The storm outside the hospital window didn't break for three hours. Long after Warren Cole pulled a metal chair beside my bed, long after the first twin—a fierce, red-faced little girl who wailed with the breath of a fighter—was placed against my chest, the rain hammered the glass like an eviction notice.

My apartment was on the third floor of an old walk-up in Inman Park. No elevator. Narrow stairs where the landlord hadn't fixed the loose banister since 2020. I stood at the bottom of those stairs with a car seat in each hand, Clara in one, Leo in the other, feeling the surgical stitches in my abdomen pull with every breath.

A black town car idled at the curb.

The rear door opened, and Warren stepped out. He wasn't wearing his coat today; he wore a charcoal sweater that made his shoulders look impossibly wide and his eyes look startlingly pale against the Atlanta sun.

"Give me those," he said, taking both carriers before I could protest.

"Warren, you don't—"

"Amelia, stop arguing. You had your womb cut open three days ago. Unless you want to pop your stitches and bleed out on a stairwell, you're going to let me carry your children upstairs."

He didn't wait for permission. He carried them up with an ease that suggested he had done difficult things his entire life and never once complained about the weight.

When we stepped inside my small apartment—which suddenly felt microscopic, smelling faintly of old floor wax and the vanilla candles I used to cover the scent of the restaurant grease from downstairs—Warren stopped in the center of the living room.

He didn't look around with judgment. He looked around with calculation.

"This won't work," he said.

"It's my home," I said defensively, setting my purse on the small wooden table. "We'll manage."

"There's no security. The front door downstairs has a latch anyone with a credit card can pop in three seconds. And the neighborhood gets loud on weekends." He set the carriers down gently on the sofa, then turned to me. "Pack a bag."

"Excuse me?"

"You and the twins are moving into my home in Buckhead."

I laughed—a sharp, hysterical sound. "Are you out of your mind? I met you four days ago in a hospital room because you got lost looking for a corpse!"

"My home has a gated perimeter, twenty-four-hour monitoring, a nursery that was built for my sister's children before she moved to London, and a kitchen twice the size of this entire apartment where you can cook whatever you want without worrying about the landlord complaining about the smell," Warren said, his voice entirely even, as if he were reading off a business invoice. "It is not a proposal, Amelia. It is a logistics solution."

"I don't need your charity, Warren."

"It's not charity," he said, stepping closer until I had to tilt my head back to look up at him. "It's an investment. Derek Fontaine's father owns half the agricultural land in three states. Derek himself is currently flying back from a private hunting retreat in Montana with his father's inner circle, blissfully unaware that he has children. When he finds out—and he will—he won't want to look like a deadbeat. He'll want control. He'll want his name on those birth certificates, and he'll use every lawyer his family's money can buy to take them from you."

My blood ran cold. The names. Fontaine.

Derek hadn't signed the acknowledgment forms at the hospital because he hadn't been there. Under Georgia law, because we weren't married...

"If you're living in a three-hundred-thousand-dollar apartment in Inman Park, Derek's lawyers will chew you up in family court before you can afford a retainer," Warren continued softly, his gaze unyielding. "If you're living in my house, protected by my legal team, they won't even get past the front gate."

Before I could answer, my phone buzzed on the table.

An unknown number.

I stared at it. Warren reached out, picked it up, and looked at the screen.

"Answer it," he said. "Put it on speaker."

I pressed the button with a trembling finger.

"Amelia?" Derek's voice came through the speaker, crisp, slightly rushed, the sound of private jet engines humming in the background. "Babe, I'm sorry I missed your calls. My phone died up in the mountains and the reception was garbage. Look, the old man died last night. It's absolute chaos here with the estate and the board meetings. Are you still at the apartment? I'll send a car by tomorrow. We need to talk about the baby stuff. My mother is already talking about private schools in Nashville."

He didn't ask how I was.

He didn't ask if I was in pain.

He didn't even remember we were having twins.