22. The Real Father

22. The Real Father

Caleb crossed the room in two strides, covering his nose against the thick, cloying scent as he grabbed the perfume bottle off the vanity and hurled it through the open window.

He hauled Gabriel off Tania, but the drug had already done its work. Gabriel came back at him with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible, his eyes glassy, his movements wild and unpredictable.

Three times, Gabriel nearly broke past him toward the bed. Caleb finally pinned him against the wall, forearm braced hard against his throat.

“She’s mine,” Caleb said, low and final. “Only mine.”

His grip tightened. Gabriel’s struggling slowed, then stopped entirely.

Caleb didn’t let go until long after it was over. He carried the body to the window himself and let it drop.

 

• • •

 

Caleb made call after call, every doctor giving him some version of the same answer. There was only one way to burn a dose like that out of someone’s system safely.

Tania’s skin had flushed a deep, feverish red by the time he came back to check on her. Her eyes opened, glassy and unfocused, and her hand shot out to fist in his tie before he could step back.

“Help me,” she whispered, and pulled him down before he could answer.

What followed blurred the rest of the night into something neither of them fully remembered by morning, Tania waking again and again, restless and burning, until exhaustion finally took them both under.

 

• • •

 

Tania couldn’t make herself get out of bed the next morning. She lay curled against Caleb, her breathing still uneven, barely reacting when his hand drifted to rest over her stomach.

They stayed like that for a long while, saying nothing, just looking at each other until her eyes finally slid shut again. She hoped, drifting off, that he’d still be there when she woke.

He wasn’t. Caleb showered, dressed, and left the villa with the shattered perfume bottle wrapped carefully in a cloth.

The scent nagged at him the whole drive over. Familiar in a way that turned his stomach.

He remembered, suddenly, a night years ago, a party, a drink that hadn’t tasted right. His cousin Kelvin had ended up the one affected that night instead of him, because Tania had called at exactly the wrong, right moment and snapped him out of whatever haze had started creeping in.

He handed the bottle to a technician at the city’s top research lab without a word of explanation, and told them to call the second they had results.

 

• • •

 

Tania woke to an empty bed and the smell of something good drifting in from the kitchen. She washed up slowly, her whole body still heavy, and found a full breakfast waiting at the table, plated the exact way Caleb always used to plate hers.

He joined her a few minutes later. Neither of them spoke at first.

“About Gabriel,” she started carefully. “I’m sorry. I never meant for any of that—”

“You’ll ruin my appetite if you talk about him,” Caleb said flatly, and spooned more vegetables onto her plate. “Eat.”

She let it go. They left together not long after, and he drove her straight to the hospital instead of back to work, where Dr. Jeff happened to be the one on duty.

“Check if the baby’s fine,” Caleb said, before Tania could even explain why they’d come.

 

• • •

 

Tania stared at him, too stunned to speak. Dr. Jeff looked almost as surprised, though he recovered fast enough to run the ultrasound without comment.

“Strong heartbeat,” he said finally, turning the screen toward them. “She’s doing just fine.”

Tania’s eyes filled watching the small, flickering shape on the monitor, something fierce and unexpected rising in her chest.

Caleb’s phone buzzed before either of them could say anything more. He stepped out to take the call, and came back with his jaw set hard.

“The lab confirmed it,” he said. “The perfume. It was made specifically for Sophia.”

He was gone before Tania could ask what that meant, driving straight to the villa, where he found Sophia curled up on the couch with the baby.

He crossed the room and had her by the throat before she could stand.

“Hands off Tania,” he said. “Do you understand me?”