Chapter 450

[ 1,153 words ]

Katia’s POV

“You don’t have to go in today,” Julian said.

“I do.” I stood and carried my plate to the sink. “There’s a board packet that needs my notes before noon. Sam already flagged two sections p>

He came up behind me and rested his hands lightly on my waist, careful of the small curve of my stomach. His mouth brushed the side of my neck.

“Drive carefully. The roads are going to be shit p>

“I always drive carefully p>

He made a low sound that wasn’t quite agreement. I turned in his arms and kissed him properly—slow, unhurried, the kind of kiss that said we still had each other even when everything outside the walls felt unstable. When we pulled apart, Aiden was already coming back down the stairs with his backpack.

I crouched to his level, smoothed his collar, and hugged him tight.

“Be good at school. Listen to your teachers p>

“I will. Are you coming to pick me up p>

“Daddy or someone from the house will. I have a long day p>

He accepted that with the easy faith of a six-year-old and ran off toward the front door, where the driver was already waiting. Julian walked me to the garage a few minutes later. The rain was louder out here, hammering the roof.

My car sat in its usual spot, dark and low. I had driven it through worse weather than this. Still, something in my chest felt tight as I opened the door.

Julian leaned in after I sat and kissed me once more.

“Text me when you get there p>

“I will p>

He stepped back. I closed the door, started the engine, and pulled out into the rain.

The streets were already slick.

Water sheeted across the asphalt in places where the drains couldn’t keep up. Wipers worked hard against the windshield. I kept my speed steady, both hands on the wheel, eyes moving between the road and the mirrors the way I always did. Pregnancy had made me more cautious, not less. I felt every small shift of the tires, every slight pull of the current running along the gutters.

Traffic was heavier than usual. People drove like the rain was a personal insult. I stayed in the middle lane and let the aggressive ones pass. The city looked washed out and gray through the glass. Buildings blurred. Lights smeared.

My phone sat in the cup holder. I thought about texting Julian that the roads were worse than expected, then decided against it. He would only worry more. I would be at the office in twenty minutes. I could handle twenty minutes of rain.

I turned onto the longer stretch of road that led toward midtown. It opened up a little. Fewer lights. More room. I eased the speed up slightly, still well within what felt safe. The tires hissed through standing water. The world outside narrowed to the cone of my headlights and the rhythmic sweep of the wipers.

My mind drifted, the way it sometimes did on familiar routes. Ellliot was still out there.

I didn’t know what he would do next, only that a man who sent someone to a child’s school and leaked private messages for sport would not simply disappear because his own son had turned on him. Julian and Marcus were already tightening security and looking into old accounts. I had my own people watching the edges of IG Technologies for anything unusual. Still, the feeling of being hunted never fully left.

I adjusted my grip on the wheel.

A delivery truck ahead of me threw up a heavy spray. I slowed and gave it space. The rain thickened until the wipers struggled to clear the glass between sweeps. I leaned forward slightly, focusing harder on the lane markers.

That was when the first wrong feeling arrived.

It was small. A faint lightness in my head, like standing up too fast. I blinked hard, and it faded. I checked the mirrors again, checked the speedometer, and checked that both hands were steady on the wheel. Everything looked normal. The road was just wet. I was just tired. Pregnancy made the body do strange things sometimes.

I kept driving.

The lightness returned a minute later, stronger. The edges of my vision softened. Sounds muffled—the rain, the engine, the faint music I hadn’t realized was still playing low. I tried to pull in a deeper breath and found it didn’t help the way it should have.

Something is wrong.

The thought was clear and sharp inside a suddenly foggy head. I eased my foot toward the brake. The car responded, but the response felt delayed, like the message from my brain to my foot had to travel through water. The steering wheel under my hands seemed farther away than it should have been.

I forced myself to focus on the lane lines. They swam slightly.

A horn blared somewhere to my left. I didn’t turn my head to look. Looking felt like it would cost too much. I kept my eyes forward and tried to guide the car toward the shoulder. The right tires caught a deeper channel of water. The back end of the car shifted—just a small, sickening slide.

I corrected.

Or I thought I did.

The wheel didn’t answer the way it usually did. The car kept drifting. Panic spiked cold and clean through the fog. I pressed the brake harder. The anti-lock system stuttered under my foot. The world outside the windshield tilted.

I saw the guardrail coming in a strange, stretched way. Time didn’t slow the way people claimed it did. It simply became less useful. I was aware of my hands still on the wheel, of the seatbelt across my chest, of the small life inside me that I could not protect with anything except the metal around us and whatever control I had left.

I tried to say Julian’s name.

I wasn’t sure if the sound actually left my mouth.

The impact, when it came, was a hard, violent noise that filled everything. Metal. Glass. The airbag exploded in a white rush that smelled like powder and burned the inside of my nose. My body snapped forward and then back against the seat. Pain flared bright along my left side and then seemed to scatter.

Rain kept hitting the broken windshield in the sudden quiet that followed.

I tried to lift my hand to the seatbelt release. My fingers didn’t answer properly. The fog in my head thickened, turning the edges of the world soft and gray. Somewhere far away a horn was still going. Or maybe it was the car’s alarm. I couldn’t tell.

My eyes felt heavy.

I thought of Aiden’s face at breakfast. Of Julian’s hands on my waist in the kitchen. Of the rain against the windows that morning and how ordinary it had seemed.

The gray closed in further.

My eyes went blank.

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