobody in this building goes anywhere alone anymore. So I built an errand around it. A pharmacy two blocks from the printer's where I collect the gala programs, a driver who stays with the car because he always stays with the car, eleven minutes inside, and a receipt I paid cash for and dropped in a bin on Merchant Street.

I bought three other things I didn't need so the bag wouldn't look like one purchase. Then I threw the bag away in the lobby and carried the box up in my coat pocket, because a pharmacy logo is the brightest thing in the world when you don't want it seen.

That is who I am now. A woman who runs an operation to buy a pregnancy test.

I take it out with shaking hands.

I don’t take it. Not yet. Not while my heartbeat feels like it’s trying to punch through bone.

I tuck it back into the drawer as carefully as something that fragile deserves. And then I close the drawer with a soft click and lean back in my chair, forcing myself to breathe even though every breath cuts.

Because if I’m right… If my body is telling the truth I’ve been too afraid to face… Then everything—my work, my role, my future, Liam’s trust, Declan’s silence—becomes infinitely more complicated.

And infinitely more dangerous.

By evening, the nausea has sharpened into a persistent, ugly throb behind my ribs—an awareness I can’t outrun no matter how many reports I review or how many strategy boards I update.

I shuffle papers, rearrange files, respond to messages from three different crews who all want Liam’s approval on something or another. But every task feels like pressing my palms to a bruise. No matter how much I try to ignore it, the possibility lurking in the bottom drawer is louder than everything else combined.

A child. Not a theory, not a metaphor—an actual life. And the father…

I push back from my desk hard enough that the wheels on my chair squeak. I stand, pace once, twice, then grip the edge of the window ledge to anchor myself against the rising panic. Outside the compound, high iron gates cut long shadows across the street. Italian guards in crisp black uniforms make their rounds, weapons holstered but hands ready. Every inch of this place says protected, fortified, secure.

But nothing feels secure inside me. Not when my body might be holding a secret big enough to fracture the last stable piece of my life.

I press a hand to my stomach—not out of sentiment but out of fear—and drag in a slow breath. I can’t fall apart. I won’t. That’s how people in this world get killed. They fall apart. They hesitate. They make one mistake.

I’m not making mistakes anymore.

But isolation has a way of turning even the strongest resolve brittle. And after hours of forcing myself through the motions of work, I know I can’t keep this inside anymore. Not by myself. Not with the possibility of being pregnant with the child of a man who won’t even call me.

My chest cracks open, letting in all the fear I’ve been holding back like floodwater pressing against a dam. I grab for the burner phone in my drawer—the one Declan didn’t know about, the one I kept active out of habit long before him, long before any of this. The prepaid number my fingers know by muscle memory.

I dial Mackenzie.

She answers on the second ring, voice bright and unaware. “Ails? What’s wrong? You never call me on this number unless something⁠—”

I break. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a single breath that comes out in a ragged, humiliating sound I can’t swallow back. And once it escapes, the rest follows, unstoppable. I press my forehead to the cool surface of my desk, gripping the phone like it’s the only thing tethering me to the earth.

“Mackenzie,” I whisper, voice splitting down the middle. “I—I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Silence falls on her end—sharp, attentive, instant.

Then: “Tell me where you are.”

“I’m in my office,” I say. “I’m fine, I’m just—God, I don’t even know anymore.”

“What do you need?” she asks, tone softening into something warm but strong. “Tell me what’s happening.”

I choke on the words. Everything I’ve been holding back surges forward—the fear, the confusion, the way Declan held me that night, the way he left without a word, the way my body feels foreign now, the way my mind keeps circling the same terrifying possibility like an open wound it can’t stop poking. “I think I might be…” I swallow, unable to finish the sentence.

Pregnant.