Chapter 5 - THE MATHEMATICS OF ABSENCE
Sophia’s chest rose and fell rapidly beneath her stained collar, but her throat felt locked in a vise. She couldn't speak. She couldn't even shake her head. She just stared at him, her wide brown eyes filled with a mixture of profound exhaustion, old trauma, and sheer, instinctual terror.
Dante stopped three feet away from her, the broken glass crunching softly under his polished shoes. Up close, the sheer physical intensity of his presence was overwhelming. He smelled of rain, expensive cedarwood cologne, and the cold leather of the luxury sedan waiting outside.
His eyes never left her midsection. He stared at the sharp curve beneath her hands, his mind visibly working, calculating dates, tracking months, and measuring the timeline of her disappearance.
Seven months.
It had been precisely thirty-one weeks since the night she had vanished from his estate in Chicago—leaving behind her phone, her clothes, her engagement ring, and every trace of the life he had built around her. Thirty-one weeks of non-stop searches, paid informants, tapped phone lines, and dark, sleepless nights spent scouring every state on the Eastern Seaboard.
As Dante stared at her, another sharp, sudden movement rippled across Sophia’s stomach. The baby kicked hard against the front wall of her abdomen, pushing the faded pink cloth outward in a clear, visible distortion.
Sophia flinched, a quiet, involuntary gasp escaping her lips as she closed her eyes against the sharp internal pressure.
Dante saw it. He watched the physical movement of the life growing inside her, and the realization hit him like a physical blow to the chest. The shock in his eyes rapidly hardened into something far darker, far more intense—a terrifying mixture of possessiveness, anger, and absolute claim.
He stepped even closer, brushing past the edge of a booth table, his broad chest rising as his posture went rigid. He looked down into her pale, sweat-streaked face.
May you like
Very quietly, his voice dropping into a dangerous, dark whisper that barely carried over the hum of the fluorescent lights, he asked:
“How far along are you?”
