"Raymond! I need to see you!" Phoebe's scream was so loud it distorted through the speaker.
"Fine. We will meet," Raymond replied, his tone leaning into a dangerous calm. "But it won't be right now."
"Why?!"
"I'm not in Australia. It's physically impossible for us to be in the same room at this very moment."
"Where are you? Tell me where you are, and I'll fly to you myself!"
Raymond's eyes narrowed. The fact that she was willing to cross oceans just to confront him confirmed his suspicion, she hadn't just found a secret, she had found the secret. "You don't need to come here."
"Then you get your ass back here! Now!" Phoebe shouted, her voice breaking with the weight of her fury. "See me immediately!"
"I am in New York," Raymond stated, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly warning. "I cannot simply materialize. I'm a man, not a werewolf as in ancient Greek myth who can sprint across continents in a single breath."
"I don't want your excuses! If you give a damn about what we have, you will be here. If not, don't you dare show your face again. I'll make sure you never get another chance to ignore me!"
Raymond exhaled sharply. The temper he had suppressed on the rooftop was clawing at his throat. "Listen to me carefully, Miss Fortunata. I will grant your request. But surely a woman of your intellect understands the 10,000-mile gap between us?"
The ice in his tone was effective. Phoebe went silent for a heartbeat, the reality of the 10,000-mile gap finally sinking in.
"I'll make it happen for you," Raymond continued, his tone absolute. "But you will have to tolerate the time it takes for my wings to reach you."
"Whatever! Don't take longer than twenty-four hours!" Phoebe snapped, her voice trembling but defiant. "I don't care how you do it, but you have twenty-four hours from this exact second to be standing in front of me. If you're late … you lose your access to me. Forever. I don't care how much power you think you have over this world!"
Raymond didn't waste another second. As he moved toward the private elevator, his fingers flew a across his phone, bypassing business notifications and opening an encrypted app. He had a small army of shadows tasked with one objective, the constant surveillance of Phoebe Fortunata.
He scrolled through the logs until a specific update caught his eye. His breath hitched, he immediately dialed a private line.
"Hello, Sir." Female's voice answered instantly, her tone sharp and professional.
The woman on the other end delivered the detail with precision. She described Phoebe erratic exit from the office and the evidence she had uncovered. "She knows, Sir. She found out today … she's pregnant."
The silence was absolute. Then, slowly, a dark, triumphant smile carved its way onto Raymond's face. He stared at the horizon, his thoughts weaving a thousand new possibilities.
"So, this is what has her so enraged. This is why she's demanding my presence at any cost," Raymond murmured, almost to himself.
"It seems so, Sir. She left the building in a state of total fury."
"Good," Raymond's voice laced with a newfound, terrifying tenderness. "Keep your eyes on her. Follow her every move, but stay in the shadows."
"Understood, Sir." The woman replied with impeccable politeness before the line went dead.
*****
"Enzo! Coordinate with our private military contractors. We're swapping the jet. I want an interceptor-grade transport prepped for sustained Mach speeds."
The suggestion brought a deep frown to Enzo's face. He had expected something drastic, but this was crossing into madness. "Are you serious, Boss? Involving that many high-level contacts just to meet a twenty-four-hour deadline? It's practically impossible."
"Impossible is a word for men with limited resources. I am not one of them."
A heavy sigh escaped Enzo as he tried to maintain his composure. "But shouldn't safety be our priority? We can't fulfill her request if we're using illegal, dangerous flight paths just to save a few hours."
Closing the distance between them, the architect of this chaos fixed his subordinate with a razor-sharp gaze. "Arrange everything meticulously. I authorized the use of 'grey' channels, not a suicide mission. Everything must remain within the safe-line."
The atmosphere between them was suddenly silence. "You should know what I require by now, but I will make it clear for you this once."
A sharp nod followed. Enzo knew the specifics were coming, he couldn't afford a single mistake on a move this complex.
"Speak with the contractors directly. Remind them of our history, tell them my situation is an absolute emergency. I want them to prep their fastest interceptor-grade transport; something that can handle sustained Mach speeds. They will chart the most direct route, regardless of civilian air-space restrictions and for the fuel … they have the logistics to handle long-range hops or mid-air transfer. Negotiate formally, but if they hesitate, use our secondary access. You know which one I mean."
"Sure, Boss," Enzo replied, the mission finally clicking into place. "We'll invoke the 'Rodriguez Priority', the ultimate clearance."
"Finally, you're using your head. Now, move!"
"Understood. I'll admit … for a moment, I thought you had lost your mind," a rare, dry smile touched Enzo's lips amidst the tension. "I was about to remind you that we aren't werewolves who can just sprint across oceans, and this jet can't exactly teleport from New York to Australia."
"I don't have such idiotic thoughts," came the dry retort.
"Forgive me, Boss. Usually, even the smartest men turn into fools when it comes to love."
Turning his back to the city, the man's expression shifted into something cold and possessive. "Then remember this, I am not one of those fools. Because what I'm thinking about isn't just love, it's the heir she is carrying."
Once the sound of Enzo's footsteps faded into the distance. Reaching into his pocket, Raymond pulled out his phone, the screen illuminating a photograph of Phoebe. He traced the lines of her face with a gaze that was no longer just cold, it was filled with an intense, possessive pride.
"Destiny has always been on my side," he murmured, a low chuckle vibrating in his chest. "Even when I wasn't looking for love or an heir, it saw fit to hand me both at once."
It was a chilling realization. For a man who had built an empire on calculated moves, a family had never been part of the blueprint, at least, not in the traditional sense. In his darkest thoughts, he had always assumed that if he ever required an heir, he would simply treat it like any other business transaction. He would have bought a womb, paid a woman to carry his bloodline, and discarded her the moment the task was complete.
But as he stared at the woman on the screen, those old, ruthless plans felt like relics of a different life. Fate hadn't given him a nameless vessel; it had given him Phoebe Fortunata, the only woman capable of matching his fire. And now, she was carrying the only thing in the world more valuable than his gold—his heir.
****
The night grew deeper, heavy with a silence that offered no comfort. Tossing and turning in her bed, Phoebe tried to force her eyes shut, but sleep remained a distant luxury. Her mind was a chaotic storm of denial. The fact that she was pregnant felt like direct violation of her own carefully crafted rules, a glitch in the perfect life she had built for herself.
Yet, amidst the anger, the shadow of Raymond began to haunt her. She was no fool, she knew the geography. She knew the thousand of miles of cold ocean that lay between New York and her home, and the grueling hours of flight required to cross them.
"How is he even supposed to get here in twenty-four hours?" she whispered to the empty room, her voice trembling with a sudden, unwanted spark of empathy. "The distance is … it's too much."
For a brief moment, her imagination turned dark. She saw flashes of engine failures, mid-air collisions, and the terrifying reality of a plane lost to the depths of the Pacific. A cold shiver ran down her spine. Her gaze drifted downward, settling on her stomach, still flat, still showing no outward sign of the life growing within.
"I don't want you to grow up without a father," she murmured, her hand hovering just inches above her skin. But as quickly as the softness had appeared, it vanished. Her eyes hardened, the ice returning to her gaze. "But why should I care? He's the one who spent months spying on me. If destiny decides he dies tonight … then so be it. I'm more than capable of deciding my own future after this!"
Phoebe pulled her hand away from her stomach as if the skin had turned to ice. She didn't need a father for her child; she needed a man who could prove he was worth her surrender. If the Pacific swallowed him whole, that was his failure, not hers.