Haven POV

Dr. Evans, the physician at the private clinic, was a small woman with eyes like flint and hands that wasted no movement.

She stitched the laceration on my thigh with efficient, unsentimental tugs before checking my ribs for fractures.

Then, she ran the blood work.

I sat on the edge of the exam table, the paper crinkling beneath me, staring blankly at a colorful poster about nutrition. I felt absolutely nothing. Just a hollow, ringing silence.

Dr. Evans returned a few minutes later, a clipboard tucked against her chest.

"Mrs. Jones," she said, her tone professional but guarded. "You are aware that you are pregnant?"

The air left the room. The world didn't just tilt; it stopped.

I gripped the edge of the table, my knuckles turning white.

"What?"

"Six weeks," she stated, flipping a page. "It is a miracle the fall didn't cause a detachment. But the heartbeat is strong."

Trembling, I pressed a hand to my stomach.

We had tried for five years.

Years of failed IVF cycles. Endless rounds of hormone injections that bruised my skin and battered my soul.

Nothing had worked.

And now, when my marriage was a rotting corpse festering in the sun, life had finally taken root.

This was the heir.

This was the future of the Apex Crew.

This changed everything.

I thanked the doctor, my voice distant to my own ears, and left.

I returned to the penthouse.

The apartment was a mausoleum of white marble and glass-cold, modern, and utterly empty.

Connor came home two hours later.

As soon as he walked in, the scent hit me. He smelled like her perfume.

Vanilla and deceit.

He froze when he saw me sitting on the white leather sofa, waiting.

"Haven," he breathed, visible relief washing over his features. "The hospital said you checked out against medical advice. I was worried sick."

"Sit down, Connor."

He perched on the coffee table in front of me, reaching out to take my hands. His palms were damp.

I didn't let him touch me.

"I have two things to tell you," I said, my voice razor-flat.

He nodded quickly, looking like a puppy who knew he had soiled the rug but hoped for a treat anyway.

"First, I am pregnant."

His eyes went wide.

His mouth fell open, a silent gasp of shock.

"You... you're sure?"

"Dr. Evans confirmed it."

A smile broke across his face, genuine and blindingly bright. It was the smile of the man I used to love.

"An heir," he whispered, reverence in his tone. "We finally did it. Haven, this fixes everything. This is a new start for us."

"Second," I said, slicing through his joy like a guillotine. "Gemma leaves."

His smile faltered, then vanished.

"What?"

"She leaves the city," I commanded. "Tonight. You cut all ties. You never speak to her again."

"Haven, be reasonable," he said, standing up and beginning to pace the room. "She has nowhere to go. She is traumatized. I can't just throw her out on the street like garbage."

"She is a mole, Connor."

He stopped pacing and looked at me as if I were the one who had lost my mind.

"She is a kid," he scoffed, shaking his head. "She barely knows how to use a phone. You are being paranoid. You are jealous."

"I am your wife," I said, my voice rising, vibrating with the force of my ultimatum. "I am the mother of your child. Choose. Right now. Her, or us."

The silence stretched, taut as a wire.

Then, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out and looked at the screen.

It was her.

I could see the name lighting up the dim room, a beacon of my destruction.

Connor looked at me, then down at the phone. Conflict warred in his eyes.

"I have to take this," he said, his voice dropping. "It might be an emergency regarding the ambush."

He answered the phone.

"I am coming," he said into the receiver.

He hung up and looked at me with apologetic, cowardly eyes.

"I have to go," he said, backing toward the door. "Just for an hour. We will talk when I get back."

He grabbed his keys.

He walked out the door.

He chose.

I sat there for a moment, the silence of the penthouse settling around me like a shroud. Then, I picked up my phone.

I dialed the number of the private investigator I had kept on retainer for strict business background checks.

"I want everything on Gemma Chan," I said into the line, my voice devoid of mercy.

"Dig until you hit hell."

Haven POV

The file hit the mahogany desk with a heavy, final thud.

It had taken the PI three days to compile everything.

Three agonizing days wherein Connor had barely spoke to me, far too busy managing the fallout of the ambush and comforting the so-called poor victim.

With trembling hands, I opened the folder.

The evidence was damning. Photos of Gemma meeting with a Capo from the George crime family. Bank transfers routing offshore funds. Territory maps found buried deep in her cloud storage.

She wasn't just a mole.

She was the architect of the ambush that had almost killed me.

I didn't wait for Connor to come home.

I tracked Gemma's phone signal instantly.

She was at our private club, using the indoor pool.

The sheer audacity of it stole the breath from my lungs.

I took two of my personal guards-men who were loyal to the paycheck I signed, not the oath Connor swore.

We marched into the pool area.

The air was thick with oppressive humidity and the sharp sting of chlorine.

Gemma was floating on a pink raft, wearing a bikini that cost more than her father's car.

She looked up and saw me. But she didn't look scared.

She smirked.

"Hey, Haven," she called out, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "Connor said you were resting. Is the baby okay? Or did you lose it like you lost his attention?"

Red vision clouded my sight.

"Grab her," I ordered.

My guards didn't hesitate.

They waded into the water, silent and efficient. They flipped the raft and dragged her screaming to the edge.

They hauled her onto the wet tiles.

I kicked a folded towel onto her face.

"Hold her down."

One guard pinned her arms, the other her legs.

I grabbed a bucket of pool water.

"You want to play games, Gemma?" I asked, my voice deadly calm. "Let's play."

I poured the water over the towel covering her face.

She thrashed.

She choked.

It was crude waterboarding, but effective.

I stopped the flow.

"Who do you work for?" I demanded.

She coughed, sputtering water from her lungs.

"Go to hell," she wheezed.

I poured again.

This time longer.

Her body convulsed violently against the tiles.

Suddenly, the doors to the pool deck burst open.

"Haven!"

Connor sprinted across the tiles.

He didn't look at me. He didn't ask why.

He tackled the guard holding her arms with the force of a linebacker.

"Get off her!" he roared.

Gemma ripped the towel off her face, gasping for air, and instantly transforming into the victim.

"She tried to kill me!" she screamed, crawling toward Connor like a wounded animal. "She is crazy!"

Connor wrapped his arms around her, shielding her body with his own.

He looked up at me with pure hatred burning in his eyes.

"What is wrong with you?" he shouted. "She is a civilian!"

"She is a rat, Connor!" I yelled back.

I grabbed the file from the table and threw the photos at him.

They scattered across the wet floor like confetti.

"Look at them! She set us up! She is working for the George family!"

He didn't even look down.

He kicked the photos into the pool.

"I don't care!" he screamed. "You crossed a line, Haven. You are becoming a monster."

A sudden pain sliced through my abdomen.

Sharp.

Hot.

I doubled over, clutching my stomach.

"Connor," I gasped, my voice breaking. "Something is wrong."

He stood up, lifting Gemma into his arms bridal style.

She buried her face in his chest, sobbing fake tears.

"Stay away from her," Connor warned me, his voice ice cold. "If you come near her again, I will forget you are my wife."

He turned and walked away.

The photos of her betrayal floated on the surface of the blue water, dissolving slowly into nothingness.

I fell to my knees.

A dark crimson flower of blood bloomed on the white tiles between my legs.

Haven POV

I didn't go to the hospital. Not yet.

I physically couldn't move.

The guards practically carried me to the car, their grip the only thing keeping me upright as they drove me back to the penthouse.

I was bleeding, but the agony radiating from my chest was so acute it dulled the cramping in my womb to a distant, throbbing hum.

I lay in the guest bedroom, staring blindly at the ceiling.

Time bled away until, an hour later, I heard the front door click open.

Connor's voice.

Hushed.

Gentle.

I dragged myself out of the sheets.

I needed him to know. I needed him to witness the ruin he had caused.

I needed him to see the blood staining my dress.

I walked down the hallway, trailing a trembling hand against the wall to stay upright.

The door to his study was ajar, a sliver of golden light spilling onto the floor.

Then, I heard Gemma.

It wasn't the scared little girl voice anymore. It was low, sultry, and confident.

"They bought it," she said smoothly. "The George family is satisfied. The shipping routes are unblocked."

I froze.

She was confessing.

Connor sighed, the sound heavy with exhaustion.

"I know," he said. "I saw the photos before I kicked them into the river. I knew, Gemma."

The ground beneath me seemed to liquefy.

He knew.

He knew she was a traitor, a liar, and he had still chosen her.

"Why didn't you let her kill me?" Gemma asked softly.

"Because I owe your father," Connor replied. "And because... because looking at you makes me feel like a man again. With her... she makes me feel like an employee."

I leaned forward, forcing my eyes to peer through the crack.

Connor was sinking into his leather chair.

Gemma was straddling his lap.

He kissed her.

It was hungry. Desperate.

"I am going to leave her," Connor murmured against her lips, the promise vibrating through the air. "As soon as the baby is born, I will take the heir and divorce her. We can be together."

A sound ripped from my throat.

A sob that sounded like an animal dying.

They sprang apart.

Connor's head snapped toward the door.

"Haven?"

I collapsed.

The darkness rose up to claim me, but not before I felt the warm, devastating rush of blood soaking my thighs, carrying the life I had wanted so desperately out of my body.

I woke up in a hospital.

Not the Family hospital. Somewhere sterile. Anonymous.

Dr. Evans was there.

Her face was a mask of grim professional pity.

"I am so sorry, Haven," she said softly. "The stress... the physical trauma... the placenta detached. The baby is gone."

I stared at her.

I felt hollow.

Scraped clean.

"We need to perform a D&C to clear the lining," she explained gently. "It is a surgical procedure. We will put you under general anesthesia. You won't feel a thing."

I sat up.

My eyes were dry as bone.

"No," I said.

Dr. Evans blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"No anesthesia," I repeated.

"Haven, that is barbaric," she gasped, her composure cracking. "It is incredibly painful. There is no reason to suffer."

"There is a reason," I said.

I looked down at my empty hands.

I wanted to remember.

I wanted to burn this moment into my neurons so deeply that I would never, ever forget what Connor Jones had cost me.

"I want to feel it," I told her, my voice turning to steel. "I want to feel every scrap of him leaving my body."

"But-"

"Do it," I commanded. "Or I will do it myself with a hanger in the bathroom."

She paled.

She prepped the instruments.

When the metal scraped against the inside of my womb, I didn't scream.

I gripped the side rails of the bed until my knuckles popped.

Sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes.

Agony radiated from my core, a white-hot fire that consumed the woman I used to be.

With every scrape, I made a vow.

I wasn't just losing a child.

I was shedding a skin.

The dutiful wife died on that table.

The Consigliere died on that table.

When it was over, I lay in a pool of my own sweat, shaking uncontrollably.

Dr. Evans looked nauseous, like she was about to cry.

I looked at the ceiling.

I felt light.

I felt empty.

I felt lethal.