Chapter 6: I'm staying

My knees buckled the second the words left her mouth.

Adrian caught me before I hit the floor. His cock was still buried inside me, thick and hard, and the sudden movement forced a broken sound from my throat. He didn’t pull out. He held me upright against his chest, one arm locked around my waist like the world hadn’t just ended.

My mother stood three feet away in black tactical gear, weapon lowered but ready, watching us with calm, assessing eyes.

“Get out of him,” she said.

Adrian’s voice was quiet. “No.”

He withdrew slowly enough that I felt every inch leave my body. Cum slipped down my thigh. He didn’t look away from her as he zipped himself, then shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it over my shoulders. The silk was still warm from his skin. It covered almost nothing.

Victoria laughed once, sharp and delighted. “This is better than I hoped.”

Elias hadn’t moved. His gaze stayed on me, cold and calculating.

My mother took one step closer. “Noah. Come here.”

I couldn’t. My legs wouldn’t work. Every hospital visit, every late-night call where she sounded weaker, every time I sold another piece of myself to keep her alive—had been a script. And the man who had been fucking me for weeks, filling me, keeping me, calling me his, was the reason I existed.

Adrian’s hand settled on the back of my neck.

“He’s not going with you,” he said.

“He’s my son.”

“He’s mine.” The words were flat. Final. “You sold him to me. The contract is signed. The money is spent. You don’t get to take him back because the game turned.”

My mother looked at me then, really looked, and for the first time, something like regret crossed her face. “I did what I had to. You were the only thing that could reach him.”

“You used me.” My voice didn’t sound like mine.

“I protected you the only way I knew how.”

Adrian’s fingers tightened. “Leave. Both of you. Take your people and walk out of my building before I decide the cleaner solution is permanent.”

Victoria’s smile didn’t fade. “The board already knows enough. The second this leaves the room, your stock drops and every partner you’ve ever had starts circling. You think you can keep a scandal like this quiet?”

Adrian’s answer was soft.

“Watch me.”

He turned me to face him. His eyes were dark, steady, completely unrepentant. There was no apology in them. No horror. Only the same possessive certainty he’d shown from the first night I knelt for him.

“Look at me.”

I did.

“I knew.”

The room tilted.

“I knew the night you walked into my penthouse,” he continued, voice low enough that only I could hear. “The second I saw your face. You have my mouth. My hands. I ran the DNA while you were still sleeping in my bed the first time. And I fucked you anyway. I kept fucking you. I have no intention of stopping.”

Heat and nausea and something worse twisted together in my stomach.

He leaned in until his forehead rested against mine.

“You are the only thing in this city I will burn everything else to keep. Blood doesn’t change that. It only makes it permanent.”

Behind us, my mother’s voice cut through the quiet.

“Noah. You don’t have to stay with him.”

Adrian’s hand slid down my stomach, under the jacket, and wrapped around my cock—still half-hard, traitorous, marked by everything he’d already done to me. His thumb stroked once over the head, smearing the wetness there.

“Choose,” he murmured.

The word hung between us.

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. My body was still trembling, still open, still shaped by him. Every filthy memory of the last weeks crashed into the new knowledge that the man holding me was my father.

Victoria’s voice sliced through the silence, cold and delighted.

“Whatever he chooses, the board will know by morning. This doesn’t stay in this room, Adrian. You’ve already lost.”

Adrian finally looked at her.

The expression on his face made the temperature drop.

“No,” he said quietly. “I’ve only just started.”

He released my cock, smoothed the jacket down over my body, and turned me to face my mother fully.

Then he spoke the words that locked the cage around both of us.

“He’s not leaving with you. He’s not leaving this building. And if anyone in this room tries to take him from me again…”

His eyes moved from my mother to Victoria to Elias.

“…I will burn every last one of you to the ground and make him watch.”

My mother’s gaze locked with mine.

For the first time since she walked in, she looked almost afraid.

Not of Adrian.

Of me.

Of whatever she saw on my face when I didn’t immediately step toward her.

Adrian’s hand settled on the back of my neck again, possessive and final.

“Say it,” he murmured.

I swallowed.

My voice came out rough, barely above a whisper, but everyone in the room heard it.

“I’m staying.”

Silence followed.

Then my mother spoke, soft and final.

“Then you’ve already lost him, Adrian. Because the people I work for don’t leave loose ends. And your son…”

Her eyes flicked to me one last time.

“…is the biggest loose end of all.”