Chapter 17: Two Heartbeats

Sienna's POV

The first thing I noticed was the steady beep of a monitor. The second was Andrea's hand wrapped around mine so tightly it almost hurt.

"Sienna." His voice cracked on my name. "Sienna, look at me."

I forced my eyes open to fluorescent light and the sterile white of a hospital room. My head throbbed. An IV line ran from the back of my hand, and somewhere beneath the haze of whatever they had given me, a memory surfaced of the floor rushing up too fast.

"What happened," I managed, my throat dry.

"You fainted." Andrea's jaw was tight, his eyes rimmed red in a way I had never seen on him. "You have been out for almost two hours."

Before I could ask anything else, the door opened and a doctor stepped in, a clipboard tucked under one arm, her expression carefully neutral in the way doctors get when they are about to say something that changes a room.

"Miss Vance, how are you feeling?"

"Dizzy. Tired." I swallowed. "What is wrong with me?"

She glanced at Andrea, a silent question. He nodded once, and she came closer, pulling a chair beside the bed.

"Your blood pressure dropped sharply, which is consistent with stress and dehydration. But while we were running tests, we found something else." She paused, choosing her words with care. "You are pregnant, Miss Vance. Approximately five weeks."

The words landed somewhere far away, like they belonged to someone else's life.

"Five weeks," I repeated, doing the math before I could stop myself. Five weeks ago was a hotel bar, tequila, a stranger with stormy eyes who had claimed me before I even knew his name.

I looked up at Andrea. He had gone completely still, the way he did right before he made the most important decisions of his life, the kind of stillness I had learned to be wary of in a boardroom.

"Say something," I whispered.

He sank slowly into the chair, never letting go of my hand. "I do not know what to say. I have spent my whole life making sure nothing in this world belongs to anyone but me, and now there is something that belongs to both of us, and I have never been less prepared for anything."

It was not the declaration I expected. It was somehow more honest than any of his commands or contracts ever had been.

The doctor cleared her throat gently. "The baby appears healthy. I would recommend rest, reduced stress, and a follow up in two weeks. Given the circumstances," her eyes flicked briefly toward the door, where I knew a guard now stood thanks to Andrea, "I would also recommend keeping this information as private as possible for now."

"It already is not private enough," Andrea said quietly, almost to himself.

After she left, I turned to him. "Blackwood knew. Before I did. How is that possible?"

His expression darkened. "I do not know yet. But I am going to find out, and whoever told him is not going to enjoy what happens next."

"Andrea." I tightened my grip on his hand until he looked at me. "The hearing."

"The hearing is over for today. I am not putting you back in that courtroom until I understand what we are dealing with." He brought my hand to his lips, pressing a kiss against my knuckles with a tenderness that still felt foreign coming from him. "You and this baby are the only thing I care about controlling right now. Everything else can wait."

For a moment, lying there with monitors humming and a guard outside the door, I let myself believe that things could be simple. That the man holding my hand was only the protector he sounded like in that moment, and not also the man who had once given an order that ended someone's life.

The moment did not last.

A soft knock interrupted us, and a nurse stepped in carrying a large bouquet of white lilies, the kind people send to funerals more often than hospital rooms.

"These just arrived for you, Miss Vance," she said cheerfully, setting them on the side table. "No name on the card, just initials."

Andrea was on his feet before she finished the sentence, lifting the small card tucked among the flowers before I could reach for it. I watched his face change as he read it, the color draining from beneath his composure.

"What does it say?" I asked, dread pooling low in my stomach.

He hesitated, then turned the card so I could see the handwriting myself, neat and unhurried, like the man who had stood in that anteroom earlier had all the time in the world.

'Congratulations. I always did want a family of my own to play with. Sleep well, Sienna. I will be watching both of you very closely now.'

The flowers suddenly looked less like a gift and more like a promise.

"He cannot get to you here," Andrea said, but the words came out rougher than he intended, less certainty than vow. "He cannot get to either of you. I will burn down everything he has built before I let that happen."

I stared at the lilies, white and perfect and somehow obscene now, and felt the baby that did not even have a name yet become the single most dangerous thing in my entire life.

Outside the window, the city lights blurred against the glass, and somewhere out there, Richard Blackwood already knew more about my own body than I had an hour ago.

Whatever war Andrea had been fighting before, it had just gained a second target who could not yet defend herself at all.