Accidentally His

Chapter 9: Under His Roof

The first sign was the letter. It arrived at the coffee shop on a Friday, with no return address, in handwriting she did not recognize: A woman who steals another woman's child should be ashamed. I will make sure the world knows what you are. Makayla read it once, twice, and then she felt the cold creep into her bones. She crumpled it and dropped it into the trash before Luciana could see.

But she could not shake it. The words burrowed under her skin like cold, and the rest of the shift she moved through on autopilot, pouring coffee, smiling, and all the while a fear sat in her chest that she had never known before. It was one thing to be afraid for herself — she had been afraid her whole life, in a hundred small ways. But this was different. Someone out there meant harm to a baby who had done nothing, and to a mother who had done nothing, and that hatred had a voice and a reach. She looked over her shoulder on the walk home, and she hated that she did.

The second sign was the call. A voice, low and controlled, that she didn't recognize at the end of the line: 'You think you've won, little waitress. You think he'll keep you. He will never want you. You're a mistake he'll throw away. And when he does, I'll be right there to make sure you're never whole again.' She asked who it was. The line went dead.

She told Luciana about it that night, curled on the worn couch, the phone light still buzzing in her hand. Luciana listened with her face going pale, and then she took both of Makayla's hands. 'That's it,' she said. 'You're not walking home alone again. I'll pick you up every day until we figure this out.' Makayla wanted to say she could handle it, wanted to be brave, but her voice came out small. 'Okay.' They slept that night at opposite ends of the couch with the lights on, the way they had a hundred times before, and it was the first time in her life Makayla had been truly afraid — not for herself, but for the small life she carried.

The third sign was Marcus, the driver, who appeared at the shop the next morning, his expression grave, and asked her, gently, to come with him. When she stepped out, Declan was standing by the car, and his face was dark with a controlled fury she had never seen before.

'Makayla.' He said her name carefully, his jaw tight. 'You've been getting messages.'

She went still. 'How did you—'

'I've had someone watching this place.' He stepped closer. 'I've had someone watching you, because I was worried this might happen. And now it has. Valerie has been out for you from the beginning. I hoped she'd fade. She hasn't. She's moving. And I'm not going to let you — or this baby — become her target.'

'I can handle myself,' Makayla said, but her voice shook and she hated it. 'I've handled everything my whole life.'

'I don't doubt it.' He was closer now, his voice low. 'But handling it alone was never the plan. You said I could be there for this baby. You told me to learn to be present. This is what presence looks like, Makayla. It means I don't let harm come to you. It means, for now, you stay somewhere safe.'

She looked at him, and a million arguments swelled up — I don't want your roof, I don't want to be bought, I don't want to owe you — and all of them dried up in her throat, because she knew he was right. She had a child growing inside her. She could not be brave with a baby's life at stake. 'Where?' she asked, small.

'My estate. On the edge of the city. Gated, guarded, private. You'll have your own wing, your own keys, your own door. You won't see me unless you want to. And if you want to go back to your apartment tomorrow, I'll respect that. But tonight, you sleep somewhere no one can reach you.'

Makayla looked at Luciana, who had come out of the shop and heard enough to be white with worry. Luciana nodded, her eyes scared but her jaw set. 'Go, Macy. Do it for the baby. I'll handle the shop. I'll keep your place. You go be safe.'

And so Makayla Adams, who had sworn she would never set foot in a billionaire's world, found herself, that night, driving through the gates of Blackwood Estate — a place of rolling lawns and old trees and a house so large it seemed to hold the sky. Her whole life had been a shoebox. This was a world. And she was terrified of it.

The gates closed behind them with a soft, final click, and Makayla watched the sweep of dark lawns and old stone and thought of her own little room with its fairy lights and its window that never closed. She had spent years building a small life with her own two hands. Now that life was gone, and she was standing in a stranger's world, carrying a stranger's child, hoping she could find her footing before the ground gave way.

Declan led her through the front hall, past the wide windows and the high ceilings, to a door at the end of a long corridor. He opened it onto a suite that was bigger than her entire apartment. A soft bed, a sitting room with a fireplace, a window that looked out on a garden, and a vase of fresh flowers on the nightstand that made her throat tighten.

'I had them put your things in here,' he said quietly. 'There's a kitchen down the hall if you want to cook, a garden, a pool. But most importantly — no one gets in without you wanting it. I've had security speak to your landlord, to Luciana's shop. There's a car waiting to take you to your appointments, or to work if you choose.'

'You've thought of everything,' Makayla said, and it came out not an accusation, but a wonder.

'I've thought of you,' Declan said, and he looked at her, honest. 'I've thought of nothing but you and the baby since the day I found out. I don't say that easily. I don't think I've said anything like it to anyone in years.'

She did not know what to do with that. A man like Declan Blackwood had a thousand women who would have given anything to hear those words. And here he was, saying them to a broke barista in an oversized cardigan, not because he wanted anything from her, but because he had somehow begun to care. It unsettled her. It also, against every instinct she had, made her feel safe.

The days that followed were a strange dream. There was a cook who fussed over her three meals a day, a housekeeper who kept fresh flowers on her nightstand, a gardener who tipped his hat. Everyone treated her with a kindness she had not earned, until she understood it was not because she was anyone — it was because Declan had told them she was under his protection, and to them that meant something. In all her life, no one had ever shielded her from anything. She had been the shield for everyone else. Now, for the first time, someone was standing in front of her, and she did not know how to stand behind him.

She stood in the doorway of the enormous room, in the house that belonged to a stranger who had offered her the safety she had never had, and she felt the wall she had built around her heart begin to wobble. She looked at him, at the dark, guarded man who had stepped out of his world to guard her, and for the first time she let herself see him without the armor.

'I don't know how to thank you,' she whispered.

'You don't have to,' he said. 'You just have to let me be here for you.' And with that he turned and left her to the quiet, closing the door gently behind him, leaving her in the warm light of a room that should have felt like a cage — and somehow, terrifyingly, already felt like a home.

Later that night, she could not sleep. The house was too quiet and her mind too loud. She padded to the window and looked out at the garden silver under the moon, and she thought of Declan — the way he had looked at her, the way he had promised to protect her. She had come here to escape a threat, and instead she had found a man who was carrying part of her weight. She did not know if that was a blessing or a trap. She only knew that, for the first time in her life, she was not carrying it all alone.