Page 85 of Heart of Stone (Dark Billionaires)

She’d been pregnant before he’d ever fucked her.

His mind made up, Warren escorted her upstairs, once again using the lift to avoid running into his family.

“Can we get the scan framed?” Kate asked, walking into his bedroom.

A non-committal noise left him. “A frame?”

“So I can put it on the bedside table,” she said shyly. His beat of silence had a frown creasing her brow. “Is everything okay? You’re very quiet. You’re not in pain, are you?”

He closed in on her, pushing her up against the wall. Just as he had when he’d first brought her here. The feel of her body had his cock hardening, but he ignored it. A hate-fuck wasnotwhat he wanted right now. “Was it him you thought of when I touched you?” he snarled.

Panic grew on her like a weed. “Excuse me?”

“Did you ever tell him of how you begged for my cock?” His hand came up to her throat. He applied no pressure, merely holding her as a reminder of at whose mercy she now remained. “Or how you swallowed my cum like a prized whore?”

“Warren…” Injured eyes flickered between his, but her voice trailed off. She looked away, ashamed.Good. You fucking should be.

He laid his cards on the table. “When we seized Graves, we searched through his possessions. Including his phone. Imagine our surprise when we found a video ofyou.”

“I’ve never met Grav—”

Warren grasped her jaw, digging his fingers in painfully. “Shut thefuckup.” He shook his head, hate coursing through his blood like venom. “I’ve watched the video.” A hundred times.“I’ve watched his cock entering you, Kate. Eight-and-a-half weeks ago. That’s when we first slept together. Eight-and-a-half weeks. The baby isn’t mine.”

Her lips opened. “There must be some mis—”

“Stoplying to my face,” he raged. “I may not be going to torture you, Kate. But I have evidence of Graves’s crimes. And—wouldn’t you know—now there’s someone to pin it on.” He seized the scan photo with a derisive snort and threw it to the floor. “If you think you’re raising your child, think again. As you’ll be in prison, it’ll be taken from you and adopted. And let’s hope it has a better childhood than I had.”

He pushed away from her and headed to the door, taking care to tread on the scan photo as he did so. Hating Graves. Hating Kate. Hating himself most of all. Kate followed him, her pleas bleating in his ear, her arms holding onto him for dear life. Warren extracted himself from her grasp just long enough to slam the door, locking it with a hollowclick.

The angry façade slipped away almost instantaneously. Like water slipping through his fingers.

Warren made it to the next door along the corridor—his walk-in wardrobe—before the sobs made it out of his throat, but when he closed the door there was no holding them back. Everything in here remained the same. The temporary bed he’d set up. The two-way mirror. The expensive ottoman. The empty watch drawer.

And yet in the space of a few days he’d lost his entire world.

The cold, hard truth stared back at him as he looked through the mirror. It was not his own reflection he saw, but Kate. She had slid down the back of the door he’d slammed in her face, tears streaming down her cheeks, hugging her knees as though that would comfort her.

She looked as heartbroken as he did.

Warren rested his forehead against the mirror. The moment he’d seen the scan, the moment he’d seen thechild, it felt like everything had fallen into place. Children had never fallen onto his radar before, but he’d lost himself at the merest hint of one.

He wanted Kate. He wanted their child. He wanted to believe everything was a mistake.

Except that Kate had lied to him. And his child wasn’t his. Kate not only knew Graves, she had fucked him—whilst she’d been with Warren, no less. She’d beenimpregnatedby him. He gasped for breath amidst his sobs, lost in grief and misery.

Through it all, she had made him love her.

And that was a crime he couldn’t forgive.

15

Kate

Kateglaredintothemirror. It wasn’t her puffy-eyed reflection she saw, nor the havoc she’d wreaked upon the room in which she’d been imprisoned—for the second fucking time. No, it was Warren.

She remembered his panic upon rushing into the bedroom on the day she’d contemplated suicide. Or the day he’d found her with the attacker’s hands squeezing her throat.

It would have been better if he’d let her die.

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