Hundred Nights With Him のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 61 - チャプター 70

Crowe did not wait long.By late afternoon the residual channels Riven monitored lit up with three separate movements. A quiet inquiry was opened against the second private clinic Riven had just arranged. A former clerk from the first clinic received an anonymous offer of money in exchange for confirmation of a pregnancy under a temporary identity. And a soft legal notice was filed against one of the old shell entities, timed to force disclosure pressure within days rather than weeks.Riven laid the intercepts out on the table without emotion.“He’s no longer fishing,” he said. “He’s trying to corner confirmation and then price it. Once he has hard proof you’re pregnant, he will attempt to trade silence for the dual-control keys or for a controlled release of the secondary copies. It’s the cleanest leverage he’s found since the mirror attempts failed.”I sat with my hands wrapped around a mug of plain hot water. Even the steam made my stomach tighten, but I forced it down.“What’s the

Riven returned just before dawn.I was still awake when the exterior seal released. He came in with a thin cut along his jaw and the controlled stillness he wore after violence. Mira appeared in the corridor almost immediately, arms crossed.“Well?” she asked.“Two of Crowe’s people took the false confirmation,” Riven said. “We intercepted them at the meet. One is dead. The other is alive and talking under pressure. The chain leads to a private floor above a logistics office near the port. Crowe has been running the recent moves from there.”He looked at me. “Theo received nothing further overnight. The team on his building reports all quiet. The photograph was the opening probe, not the full strike.”Relief loosened something in my chest, but only slightly.“Does the living one know about the pregnancy?” I asked.“He knows Crowe is hunting confirmation of a medical condition tied to you. He does not have the result. Crowe is still working off the clinic photograph and the pattern of

Crowe was moved to a secondary holding location before sunrise.Riven did not keep him at the site. He handed him over to two specialists who specialised in men who knew too much and had too many residual contacts. By the time the exterior seal locked behind us again, Crowe was no longer our immediate problem. The notebook of residual channels had already been copied and distributed to the people who would spend the next forty-eight hours burning every name on it.Mira took a long shower and then sat in the main room with a mug of tea, watching me over the rim.“So,” she said. “Pregnant. Keeping it. And still locked inside this place with him for another thirty nights.”“Yes.”“You trust him with that?”I considered the question honestly. “I trust him to protect what he has decided is his. The baby is now on that list. That doesn’t make the situation simple. It just makes it clearer.”She gave a short, humourless laugh. “Nothing about you is simple anymore.”Riven came back in as she

The revised terms sat between us for most of the morning.Riven had rewritten two clauses overnight. The first made medical priority absolute during pregnancy and for the first year after birth. The second removed any ambiguity about operational exposure: once the contract ended, I would not be brought into active field work while pregnant or while the child was under a year old unless I explicitly agreed in writing for each instance. Everything else—the three nights a week, the absolute intensity during those hours, the tight revisiting language—remained.I read both changes twice.“You’re building a structure that assumes the child is part of whatever continues,” I said.“The child is a fixed condition,” Riven answered. “Pretending otherwise would be stupid. These terms either account for that reality or they are useless the moment the contract ends.”Mira listened from the kitchen counter without pretending she wasn’t. She had started treating the site less like a temporary shelter

I did not answer him the same night.The question sat between us through the dark hours and into the morning. What I could live with after the contract ended was no longer theoretical. The scan image existed. The heartbeat had been real on the screen. The revised terms already treated the child as a fixed condition. Avoiding the answer had become another form of delay, and we had both agreed delay was finished.Riven did not push at breakfast. He set water and dry toast in front of me, checked the encrypted residual reports one final time, and then simply said, “The watch on Theo’s building stands down at midnight. After that you have no clean reason left to withhold the full truth from him.”I nodded. The nausea was already active, but milder than the day before. I managed half the toast and waited for the worst of the wave to pass before I spoke.“I’ll tell him tomorrow,” I said. “In person if possible. Not over a secondary line.”“Agreed. I will arrange secure transport and a contr