Page 196 of Keeping Kasey
I keep my mouth shut, even as a chilling smile spreads over his lips like he’s a tiger playing with his prey.
“Guess that means it’s time to give Consoli a call, don’t you think?”
“It won’t work,” I whisper.
The soldier’s arm lifts to strike me again, and I flinch back, but the hit doesn’t come. When I look at Leon, he’s lifting a halting hand.
“If you’re implying you’re not worth saving, I’m inclined to agree,” he says with a playful grin. “But it’s notyouhe’ll be desperate to get back.”
Leon reaches into his back pocket, and I already know what he’s going to pull out before he throws the pictures onto the coffee table between us.
The ultrasound.
I don’t look at them. I can’t.
“I suppose congratulations are in order. You’re what? Twenty weeks along now?”
“It won’t work,” I repeat.
“You underestimate the power of an heir. Consoli is going to give me whatever I want.”
“There is no heir,” I tell him. “There is no baby.”
I watch as skepticism melts his smugness until he’s back to the deadly stare he wore when I first walked in. “What are you talking about?”
I know with vivid clarity that my life is about to end, but I can’t help myself—I shake with laughter. It’s a haunted sound, as hollow and hopeless as I have felt for weeks.
Leon was so sure of this plan.
“Should’ve been watching me more closely,” I say through a bitter laugh. “Then you might’ve realized I lost the babyeight weeks ago.”
The words are ash on my tongue, and speaking them makes the loss real, the pain sharper—like an axe hacking away at the disfigured remnants of my battered heart.
I’ve never spoken them before. Never admitted my loss out loud.
Not even to myself.
Every day of the six weeks I knew about my pregnancy, I delighted in saying the words:I’m pregnant.
It didn’t even matter that I had no one to share the news with. I was so happy to hear it every single time. The surge of joy it gave me, the excitement and hope that filled me each time I held my hand over my stomach and knew there was life growing inside me—a child.
My child.
Logan’s child.
Then, one day, all of that joy disappeared.
Hopelessness and pain made themselves at home in my empty chest, and I haven’t had it in me to kick them out. The pain—as excruciating as it’s been—is all I have left of the child who should’ve been.
The only thing that makes it bearable to say the words out loud now is knowing that even if I die, Leon won’t win.
“He won’t come just for me. You havenothing,” I tell him.
Realization settles over Leon’s face as he processes the implications.
Months of planning, tracing my every step, watching from the shadows for the right moment to strike—all for nothing.
Leon takes three steps forward. With his height, he only needed two to get close, but he doesn’t want to get close; he wants to dominate my space. I never break from his cold glare,not even as he lowers himself in front of me. Even crouched down, he still towers over me.
