The nurse turned the first page toward me, and for a moment the sounds of the hospital disappeared.
I had spent my adult life learning how to read danger before anyone else saw it coming.
A change in a man’s breathing.
A hand drifting toward a jacket.
A car parked half a block too long.
But I wasn’t prepared for a medical folder.
The nurse kept one finger on the page.
“Mr.
Blackwood,” she said, “Ms.
Holloway listed you in connection with the pregnancy.”
Vanessa’s breath caught behind me.
I stared at the nurse.
“What does that mean?”
She chose her words carefully.
“It means your name is recorded as the baby’s father.
She also left instructions that you were not to be contacted unless she became unable to speak for herself or there was an emergency involving the baby.”
The floor seemed to move under me.
Not could be mine.
Not maybe.
Claire had written my name.
Nine months earlier, I had walked away believing I was removing myself from her life.
She had discovered she was pregnant afterward and carried that knowledge alone.
“She knew,” I said.
The nurse’s expression softened, but there was urgency underneath it.
“Apparently she did.”
Vanessa stepped beside me.
“This is ridiculous.
Dominic, you don’t know that the child is yours just because she wrote down your name.”
I looked at her.
“The dates match.”
“Dates aren’t proof.”
She was right in the narrowest possible sense.
But I remembered that final night too clearly.
Claire in the apartment above Vesper Row.
Her bare feet tucked beneath her on the couch.
The half-finished whiskey on the table.
Her hand resting over my chest while she asked why I had been distant for two weeks.
I had already decided I was going to leave her.
I had already decided she could never know why.
Someone in a rival crew had mentioned the dark-haired bartender who always left my club through the private stairwell.
Nothing had happened to Claire yet.
That had been enough.
The next morning, I destroyed us before anyone else could.
And sometime afterward, she learned she was carrying my child.
A pair of doctors rushed through the doors behind the station.
I turned toward them instinctively.
“What’s happening to her?”
The nurse glanced toward the maternity wing.
“Her heart is under severe strain.
The obstetrics and cardiology teams are working together.
That’s all I can tell you right now.”
“Is the baby alive?”
“They were detecting a heartbeat when she came through.”
Were.
I hated that word.
Vanessa touched my arm.
