The Unborn

The Unborn
Chapter 293: The Unborn 

Roman 

He’s lying.

The thought arrived with strong certainty like a reflex meant to protect what remained of my sanity. It planted itself firmly in my mind and refused to move.

He has to be lying. Because if he wasn’t… then everything I believed about the past—about Dahlia, about Naomi, about myself—would unravel into something unrecognizable.

How could the child Dahlia carried have been mine? The time difference didn't match up. Someone is definitely lying… 

“How dare you,” I growled, my fingers tightening in the fabric of his collar until my knuckles burned. “What kind of twisted nonsense are you spewing? First you made it seem like Reese was the father. Now you’re saying the child was mine? What are you? What kind of demon manipulates truth like this?”

My voice rose without my permission.

“The child wasn’t mine!”

He did not resist my grip. He did not look threatened. If anything, he regarded me with a calm that felt more violent than any strike.

“Believe whatever helps you endure the moment, Roman,” he said evenly.

Then, with deliberate gentleness, he removed my hands from his collar as if disentangling himself from something trivial. He stepped back, restoring distance between us while I stood frozen in place, my arms hanging uselessly at my sides.

The room seemed too quiet. Too still. Even my breathing sounded foreign. Could he be telling the truth? The possibility slipped into my thoughts. 

“You said,” he continued, his tone measured, “that you would kill the man responsible for your wife’s pregnancy.” 

His eyes held mine with unsettling steadiness.

“I have given you a name. Roman. Will you make good on your promise?”

My body refused to respond. Muscles locked. Breath stalled. Words dissolved before they could form. “I don’t believe you,” I whispered hoarsely. “Dahlia was—”

“Already losing her mind,” he finished for me.

The words struck harder than any blow.

“I will spare you the trouble of denial,” he continued. “Penelope had been poisoning your wife long before the accident. Slowly and methodically. You did not notice the signs because you neither looked nor knew what to look for.” 

My heartbeat thundered in my ears.

“Hallucinations are not imaginary in the way you think, Roman,” he said quietly. “They are real experiences to the mind. Your wife endured them with remarkable resilience. She fought to keep her sanity. She fought… for your child. I doubt Dahlia even knew what trimester she was in.” 

My thoughts shattered.

Penelope had been poisoning Dahlia all along? For how long? How many moments had I misread? How many signs had I dismissed? How many times had Dahlia reached for help while I stood blind beside her?

A new horror surfaced, colder than the rest. If he was telling the truth… Then Naomi was truly mine.

The realization hollowed my chest from the inside out. “Why?” The word escaped me before I could contain it. It was barely more than breath. “Why are you so determined to destroy everything I love?”

He regarded me with something almost resembling patience. “I am not destroying your life,” he said. “I am correcting it.”

The calm conviction in his voice was unbearable.

“I am your father. I understand consequences in ways you cannot. Your daughter would have suffered horrors you cannot begin to imagine. Pain that would have broken you beyond repair. Pain that would have shattered our family’s name, reduced everything we built to ridicule and ruin—”

“Stop!” I snapped, cutting through his words. “You have daughters! River. Riley. Rosie. They are alive. They are safe. Why this obsession? Why this madness? If what you claim is protection, why did you not murder them as well?” My voice shook, anger colliding with disbelief. “Why draw the line only when it suits you?”

He shook his head slowly.

“If I had encountered the forces and threats I face now before their births,” he said, “I would have made the same choices.”

The admission chilled the air.

“In my world,” he continued, “enemies outnumber allies. And some enemies…” His voice lowered, losing its certainty for the first time. “…are beyond negotiation.”

A heavy silence followed.

“These people,” he said quietly, “are not ordinary adversaries, son.”

His gaze drifted somewhere distant, as though he were seeing something that existed beyond the room.

“They are the kind of people I fear. People who have put a target on the backs of each and every one of us.”

The confession struck deeper than any revelation that had come before it. My father feared no one. If he was afraid… then whatever hunted him existed beyond anything I had imagined.

“What did you do to them?” I asked, my voice steadier than I felt. “You must have crossed a line no one survives crossing.”

“That is not your concern,” he replied sharply. “There are places you cannot escape once you step into them. Do not seek them.”

I let out a hollow laugh and glanced at Ryan.

He stood motionless, pale and rigid, as though the life had been drained from him. His silence disturbed me almost as much as our father’s words.

“So all of it,” I said slowly. “Every death. Every child denied a future. Every woman who never lived long enough to hold her own baby. Aunt Felicia. Dahlia. Mother—”

“No,” he interrupted firmly. “Not Lena.”

The immediate denial caught me off guard.

“I had nothing to do with your mother’s death,” he said, voice lower now. “I love her. I would never harm her.”

“How am I supposed to believe anything you say?”

He studied me for a long moment. Then he turned, walked to the safe embedded in the wall, and entered a sequence of numbers with practiced ease. The door clicked open. From within, he withdrew a sealed letter.

“After your mother and sister died,” he said, holding it between his fingers, “this arrived.”

My throat tightened.

“They declared their intentions clearly. They would pursue my bloodline. Specifically the women within it.”

He held the letter up slightly, as though presenting evidence before a silent court.

“A bidding went catastrophically wrong,” he continued. “One of their own suffered because of it. I was unaware of the full consequences until it was too late.”

The air felt thinner.

“They do not forgive. They do not negotiate. The timing of this letter… following your mother and sister’s deaths… was no coincidence. They wanted me to understand that they could reach anyone I loved.”

His voice hardened.

“I believe they hurt your mother to send a message.”

Understanding began to assemble itself piece by piece, forming a picture too grotesque to reject.

“That’s why you began killing them,” I said quietly. “The unborn daughters. The ones you believed would be targeted.”

He did not confirm it. He did not deny it. He simply returned the letter to the safe and closed it.

“What exactly did you do to these people that are after you?” I demanded. “It must have been something disgustingly vile.” 

He ignored the question.

“The objective was humiliation,” he said instead. “To destroy our legacy. To reduce our name to nothing. We are visible and we are powerful. That makes us targets. They will pursue my daughters. They will pursue yours. They will take revenge on anyone who bears our last name.”

“And you think murdering them prevents that?” I shouted. “You think death is mercy? How long does this continue? How many children must die before you are satisfied? When does this sick cycle end? How many innocent children have to make up for one life? Who even are these people?!”

“Until every threat is eliminated,” he replied without hesitation. “Plans are already in motion to crush them. They're quite difficult to track.”

A sickening realization struck me. “Then Emily—”

“No.”

The single word stunned me.

“I will not hurt my own grandchild,” he said with a faint chuckle. “Surely you do not believe me capable of killing a five year old.”

The contradiction left me reeling. I staggered back a step.

Ryan exhaled quietly behind me, tension leaving him in a visible wave.

“I don’t understand you,” I said. “You're not going to hurt her because she's already been born?” 

“You are not meant to understand me. You can't,” he replied. “I only discovered Emily’s existence two weeks ago at the hospital in New Hope. I noticed her resemblance to you. For a moment, I believed she was yours. I didn’t know about Ryan and the older Hart sister.”

He paused.

“I investigated her mother. Learned she once worked for Ryan. The truth became clear. She is not your child. She is Ryan’s.”

He regarded Ryan thoughtfully. “You concealed her existence remarkably well.”

I swallowed bitterness that tasted like ash. “So I’m supposed to thank you,” I said, voice hollow, “for sparing her life?”

“I never demanded an applause.” 

The next question pressed against my chest like a blade. “Is that why you insisted Savannah remain here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And the appointment?” I asked quietly.

“Yes.”

The final question lingered. I did not want to ask it. But I already knew the answer.

“Was that why you kept me in a coma?” My voice barely held together. “So Savannah could not leave until you learned our child’s gender?”

He did not hesitate. “Yes.”

Something inside me fractured completely. My mouth felt numb. My heartbeat thundered painfully against my ribs.

“So…” My voice trembled despite every effort to steady it. “If our child is a girl…”

He held my gaze.

“…you’re going to kill her?”

And yet again, without blinking, he said.

“Yes. I’m going to save her from the torture.”