Then at me.
Then at the side entrance where a thin, bearded man in a U.S. Marshal’s vest stepped from the shadows with a limp of his own and forty pounds less than I remembered carrying on his frame.
My father.
Everything inside me stopped and started at once.
“Dad?”
Patrick Monroe’s eyes filled before mine did.
“Sorry, honey,” he said, voice hoarse. “Been a hell of a year.”
Malcolm shouted, gun rising.
I used the second of shock he gave me.
They had searched my coat. They had not searched the inside hem of my scrub pants where, out of old habit from work, I still kept a tiny foldable trauma shear.
I had been sawing at the zip tie behind my wrists for ten minutes while Helena talked.
The plastic snapped.
I threw my weight sideways with all the grace of a collapsing lamp.
The gunshot cracked over my shoulder instead of through my skull.
Roman moved.
He crossed half the warehouse faster than his injury should have allowed, using the cane not as support but as a weapon, slamming the silver wolf’s head into Malcolm’s wrist hard enough to send the gun skidding across the floor.
Theo tackled one man. Agents shouted. Helena tried to run and found two marshals already at her arms.
Roman dropped to one knee in front of me, breath hard, hands shaking for the first time I had ever seen, and cut the rest of the restraints away with a knife I had not seen him draw.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
My throat closed.
“Only angry,” I whispered.
His eyes shut briefly, like the answer had kept him upright by itself.
Then he touched my face once, fast and careful, as if confirming I was not another beautiful thing this city had decided to charge him for loving.
The rest blurred after that.
Malcolm in cuffs, swearing.
Helena silent and immaculate even with agents around her.
Patrick giving statements.
Theo arguing with somebody in a suit from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Roman refusing medical attention until I had mine.
At the hospital, after the bruises were documented and the baby’s heartbeat came back strong and stubborn, the room finally went quiet.
Roman stood by the window with his cane, shoulders bowed in a way he would have hated anyone noticing.
“I should have told you sooner,” he said without turning. “About Helena. About what I suspected. About why Patrick asked me to keep you close.”
I looked at him over the blanket, the monitor pulsing beside me.
“Yes,” I said. “You should have.”
He nodded once.
“I did not marry you only for the board vote. At first I told myself I did. It was cleaner that way. Less dangerous.” He turned then, and the truth in his face hurt to look at. “But the longer you were in my house, the less it felt like strategy and the more it felt like the first decent thing that had happened to me in years.”
I swallowed hard.
“What happens now?”
“Helena flips or goes to prison. Malcolm goes with her. Theo takes the legitimate side until the fallout settles. I finish what Patrick started.”
“And us?”
That, finally, made him go still.
He crossed the room slowly and sat beside the bed.
The cane leaned against the rail.
His hands rested on his knees as though he did not trust them loose.
“I was furious when I learned about the baby,” he said. “Not because the child wasn’t mine. Because you believed I would only ever choose power over mercy. The problem is you had evidence for that belief.”
I stared at my blanket.
“Roman—”
“No. Let me finish.”
His voice gentled.
“I have spent so long treating vulnerability like an open wound that I forgot trust cannot grow in rooms where only one person gets all the information.” He looked at me then, directly, without armor. “I was wrong. More than once.”
I did not know what to do with the ache in my chest.
So I told him the full truth.
About Eric.
About the blocked number.
About sitting on a cold bathroom floor with a positive test and the feeling that the walls of my life had all moved inward at once.
About choosing survival before dignity because I did not know if I would get to keep both.
When I finished, Roman was quiet for a long moment.
Then he did something so simple it undid me.
He placed his palm very gently over the curve of my stomach.
Not possessive.
Not performative.
Just present.
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