Chapter 7 - The Unanswered Question
Nathan began to turn, his hand frantically reaching out to grasp his fiancée’s arm to pull her toward the registers. But then, driven by some twisted, lingering sliver of wounded pride—the desperate, pathetic disbelief of a man who could not comprehend how the girl he had discarded like trash was now standing under the wing of an untouchable predator—Nathan stopped.
He looked back over his shoulder.
His gaze flickered from Adrian’s iron grip on the shopping cart to Claire’s rounded belly beneath the cream ribbed dress. The timeline didn't make sense. Six months ago, Claire had been his. Five months ago, she was pregnant. He had assumed she was destitute, broken, weeping into her pillows in some roach-infested studio.
Yet here she stood, glowing with health, her chestnut hair shining under the grocery store lamps, wrapped in the protective shadow of the most dangerous man in the state.
A reckless, poisoned question tore from Nathan’s throat before his survival instincts could strangle it.
"Is he the father?" Nathan asked, his voice stripped of its earlier arrogance, sounding thin, raspy, and desperate.
The words echoed down the aisle, striking the quiet like a dropped glass.
Claire’s breath hitched in her throat. Her slender fingers, resting over the curve of her belly, went completely, utterly still.
She didn't look at Nathan. She slowly lifted her head, her warm hazel eyes searching Adrian’s hard, carved profile. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, fragile rhythm beneath the chunky beige cardigan. She knew the truth. She knew the timeline. She knew the secret she had carried in her heart through sleepless nights and lonely clinic visits.
Beside her, Adrian didn't move a muscle.
His hand remained resting on the small of Claire’s back, his broad fingers warm and immovable through the knit fabric. He did not deny it. He did not confirm it. He simply stood there, his amber-gray gaze locking onto Nathan with an intensity so terrifying, so suffocatingly absolute, that it felt as though the very air had been vacuumed from the room.
The shopper near the milk cooler held her phone motionless, her screen recording the frozen tableau.
Nathan waited, his chest heaving, his eyes pleading for an answer that would restore some semblance of order to his shattered ego. His fiancée stared in horror, clutching his arm, begging him with her eyes to turn and run.
One second passed. Two seconds. Three.
A heavy, unresolved beat stretched between them, thick with unsaid truths and dangerous promises.
Adrian’s lips remained sealed, his expression an impenetrable fortress of stone and ink.
May you like
Claire did not utter a single sound.
And before the silence could break, before a single word of explanation could be offered to the trembling man in the navy suit, Adrian’s hand tightened gently against Claire’s waist, turning her away from the past forever.
