Page 51 of Forbidden Daddy
A baby changed everything. Made Cassie not just my woman, but the mother of my heir. Made her the most valuable target in the city. Every enemy I’d ever made would see her as the perfect way to destroy me.
But it also made her family in a way that couldn’t be negotiated or dissolved. Blood of my blood. The future of the Creed name growing inside her body.
"Mr. Creed?" A nurse appeared beside me. "She’s awake now. Room 205."
I followed her down sterile corridors that smelled of disinfectant and fear, my footsteps echoing off polished floors. Outside room 205, I paused, hand on the door handle.
Inside was the woman who’d hidden her pregnancy from me. The woman is carrying my child. The woman whose safety had just become the most important thing in my world.
Everything had changed in the space of a doctor’s diagnosis.
And I had no idea what the hell I was going to say to her.
20
ROMAN
Istood in the sterile hospital hallway, my back pressed against the cold wall, hands fisted at my sides as I stared at the door separating me from Cassie. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like angry wasps, and the smell of disinfectant couldn’t mask the underlying scent of fear and death that clung to places like this.
Pregnant.
The word still echoed in my skull like a gunshot, reverberating through every carefully constructed wall I’d built around my heart. My child was growing inside her. The heir to everything I’d fought to build, everything I’d killed to protect.
And she’d hidden it from me.
I should walk in there. Should sit beside her bed, take her hand, and tell her everything would be alright. That’s what a normal man would do. What a good man would do.
But I wasn’t either of those things.
I was Roman Creed, and in my world, secrets were weapons. Lies were betrayal. And betrayal?—
My phone buzzed. Connor’s name flashed on the screen.
"Boss, how is she?"
"She’s..." I stopped, my throat tight. "She’s going to be fine."
"And the baby?"
The words hit me like a physical blow. Connor knew. Of course, he knew—the man had been reading people since before I was born, and could probably smell secrets from three floors away.
"How did you?—"
"Doctor told me when I offered to fill out the insurance papers. They asked about family medical history and emergency contact." His voice was carefully neutral. "Congratulations, Roman."
I ended the call without responding, my hands shaking as I shoved the phone back into my pocket. Congratulations. Right. Bringing a child into my world—into this endless cycle of violence and betrayal—was something to celebrate.
A memory surfaced unbidden: Cassie’s hand on my chest two nights ago, her whisper cutting through the darkness like a prayer."I trust you."
Trust. The one thing I’d never been able to give freely, the one thing that had been used to destroy me time and again. And now the woman carrying my child had proven that even she couldn’t be trusted with the truth.
But as I stood there in that antiseptic hallway, I remembered the way she’d looked at me in those quiet moments—not with fearor calculation, but with something I’d never seen directed at me before. Something that looked almost like love.
Fuck.
I pushed off the wall and walked toward her room.
Cassie was awake when I entered, propped up against white pillows that made her skin look pale as porcelain. Her dark hair spilled across the hospital gown, and her eyes—those intelligent brown eyes that saw too much—tracked my movement as I approached the bed.
