Chapter 160 Chapter 160

Chapter 160 Chapter 160
On the side table beside my tea tray was a small tablet. On its screen was a simple clear medical report, delivered thirty minutes ago by Dr. Evelyn Wynn our private family physician who had flown in discreetly from Boston on one of our private transport helicopters.
Positive. Four weeks. I was pregnant.

A quiet, stillness filled my chest, it was a mixture of awe, fierce protectiveness, and a sudden, sharp edge of anticipation. A life. Nikolai’s and mine. A child born not into the absolute, unshakeable sanctuary of an empire. The heavy oak door of the study clicked open. I didn't need to look up to know it was him. The temperature of the room seemed to rise instantly, saturated by the dark, heavy presence that always followed Nikolai Ferro.

He walked in without a sound, taking off his suit jacket and tossing it onto the back of the sofa. He had spent the morning down at the tactical training grounds with Wesley and the senior guard detail, and his dress shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, revealing the dark ink creeping up his neck. His eyes locked onto me the second he crossed the threshold. That quiet, hyper-attentive focus never waned.

"You skipped lunch," he said, his voice a deep, gravelly vibration that settled straight into my spine. He crossed the hardwood floor with deliberate, heavy strides, coming around the edge of my desk. "Maria  was ready to march up here with a tray herself until I told her I’d check on you."

"I was finishing the secondary clearance for the Rotterdam port," I said smoothly, turning my chair to face him. My voice sounded calm and  controlled the voice of the woman who managed a multi-billion-dollar holding firm. He stopped directly in front of my chair. He didn't look at the monitors. He didn't look at the Rotterdam files. His eyes narrowed slightly, sweeping over my face with that terrifying, razor-sharp intensity that could read a man's pulse from across a room.

He leaned down, placing his hands on the armrests of my chair, trapping me completely in his shadow. "You're lying,Isla," he murmured, his voice dropping into a velvet-soft, dangerous register.  His face was inches from mine, his eyes searching every line of my features. "Your heart is beating faster than usual. Your pulse is right here." He reached out, his heavy thumb pressing gently against the side of my throat, feeling the rapid, steady flutter beneath my skin. "What happened?" he asked.

I reached up, wrapping my fingers around his wrist. His skin was warm, solid, and rough, an anchor of pure iron. "Evelyn was here an hour ago," I whispered softly.
Instantly, the atmosphere in the room shifted. The air grew dense, cold, and razor-sharp. His jaw tightened until the bone looked like carved marble, his eyes flashing with a sudden, lethal instinct.

"Who?" he growled, his voice dropping an octave, terrifying and flat. "Are you sick? Are you hurt? If someone tried to…"
"Nikolai, stop," I cut in gently, taking his other hand and placing it flat over my stomach, pressing his broad, heavy palm directly against the silk of my blouse and he froze.

He didn't move a muscle. The titan who had personally executed cartel leaders, dismantled international syndicates, and commanded thousands of armed men was completely paralyzed in the middle of our study. His palm covered almost my entire abdomen, the heat of his hand seeping straight through the fabric to my skin.
He looked down at his own hand resting against my body, then slowly raised his dark, intense gaze back to mine.

"Isla..." he breathed, the word barely a rasp in his throat.
"I'm pregnant," I whispered, my eyes shining with quiet emotion as a small, radiant smile touched my lips. "Four weeks. Doctor Wynn confirmed it an hour ago. Healthy, clean, and perfectly safe."

Silence descended upon the study, thick, heavy, and absolute. For three long seconds, he didn't speak , he didn't smile, he didn't even draw a breath. Then, a sudden, dark transformation swept across his face. It wasn't joy and it wasn't relief either. It was an overwhelming, terrifying wave of raw, primitive possessiveness that made his pupils contract into tiny black points.

"Pregnant," he repeated, the word sounding heavy, dark, and dangerous on his tongue. Before I could say a word, his hands moved with sudden, startling speed. He slid his arms beneath my thighs and lower back, lifting me out of the chair and pulling me hard against his chest. He backed up two steps and sat down heavily in the oversized leather armchair, holding me tightly in his lap, wrapping himself around me like an iron vault.

"Nikolai…" I started, startled by the sheer velocity of his reaction.
"Quiet," he growled low against my neck. His hands cupped the back of my head and my waist, pressing me so flush against his chest that I could feel the wild, thunderous pounding of his heart against his ribs. "Just stay still. Don't move." he said.

He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling in heavy, ragged cycles. His grip on me wasn't painful, but it was suffocatingly tight, an absolute, unyielding clamp that left zero space between our bodies. "Nikolai, I'm fine," I said softly, resting my hand against his cheek, feeling the intense tension vibrating through his heavy jaw. "The doctor said everything is normal. I'm healthy."

"You aren't going to Rotterdam," he said flatly, his gravelly voice tight, cold, and entirely unhinged. "You aren't going to the city. You aren't leaving this estate."
I pulled back slightly to look at him, surprised by the sudden, absolute lockdown in his tone. "Nikolai, the quarterly summit in London is next month…"
"The summit is canceled," he barked, his pitch-black eyes burning with a dark, territorial mania that I had never seen before. "Alessio can go to London. Stefan can go to London. You stay here, in this house. Where I can see you every second."

"Nikolai," I said, my voice firmer now, searching his face. "What is wrong with you?" He stared at me, his jaw working silently, his hands tightened around my waist as if he were afraid that if he loosened his grip by a fraction of an inch, I would vanish into thin air. There wasn’t any  joy in his eyes. There was only an intense, stormy, deeply conflicted fury, a primal instinct torn wildly between two competing realities.

He reached down, his hand cupping my lower stomach again, his fingers pressing firm and possessive against my skin. But he didn't look down at my belly. He kept his  eyes locked on my face, searching my eyes, my lips, my expression, with a desperate, suffocating intensity.
"You belong to me," he whispered, his voice a dark, ragged rasp that sent a strange, intense chill through my blood. "Every breath you take, every thought in your head. You are mine, Isla."

"I know I'm yours," I murmured gently, reaching up to frame his face with both hands, thumbing the high ridge of his cheekbone. "I have always been yours."