Protected by Four: The secret baby

5

"No," I said, for the third time, standing in the hallway outside Micah's room while Adrian watched me with an expression that was somehow patient and stubborn at the same time. "I'm not moving into your house, Adrian. I don't even know you."

"You know me well enough to have my son," he said, then winced immediately, like he regretted how sharp it came out. "I'm sorry. That wasn't fair. But Becky, you're living in an apartment with no insurance, working a job that barely covers rent, and Micah is about to start a treatment plan that's going to require constant monitoring, follow-up appointments, specialists Caleb wants brought in from three different cities. You can't do that from a walk-up with a broken elevator."

"How do you know about my elevator?"

"I had someone look into your address this morning," he admitted, and at least he had the decency to look uncomfortable about it. "I needed to know what I was dealing with, so I could figure out how to help."

I wanted to be angry about that, the way rich men just moved through the world assuming they were entitled to know everything about you the second you became inconvenient to them. But I was too tired to hold onto the anger. It kept slipping out of my hands.

It was Ryder who found me a few minutes later, leaning against the vending machine down the hall with a cup of vending machine coffee I hadn't touched. He didn't waste time on small talk.

"You need to think about this clearly," he said. "Not about pride. About Micah."

"I'm not doing this for pride," I snapped, more tired than I meant to sound.

"Then hear me out." He crossed his arms, tattoos shifting over muscle. "Adrian's one of the most photographed men in this state. The second word gets out he's got a kid nobody knew about, and a kid that sick, reporters are going to be outside your apartment building within a day. People are going to dig into everything about you. Your job, your family, your finances, all of it, spread out for strangers to pick apart. You really want to go through chemo rounds with cameras outside your door?"

I hadn't thought about that. I hadn't thought about any of it, too consumed by fevers and bloodwork to consider that Adrian's world came with its own dangers, different from the ones I was used to, but dangers all the same.

Mason found me next, more gently, crouching down slightly so he wasn't towering over me the way his size usually did. "I know it feels like giving something up," he said. "Believe me, I get it. But look at that kid in there. He laughed today. Really laughed. First time probably in a while, huh?"

I nodded, throat tight.

"I'll keep him laughing," Mason said. "Every single day, if you let me. That's all I want from any of this."

And then Caleb, quieter, more clinical, but no less certain. "I need to be able to reach him within minutes if something changes. Not across town. Not a bus ride away. I need proximity, Becky, if I'm going to give him the best chance."

By the time Adrian came back to find me, I had already run out of reasons to say no. Only the truth remained, the thing I'd been avoiding saying out loud since the moment I'd walked into his office three days ago.

"I'm scared," I told him. "Not of you. Of losing myself in all of this. Of becoming someone who just depends on a man because he has more money than I could ever imagine having."

Adrian was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice had none of the boardroom coldness I'd first met in his office. "You won't lose yourself. I promise you that. But you don't have to face any of this alone anymore, Becky. Not the bills, not the fear, not the nights when you don't know what to do. Whatever you need, however long you need it, you and Micah will never be alone in this again."

I looked through the little window at my son, asleep now, an IV taped to the back of his small hand, and I thought about every night I'd lain awake calculating rent against groceries against the electric bill, every time I'd told myself we were fine when we weren't, not really, not for a long time.

"Okay," I whispered. "For Micah. Not for me."

"For Micah," Adrian agreed. "That's enough."

The mansion, when we arrived four days later with Micah stable enough to be moved by private medical transport, was nothing like anything I'd ever stood inside. Ceilings that stretched two stories high. A staircase that curved like something out of the movies. Windows overlooking grounds so large I couldn't see where they ended in the fading evening light.

Ryder was already there when we pulled in, unloading bags from the car like it was nothing. Mason had gotten there first somehow, and I could hear him inside already, his booming laugh echoing off the marble as he showed Micah, wrapped carefully in a wheelchair, the massive fish tank built into the living room wall. Caleb stood near the entrance with a nurse he'd apparently already hired, going over medication schedules on a tablet.

I stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching my son's tired face light up at the size of the fish tank, watching these three enormous, strange, gentle men fold themselves around him like they'd been waiting their whole lives for exactly this. Adrian stood beside me, waiting, not pushing, just present.

I stepped inside, and the door closed behind me with a heavy, final sound, and I understood, standing there in that impossible house, that whatever quiet, small life I used to have was gone now. There was no going back to that apartment, that job, that version of myself who handled everything alone in the dark.

There was only this now. Whatever this was going to become.