Nine Months of Deception: The CEO's Hidden Heir

Chapter 9

Sebastian's POV

The rain lashed the asphalt of Blackwood with deafening violence, but for me, the entire world had fallen into a deathly silence.

I stubbed out my cigarette, crushing it against the wet body of the SUV, and stepped outside. The icy Atlantic wind whipped through my cashmere coat, soaking me in seconds, but I barely registered the cold. My entire mind was focused on the small, rustic-looking café that stood before me, its paint peeling and its wooden sign creaking in the storm.

The Lighthouse.

"Mr. Volkov, the outer perimeter is secured," Marcus, my head of security, reported, approaching briskly, water trickling down his militarily expressionless face. "My men have already forced the main entrance and are checking the ground floor. The back door was open when we arrived."

"Open?" My voice cracked like a whip through the night. “Are you telling me a team of six heavily armed ex-Marines let a five-foot-three secretary slip right through the back door?”

Marcus swallowed, his jaw clenched.

“We had the perimeter covered, sir, but visibility in the back alley is zero, and there’s a network of docks right behind it. If she got out before we blocked off the exits on the block… she’s got a few minutes’ head start.”

“Find her, Marcus,” I hissed, taking a step toward him until I was invading his personal space, letting the murderous instinct that was burning in my gut show in my eyes. “If she’s got a one-minute head start, cut it off. Deploy the drones with thermal cameras. Bring in dogs if you have to. I don’t want excuses, I want my woman.”

I left Marcus barking orders into his radio and walked toward the wrecked entrance of the coffee shop. The beveled glass lay shattered on the old wooden floor. As I crossed the threshold, the contrast between the frigid air outside and the warm atmosphere inside hit me. The place smelled of roasted coffee, freshly baked cake, and... her.

That damned, subtle hint of vanilla and cinnamon hung in the air, so distinct I felt a physical pang in my chest.

I ignored the two guards searching the kitchen and headed straight for the narrow wooden staircase leading upstairs. I took the steps two at a time. My Italian shoes creaked on the worn planks, heralding the arrival of destruction to its pathetic little refuge.

Reaching the end of the hallway, I found a door ajar. I pushed it so hard the wood slammed against the plaster wall, creating a hole.

The room was dark, illuminated intermittently by the lightning that ripped across the sky outside. I entered slowly, flipping the small wall switch. A dim, yellowish lightbulb flickered, revealing the grim reality in which my Gianna had been living for a month.

It was a tiny space, ridiculously small compared to the walk-in closet in my Manhattan apartment. There was a single bed with rumpled sheets, a small fabric wardrobe, and a bedside table where a cheap paperback and a cup of tea sat.

I approached the table. I cupped the ceramic cup in both hands. It was still warm.

A hoarse, primal growl escaped my throat. She had been here. Just minutes before, she had been sitting in this very spot, breathing this very air, probably watching me from the window like a cornered animal.

Fury and frustration collided within me, creating a lethal cocktail. I grabbed the mug and smashed it with all my might against the opposite wall. The ceramic shattered into a thousand pieces, staining the faded wallpaper with the amber liquid.

I ran my hands through my soaked hair, breathing heavily.

I walked to the closet and yanked the zipper open. There were only a few loose garments, all gray, baggy, shapeless.

None of the elegant pencil skirts or silk blouses I used to insist she wear to the office. She had completely erased her old identity.

Why?

That was the question that had been gnawing at my brain ever since she disappeared.

Yes, I had been cruel. But Gianna knew me. She knew my coldness was my armor, my defense mechanism. She had endured my worst moods for three years.

One bad night, however hurtful I might have been, didn't justify her destroying her phone, emptying her bank account, and fleeing to the most forgotten corner of the country.

The logical and structured Gianna I knew would have demanded a transfer, or at worst, a million-dollar settlement.

But she had run away as if her life depended on it.

The buzzing of my cell phone pulled me from my thoughts. I took it out of my coat pocket. It was Elias.

"Speak," I ordered, my voice sounding like the crackle of ice about to give way.

“Mr. Volkov… I’ve finished penetrating the servers of the rural medical clinic Miss Rossi visited this morning.”

“Is she sick?” The question slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it, laden with a vulnerability I instantly loathed. My stomach clenched at the mere thought of her being hurt or suffering from some illness in this godforsaken hole.

Elias remained deathly silent on the other end of the line. A silence that lasted three full seconds. Three seconds in which a computer programmer on my payroll hesitated to give me an answer. In my world, that was a death sentence.

“Elias,” I hissed, with a calmness that foreshadowed the impending m******e. “I suggest you speak before I send someone to your department to rip out your tongue.”

“Sir, I just sent the encrypted medical record to your terminal. I think… I think you should read it yourself. The on-call doctor’s notes are in the attached file.”

He hung up.

Elias had hung up on me.

With dangerously tense hands, I pulled out my encrypted terminal and opened the file that had just arrived in my priority inbox. The screen lit up with the cheap logo of the Blackwood clinic. I swiped across the screen, reading the admission form.

Patient Name: Anna Smith

Reason for Visit: Acute abdominal pain, lower abdominal cramps, minor bleeding (ruled out).

My heart stopped for a split second. Abdominal pain. Bleeding.

What on earth was wrong with her?

My eyes darted across the lines of medical text, desperately searching for the diagnosis.

Assessment: The patient presents in a highly anxious state. She reports pelvic cramps. An emergency transvaginal ultrasound was performed to rule out an ectopic pregnancy or threatened miscarriage.

The world stopped.

It stopped raining. The wind stopped howling. The cold disappeared. The entire universe shrank to the word flashing on the backlit screen of my device.

Pregnancy.

I felt as if someone had struck my chest with a steel sledgehammer.

My lungs emptied of air, refusing to function. My wide eyes scrolled down to the next line of the report, my retinas absorbing each letter, each number, as if they were sentences seared into my very soul.

Diagnosis: Round ligament pain, a normal and expected symptom of the first trimester. Closed cervix. No sac detachment. Single fetus in perfect condition.

Estimated gestational age: 8 weeks and 2 days.

Fetal heart rate: 145 beats per minute. Strong and rhythmic.

Eight weeks.

The phone slipped from my limp fingers and crashed to the wooden floor, the screen cracking.

I stumbled backward until I hit the wall of the room. I squeezed my eyes shut, but all I saw was that number. Eight weeks. Exactly the time that had passed since that night in my office. That night I ripped her from her gray blouse, that night I made her mine on the mahogany desk with a fury and desperation I had never felt for any human being.

That night I came inside her not once, but three damn times, losing all control, blinded by the absolute need to possess her.

"Take the pill, Gianna. I don't want mistakes, I don't want heirs, I don't want emotional complications."

The memory of my own words, spoken the next morning with calculated coldness as I tossed her a wad of bills, returned to me like a poisoned boomerang, plunging straight into my throat.

She didn't take the pill. Or she took it and it failed.

Gianna was pregnant.

She carried my child. My blood. My heir.

The revelation was so monumental, so devastating, that it shattered the foundations of my sanity in an instant.

All my life I had sworn never to have children.

My own childhood had been a hell of coldness and tyrannical expectations under my father's rule; I had promised myself that the Volkov line would die with me, that no child would have to bear the weight of this cursed empire.

I had seen a baby as a tactical weakness, a vulnerability my enemies could exploit against me.

But the second my brain processed the information from the medical report, that stupid philosophy completely disintegrated.

I didn't feel repulsion. I didn't feel the disgust or panic I expected. I felt something infinitely darker, more primal, and more dangerous.

I felt a possessiveness so absolute, so savage, that it made me growl in the solitude of the empty room.

A child of mine. Growing inside the woman who had obsessed me for years.

Suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place with blinding clarity. Her flight. Her change of identity. Her job in this pigsty, getting paid in cash.

The way she should have run into the storm just minutes before, instead of staying to negotiate with me.

She wasn't running away out of pride. She wasn't running away because I had broken her heart. She was running away because she believed that if I found out, I would force her to have an abortion.

She was afraid of me.

She believed I was a monster capable of murdering my own flesh and blood to maintain my untarnished empire.

A harsh, broken, and humorless laugh escaped my lips.

She was wrong. Oh, moya malenkaya ptichka, how terribly wrong you were.

The predatory instinct of the alpha male, already immense, mutated in that very instant into something far more lethal.

Now it wasn't just the Devil claiming his woman; it was a beast protecting its young.

Gianna was out there. In the midst of a storm, with temperatures nearing zero, alone, in the dark, running along the muddy, slippery docks. And she was carrying our child inside her. The mere image of her stumbling, falling, or getting sick in that torrential rain ignited a fire within me.

I practically flew down the stairs, my boots crushing the glass in the entryway as I stepped back out onto the street.

The rain lashed my face, but now I felt it as a personal affront.

Marcus was standing by the SUVs, coordinating the teams under a tarp.

"Marcus!" My roar cut through the thunder, instantly snapping all the mercenaries and ex-military personnel present to attention."The search and detention protocol has just changed."

I reached him and grabbed the lapels of his tactical jacket, lifting him a few inches off the ground despite his size. My gray eyes must have looked like a lunatic's, but I didn't care.

"Listen very carefully, because I'm only going to say this once," I hissed, my voice heavy with the promise of imminent death. "She's not alone. She's pregnant with my child."

Marcus's eyes widened, his professional composure vanishing for a split second.

"If anything happens to her or the child, if she slips, if she cuts herself, if even one of your men frightens her too much and she suffers a damn collapse... I swear on my life I'll skin every one of you alive before burying you in these very docks. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir! Absolutely clear."

I let him go roughly.

"Establish a ten-kilometer perimeter. I want the drones in the air now, I don't care if the wind destroys them. Call headquarters. I want three rescue helicopters and an emergency medical team flying here this instant."

I turned toward the dark alley where she had vanished. The shadows of the docks looked like an endless maze of wood and fishing nets, but I didn't care anymore. She could hide in the darkest trenches of this damned town, she could run until her feet bled, but there was no force on Earth or in Hell that could keep me away from her now.

"Don't worry, Gianna," I muttered to myself, striding deeper into the darkness of the alley, letting the storm engulf me. "I'm going to find you. And when I do, I'll lock you so deep into my world that you'll never see the light of day again without my permission."