CHAPTER FOURTEEN — Edmund Calls

LENA'S POV

The call came on a Thursday morning.

I was in the kitchen eating the breakfast Rook had insisted on when Ghost walked in with his phone in his hand and an expression that made everyone in the room go still without him saying a word.

He looked at Axel. Then at Rook. Then at me.

"Edmund is on the line," he said. "He wants to talk."

The kitchen went completely quiet.

"To you," I said.

"To me," Ghost confirmed. He looked around the table. "I am putting it on speaker."

He set the phone on the table and accepted the call.

Edmund's voice filled the kitchen.

I had not heard it since the altar. It was exactly as I remembered. Polished and certain and cold in the particular way of men who had never once been told no by anything that mattered. Hearing it in this kitchen, in this compound, with these three men around me, felt like two worlds that should never have touched pressing against each other.

"Ghost," Edmund said. Like they were old acquaintances. Like this was a reasonable Thursday morning conversation between reasonable men.

"Hale," Ghost said. Nothing else.

"I think we both know this has gone on long enough," Edmund said. "You are a practical man. I respect that. So let me be practical with you. Name your price."

Ghost said nothing.

"Everyone has a price," Edmund said. "I have found that to be universally true in my experience. Whatever she cost you in trouble and resources I will double it. Triple it if necessary. This does not have to be complicated."

Ghost looked at me across the table while Edmund talked. His eyes were completely steady. Not angry. Not threatened. Just watching me the way he watched things he had already made a decision about.

"She is not for sale," Ghost said.

A pause on Edmund's end. Brief but real. Like the words had landed somewhere unexpected. "Everything is for sale," Edmund said. "You know that as well as I do."

"Not this," Ghost said.

"Ghost." Edmund's voice shifted slightly. Still controlled but with something underneath it now. Something that sounded like the first crack in a very expensive facade. "Those children she is carrying are mine. You know that. She knows that. Whatever arrangement you have with her is temporary. What I have with those children is biological and legal and permanent. I suggest you consider that carefully before you make decisions that cannot be unmade."

The kitchen was so still I could hear the compound outside going about its morning like nothing was happening in here.

I looked at my hands flat on the table.

I looked at Ghost.

Ghost looked at Edmund's name on the phone screen and then said something that I had not expected.

He said, "Those children belong to their mother. Their mother belongs to herself. And everything that belongs to her is under the protection of this club. That is not a negotiation. That is a fact. Call this number again and I will consider it a direct threat."

He ended the call.

The kitchen stayed quiet for a moment.

Then Axel leaned back in his chair and let out a long slow breath. "Well," he said.

"Well," Rook agreed.

I looked at Ghost across the table. At the complete stillness of him. At the man who had just told Edmund Hale on a Thursday morning that I belonged to myself as simply and finally as stating the weather.

"You did not have to say that," I said quietly.

"Yes I did," he said.

"The part about me belonging to myself."

"Especially that part," he said.

I held his gaze for a moment. Something moving through my chest that was warm and fierce and grateful and several other things I did not have names for yet.

Axel looked between us. "Are we going to talk about what Edmund said. About the babies being his."

"We know what it means," Ghost said. "It means he knows the DNA results somehow. Which means our leak gave him more than just access to the compound."

Rook straightened slightly. "He knows about the paternity test."

"Yes," Ghost said.

"Which means he knows the results," I said.

"Yes," Ghost said again.

The warmth in my chest shifted into something colder. Edmund knowing about the DNA results meant Edmund knew with certainty that those babies were his. Which meant this was no longer just about getting me back. This was about the babies too. His biological children growing inside someone who had said no to him at an altar and run.

"He is going to use it legally," I said.

"He is going to try," Ghost said.

"Can he."

Ghost looked at me steadily. "He can try," he said again. "And we are going to make sure trying is the only thing he ever does."

Axel put his hand on the table palm up between us. Not asking for anything. Just putting it there.

I put my hand over his.

Rook said nothing but moved his chair slightly closer to mine in the way he did things. Quietly and without announcement and meaning everything by it.

Ghost looked at the three of us around the table and something resolved in his expression. Something final and certain and immovable.

"I am going to make some calls," he said. He stood up. Looked at me. "Eat the rest of your breakfast."

"Ghost."

He stopped.

"Thank you," I said. "For what you said to him."

He looked at me for a moment with those grey green eyes that I could read more of every day. Then he said "you never needed him to say it. But you deserve to hear it anyway" and walked out of the kitchen.

I sat at the table with Axel's hand warm under mine and Rook solid beside me and three babies pressing against my ribs and Edmund Hale's voice still faintly in the air of the room.

He had called me a possession on a Thursday morning.

Ghost had called me my own person in the same breath.

There was no version of this story where Edmund won.

I was going to make sure of that.