The elevator ride was silent, a vertical tube of pure, distilled rage. When we reached the vault level, I pulled her out and practically shoved her into the main command room. I slapped the palm scanner to lock the door behind us.
"The full truth, Love," I demanded, walking past the console, my eyes on her. "The crying, the paranoia, the lies about the air. What is the real vulnerability you think you were protecting? Because my father's death doesn't account for the last two weeks of behavior."
She stood there, small but unyielding, wrapped in the protective arrogance of her good intentions.
"The fatigue is real, Jackson," she insisted, leaning on her well-worn lie. "The stress of the war is real. The sight of your father's death means the pressure is off. We focus on the network now."
I stopped directly in front of her. My blood was roaring in my ears. The lie was so perfectly constructed, so close to the truth, that I knew I would have to use the one weapon she could not deflect. I had to make her choose between the lie and the safety she craved.
"Fine," I said, my voice low and menacing. "You want to talk about focus? You want to talk about tactical efficiency? You have just made us the primary target for the rest of our lives. We can't afford a single weakness."
I reached out and ripped the borrowed grey sweatshirt from her body. She gasped, grabbing at the knit top beneath.
"The air quality, the aversion to coffee, the sudden, aggressive nausea," I recited, my gaze raking over her body, searching for the clue. "You are exhibiting the classic, physical signs of early-stage biological stress."
I stepped back, pulling my comms from my pocket. "I am calling Rosline and Ronda down here now. We are running a full medical panel. No more green drinks, no more tactical excuses. We find the source of your physical distress, and we eliminate it."
Her face went from defiant to utterly panicked. The warrior was gone, replaced by the cornered woman. She knew the secret couldn't withstand Rosline's medical scrutiny.
"Jackson, no! You can't!" she cried, lunging forward, trying to grab the comms unit from my hand.
I caught her wrists easily, pinning them to her side. "Why, Love? Why can't I ensure the health of the woman who just risked her life for me? Tell me the truth. You don't get to choose which risks I face."
She went limp, the fight draining out of her. Her eyes finally, tragically, gave me the answer I had been searching for. She was protecting the very thing I had just told her I would never allow. The true vulnerability.
She whispered, the words ragged, defeated. "I'm pregnant, Nunus. And I did what I did because I knew you wouldn't. I was protecting you."
The words hit me with the force of a detonated charge: "I'm pregnant, Nunus."
The vault, the console, the entire world of strategy and steel, dissolved into a ringing, terrifying silence. My hands, which had been pinning her wrists, went slack. I stumbled back a step, staring at her, unable to process the dual devastation.
She had killed my father. And she was carrying my child. The two things I had spent my entire adult life trying to control—my past and my future—she had seized in a single, catastrophic day.
The panic about my deepest fear—my mother's trauma—was instantly eclipsed by a pure, white-hot fury at the betrayal.
"No," I roared, the sound echoing off the vault walls. It was a shout of primal denial, the denial of a man whose trust had been shattered. "No, Love! You didn't! You didn't tell me!"
I turned away, slamming my fist against the steel wall of the vault, the shock jarring my bones. I wheeled back around, my voice trembling with contained violence.
"I found you crying on the floor of the shower! You were throwing up the one thing I knew you loved! I was smoking cigarettes again because I thought you were dying or planning to leave, and you let me search your things while you were in agony!" I took a step toward her, the pain in my voice raw. "I laid out the single most vulnerable, agonizing thing about my past—the truth about my mother—and you let me think I was hurting you by rejecting a hypothetical future, when all the while, you were carrying our son or daughter!"
I grabbed her shoulders, my grip hard, but I stopped short of shaking her. The protective instinct was still there, warring with the rage.
"I would have moved us to a different continent! I would have fortified an entire island! I would have allowed you to rest! I would have been there for you!" I shouted, the words tearing from my throat. "I'm your shield, Love! You don't get to decide what burdens I carry alone! I asked you to be honest, and your idea of honesty was to let me spiral into paranoia while you suffered in secret and planned an assassination! I wanted to help you!"
She met my gaze, her own eyes blazing with fierce, protective defiance.
"I couldn't!" she countered, her voice strained. "I couldn't tell you, Love! Your fear was too big! You were paralyzed! You were too focused on the trauma of your mother to see that I needed to fight! You wouldn't have helped me…you would have locked me away and made yourself a target! I took the necessary risk to give us a future free from your father's shadow, and free from your fear!"
Her audacity, her sheer strategic nerve, was breathtaking. She had committed a high-level assassination and justified it with a declaration of love.
My mind, though reeling, began to grasp the immediate, terrifying reality. The secret was out. The target was inside the fortress.
I released her and walked over to the main vault console, my movements stiff and unnatural, and brought up the surveillance feed. I slammed the comms button, not for Tyrone, but for the entire system.
"Attention," I barked, my voice cutting through the compound. "All personnel, effective immediately: Phase Omega Lockdown. No asset leaves this compound for any reason. The primary operational priority is no longer the network. It is absolute, internal silence."
I ended the transmission, turning back to Belinda. I looked at the fierce warrior standing there, the woman who had just confessed to a murder and a pregnancy in the same breath.
"You've won, Love," I said, the words heavy with resignation and a deep, agonizing love. "You killed my father, and you've forced my hand. But you will not die for it. You will not become my mother."
I walked to her, pulling her into a tight, desperate embrace—not rough, but protective, as if trying to shield her from a coming storm.
"You will tell me everything I need to know," I commanded, my lips moving against her hair. "And you will submit to every single diagnostic, every restriction, every safety measure I impose. You don't take one step outside this safe zone. Not one. I will lock you in this vault and guard the door myself if I have to."
I pulled back, forcing her to look at me, the terror of loss eclipsing all rage.
"I love you, Love. But you have just given every single enemy I have a reason to breach this wall. And I will burn the entire world to the ground before I let them touch you or our child. The war just got real."
Belinda's POV
His fury didn't break me…it fortified me. His absolute rage at the loss of control was the confirmation I needed: he would have paralyzed himself with fear. But hearing the depth of his hurt—the agony that I hadn't let him be my shield…that cut deeper than any tactical blow.
He released me, and I felt the sudden, terrifying shift from partner to prisoner.
"The comms," I managed, my voice strained but steady. "I'm calling them now."
I moved to the auxiliary panel, my hands flying over the controls, initiating a secure, multi-party link to Rosline and Ronda. Jackson stood behind me, a pillar of lethal certainty.
"Rosline. Ronda. Report to the vault," I instructed, my voice flat, devoid of emotion. "Immediately. Code: Final Compromise."
I cut the link, turning to face Jackson. "They'll be here in sixty seconds."
He stared at me, his chest heaving, the protective urge battling the need to punish my betrayal.
"You think this is over?" he ground out. "The moment they know, the fortress shrinks. The threat profile changes. Every move, every meal, every breath is now a calculated risk. And I swear to you, Love, I will never forgive you for making yourself suffer this burden alone, after I begged you to share it with me."
"I know," I whispered, the words sincere. "But now that you know, you can protect us properly. You don't have to choose between your mother's ghost and your present. We are a family, Jackson. And now you get to build the ultimate fortress."
The heavy vault door began to cycle open. Rosline and Ronda stood there, their expressions a mixture of confusion and high alert.
Jackson stepped forward, placing a possessive hand on my shoulder, anchoring me beside him as he addressed the two women. His voice was cold, professional, and terrifyingly absolute.
"Effective immediately, all previous protocols are void," Jackson stated, his eyes fixed on Rosline and Ronda. "The truth is out. Love is pregnant. And she has just initiated a Phase Omega counter-strike by assassinating my father."
The air in the vault turned ice-cold. Rosline's hand went immediately to her mouth, not in surprise at the murder, but at the fact that I told him. Ronda's eyes went wide, but she recovered instantly, her gaze dropping to my stomach.
"Rosline," Jackson continued, giving her no time to react. "You're on 24/7 medical surveillance, more than you were probably already doing. You will be drawing blood and running diagnostics hourly. Ronda, you're the only armed guard allowed within the immediate vicinity of the South Wing. The baby's health is the only priority. The compound is now a nursery."
"The green drink," Ronda murmured, her expression finally making sense of the Folic Acid. "It wasn't stress."
"No," Jackson confirmed, his stare pinning me to the spot. "It was a lie. And the war just got complicated."