The mansion’s marble floor was cold under his bare feet. Robin stood at the wall of glass, looking out at the lit infinity pool, its blue glow casting everything in a sterile, chemical light. The air smelled of chlorine and, faintly, of the champagne he’d spilled last night trying to drink himself into forgetting the look on her face in the alley. He hadn’t called her. He’d sent a lawyer instead. A man in a two-thousand-dollar suit to deliver an ultimatum to a nineteen-year-old girl in Fort Lauderdale. His ego’s decision. Not his brain’s. He’d been sure she’d fight.
But she came.
The electronic gate buzzed, a sound that usually meant a delivery or a lost fan. He didn’t turn. He heard the soft click of the front door opening, then closing. He heard the hesitant footsteps on the marble, stopping somewhere behind him in the vast, empty great room.
He finally turned.
April stood just inside the doorway, a single small duffel bag at her feet. She wore simple jeans and a plain white t-shirt, her hair pulled back. She looked younger than he remembered, and older at the same time. Her face was pale, composed. Her eyes weren’t wide with wonder or shock anymore. They were flat. Dark.
“Your lawyer said a week,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but it didn’t waver. It carried across the cold space. “I’m here now.”
Robin’s throat felt tight. He wanted to say something—to explain, to justify, to take the threat back. The words that came out were different. “You made the smart choice.”
April’s lips pressed into a thin line. She didn’t nod. She just looked at him, and in that look, he saw the alley again. He saw his own reflection in her eyes, small and cruel.
“It wasn’t a choice,” she said. “It was a surrender. You made sure of that.”
“April—”
“Don’t.” She cut him off, her voice sharpening for the first time. She took a slow breath, her hand drifting unconsciously to rest low on her stomach. The gesture was subtle, protective. It made his chest ache. “I’m not here for you. I’m here for the baby. I know how this game ends if I try to play it with you. The lawyers, the courts, the money… the headlines. I don’t want that for my child. I won’t have it.”
She took a step forward, then another, until she was close enough that he could see the faint gold flecks in her brown eyes. There was no warmth in them.
“You took everything else,” she whispered. “My trust. That night, I was stupid enough to think it meant something. You took it, and you turned it into this… this transaction. So take this, too. The body. The compliance. Whatever you think you won.”
Her words were like stones dropping into the silence between them.
“But you should know what you’ve got,” she continued, her gaze holding his, unblinking. “The girl who loved you? That girl is gone. She died in that alley when you threatened to take her child. What’s left… It’s just a black heart now. That’s all you get.”
Robin felt the chill of the marble seep up through his feet into his bones. He had wanted her back. He had burned down every bridge between them to make it happen. And now she was here, standing in his house, telling him he’d succeeded. He had her. And he had nothing at all.
He reached for her, his hand moving to cup her cheek. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t lean into the touch. She just stood there, her skin cool under his palm, her eyes watching him. A statue. A beautiful, breathing statue with a core of cold ash.
His thumb stroked the line of her cheekbone. He remembered the heat of her, the way she used to melt against him, the sounds she’d make. This silence was worse than any scream.
“I can fix this,” he heard himself say, the words hollow even to his own ears.
April didn’t answer. She just kept looking at him, her black heart beating steady behind her ribs, a clock counting down in the quiet, expensive tomb of his mansion.