“Tell me what you need,” he said.
She swallowed. For a moment he thought she might actually answer. Then she shook her head. “I need you to leave.”
He nodded once. “Okay.”
Surprise crossed her face again. Perhaps she had expected the old Dominic, the man who pressed when afraid and controlled when wounded. He was still that man in some corners of himself, but for the first time he understood that love might require him to stand still.
After she disappeared behind the door, his phone vibrated.
Boss, his head of security texted. Want me to pull her address and schedule?
Dominic stared at the message for a long moment. The answer his old life expected was yes. The answer his fear wanted was yes. But Evelyn had looked him in the eye and drawn a line. If he crossed it within minutes, he would only prove that she had been right to run.
No, he typed. Not without her consent.
The reply came almost instantly. Understood. But she looked like she was watching her back.
He locked the phone and slid it into his pocket. That, too, was true. He had noticed it in the coffee shop window, in the way she scanned reflections rather than corners, in the way she hated being seen with him in public. Those were not the habits of a woman protecting pride. They were the habits of a woman protecting survival.
He barely slept.
The next morning he called the only person in his family who had ever been able to shame him without fear. His younger sister, Gia, answered on the second ring.
“If this is about bailing out one of your idiots, I’m busy.”
“It’s Evelyn.”
Silence.
Then Gia’s voice changed. “What about her?”
“I saw her. She’s pregnant.”
Another silence, longer this time. Then, very softly, “It’s yours.”
“Yes.”
Gia exhaled as if she had been carrying something sharp for months. “I figured.”
His grip tightened around the phone. “What do you mean?”
“She came to see me after the divorce,” Gia said. “Once. She told me not to tell you.”
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