Page 22 of His Orders

“That’s enough out of you,” he snaps, his voice sharp enough to make her flinch and hurry off without another word.

My stomach drops. I don’t have to look at him to know he’s doing the math. I’m doing it too. It lands in both of us at the same time.

Ethan doesn’t move. Not visibly. But something shifts behind his eyes. The way steel bends just before it breaks.

He speaks again, his tone as quiet as it is precise. “Tell me the truth, Ivy. Is it mine?”

7

IVY

It rings through my skull, louder than the beeping monitors, louder than the footsteps outside this curtain, louder than the blood rushing behind my eyes. My mouth is dry, and my body feels wrong, heavy in places it shouldn't be, weak in others. But none of that matters right now, not when Ethan is staring at me like this. Not when his voice has shifted into something low and anchored, the kind of voice that never rises but still manages to cut straight through skin.

He isn’t asking to understand. He’s asking because he already suspects the truth.

And for a second—for one stupid, dangerous second—I almost tell him.

But the thought hits me like a slap.Daniel. The shadow I keep trying to forget. I see him again, polished shoes walking across my old kitchen floor, the soft scrape of a chair pulling out, the way his voice always dropped when he was angry, never raised. Control was his language. He didn’t need to shout to ruin someone. He only needed access.

He has that in spades.

His father sat on the city council for twelve years. His mother is the silent donor behind half the philanthropic events in Valleria. Their family name is printed into the marble of university buildings and museum wings. They own blocks of property beneath shell corporations and bank names that no one questions. Daniel has learned from the best. How to hurt people without leaving bruises. How to make lives disappear without bloodshed. How to smile while he does it.

And if Ethan even breathes near this child, Daniel will know.

He’ll see it in the shifts. The rumors. The paper trail. A doctor showing up at an emergency room where I’m checked in under my maiden name. A flagged insurance note. A favor called in at the hospital’s executive wing. It won’t take much. And when he does find out, he’ll do what he always does. He’ll take it back. Quietly. Efficiently.

I will not let that happen.

So I do the only thing that keeps the people I care about safe and lie.

I lift my chin and force my voice to hold. “No,” I say, calmly, clearly. “It’s not yours.”

His body stills, but something behind his eyes shifts. Not dramatically. Not with some grand reaction. But with a tightening at the corners of his jaw, a subtle way his hands close around the edges of his coat like he’s grounding himself. I know this version of Ethan. It’s the same one I’ve seen before surgeries, when he’s reviewing a trauma report that doesn’t quite make sense. Focused, sharp, dissecting every syllable like he’s waiting for the truth to slip through.

I don’t let it.

“It was someone else,” I say, swallowing the burn that rises with every word. “It’s over now. He’s not in the picture.”

I don’t blink when I say it. That would be a tell. I don’t flinch or drop my gaze. I meet him where he is, even though everything in me screams at the betrayal of it. I watch him process, letting the lie settle like sediment in water, waiting to see what kind of shape it takes once it sinks to the bottom.

His mouth tightens, but he says nothing. No questions. No protests. Only that dangerous quiet I used to find comfort in, back before I knew what it meant for him to bite his tongue. He’s thinking. Measuring. Telling himself that if I wanted him to know more, I would tell him. But he doesn’t believe it. Not really.

And the worst part is, I see it.

I see the part of him that wants to call my bluff, the part that doesn’t quite trust the woman in front of him because the woman he knows wouldn’t look him in the eye and lie. I see the anger, cold and carefully leashed, simmering just beneath the surface of his control. He isn’t loud. He never has been. Ethan Cross is the kind of man who becomes quieter the more furious he gets. It’s the way his eyes darken. The way his shoulders square. The way the whole room seems to contract around him, like the air is taking a step back to make room for whatever he’s about to do next.

And still, I hold.

Because the alternative is worse.

If I give him this child, I give Daniel a reason to strike. Ethan won’t be careful. He never has been. He doesn’t know how toback away from a fight once he sees a line that’s been crossed. He would fight for me, and Daniel would take that as an invitation. He would dig into Ethan’s life like a cancer, find the people he trusts, and ruin them. Slowly. Completely.

So I keep my expression even.

I don’t let my voice crack.

I don’t cry.

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