19. Cody

19. Cody

Caleb watched the hospital footage from his office, Tania and Ashton walking out together, his jaw tightening at the sight of it.

His head of security had already confirmed the gunmen were hired, tracked back through three different shell accounts. “Kill them,” Caleb said flatly. “All of them. Tonight.”

He was still watching the footage loop when Nicole let himself into the office without knocking, the way he always had since they were kids.

“How’s Tania?” Nicole asked, dropping into the chair across from him.

“She’s pregnant.”

Nicole sat up fast, grinning outright. “Caleb, that’s huge. Do you remember how wrecked you were when you lost the first one? This is good news, man.”

Caleb didn’t look like he agreed.

Nicole’s grin faded slightly. “Don’t tell me you’re actually considering accepting Sophia’s kid over your own. That’s too much of a sacrifice, even for you.”

“Don’t say that again,” Caleb said, low and sharp. “She has a father.”

 

• • •

 

At Ashton’s house, Tania poured tea for his mother with careful hands and asked, as gently as she could, whether the woman remembered someone named Carla.

The old woman’s brow furrowed. “Do you mean Cody?”

Tania’s stomach dropped.

Cody. The same name from the detective’s old photographs, the woman linked to Caleb’s father all those years ago.

Had her mother lived under a second name, one she’d hidden even from her own husband? There was no one left to ask. Her father was long gone. Her uncle, the only other person who might have known, had died with the answer still buried.

She went home hollowed out by the question, only to find Nicole waiting for her, one foot already out the door.

“I wanted to see you before I head back,” he said. “The greatest battles are always fought for love, Tania. Be patient with him.”

“I don’t think I deserve his love in the first place,” she said quietly. “Not after everything.”

Nicole didn’t argue with her. He just squeezed her shoulder once and left to go looking for a love of his own, one he’d apparently been chasing across the country for years.

 

• • •

 

Tania called the detective the moment she had a quiet minute alone.

He hesitated before agreeing to send the real photographs this time, no longer able to justify holding them back now that she already knew about Cody.

The images came through a few minutes later. Her mother, younger, laughing, standing far too close to a man Tania now recognized without needing anyone to confirm it.

Her phone rang again before she could sit with the photos too long. Jordan.

“I found something at your uncle’s place,” he said. “Something important. You need to come back for this one, Tania. I can’t explain it over the phone.”

She promised she would, as soon as she could get away, and hung up planning to visit Vivian first.

She was still a few steps from Vivian’s hospital room when she heard shouting.

 

• • •

 

Tania pushed the door open to find Nicole and Ashton grappling with each other, Vivian shouting for them to stop from her hospital bed.

She stepped between them without thinking. One of them shoved the other off balance, and the stray momentum caught Tania square in the shoulder, sending her stumbling into the bed rail.

Both men dropped instantly to check on her, all traces of their fight forgotten.

“Are you alright?” they asked, almost in unison, then both blurted out at the same time, “She’s pregnant, be careful!”

Tania blinked at both of them. “How do you both know that?”

Neither answered. She let it go, too tired to chase it, and sat down beside Vivian instead, smoothing a hand over her friend’s hair until the room settled back into something calmer.

 

• • •

 

Tania found Caleb sitting in front of the fireplace when she finally got home, the flames throwing long shadows across the room.

She sat down beside him without a word, and for a long while, neither of them spoke.

“Love is a destructive thing,” she said eventually, watching the fire instead of him. “It ruins everyone it touches. I don’t know why anyone still wants it.”

Caleb didn’t answer. Exhaustion pulled her under before she could say anything else, her head sliding down to rest against his lap.

He sat very still for a long moment. Then, carefully, like he was afraid of what he might feel, he rested his hand over her stomach.

Something moved behind his eyes that he didn’t have a name for.