Zayden’s POV
I drive us home instead of back to the foundation.
Midday on a Thursday, leaving work unfinished, meetings unattended. Jocelyn doesn't question it. She just sits in the passenger seat, hand pressed to her stomach, looking small in a way that makes rage simmer under my skin.
Aiden cornered her. Alone. Used her pregnancy as a weapon. I'm going to destroy him for that.
"IT audit starts tonight," I say, unlocking our apartment door. "Full security sweep. Every system, every login, every access point. If there's a digital breach, we'll find it."
She drops her bag by the door, kicks off her heels. The simple domesticity of it—my wife coming home, getting comfortable—should feel normal. Instead, it feels precious. Vulnerable.
"And if it's not digital?" she asks.
"Then it's human." I loosen my tie, trying to channel fury into something productive. "Someone on staff either helping him or being careless enough that he can exploit their mistakes."
"So we suspect everyone?"
"We protect everything."
I turn to face her, and the fear in her eyes—carefully hidden but there, makes something fierce surge in my chest.
"New protocols, new passwords, restricted access levels. If someone needs to know something to do their job, they get access. Otherwise, information stays locked down."
She moves to the kitchen, pours water with hands that aren't quite steady. "He said I'd be collateral damage. That you're losing control and I'll fall with you."
The manipulation is textbook—isolate the target, create doubt, offer false safety. Harrison used the same tactics for decades.
"He's trying to drive a wedge between us," I say, crossing to her. Close enough to feel her warmth. "Create fear, make you doubt me."
"I know what he's doing." She sets down the glass, turns those dark eyes on me. "Doesn't make it less effective. He's in my head, Zay. In our privacy. Our medical information. Our foundation. Everywhere we should be safe."
"Not for long." My hands find her hips, pull her against me. I need the contact, need to feel her solid and real and mine. "By tomorrow, every access point he's exploited gets locked down. Every vulnerability gets closed. I'm rebuilding our security from the ground up if that's what it takes."
"That's a lot of work."
"You're worth it." I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in. "This baby's worth it. Our family's worth it."
My hands slide from her hips to her stomach—still flat, no visible evidence of the life growing there. The life Aiden weaponized with his casual mention of cortisol and fetal development.
"He made my pregnancy feel like a weakness," Jocelyn says quietly. "Like ammunition he could use against us."
The words hit wrong. Make me want to find Aiden and show him what an actual threat looks like.
"It's not weakness. It's strength." My voice comes out rougher than intended. "You're growing our child while fighting a war on every front. That's the opposite of weak."
"I don't feel strong right now."
"Then let me be strong for both of us."
I kiss her—not gentle, not tentative. Claiming, desperate, full of everything I can't articulate. The need to protect her, to reclaim what Aiden violated, to remind us both what intimacy looks like when it's chosen instead of invaded.
She kisses me back with matching intensity, fingers tangling in my hair, pulling me closer. This isn't comfort. It's reassurance through possession, connection through desperate need.
We break apart breathing hard.
"Bedroom," she manages. "Now."
I don't need to be told twice.
We barely make it down the hall. My hands are everywhere—unbuttoning her blouse, unzipping her skirt, needing skin, needing proof she's here and safe and mine.
She tugs at my shirt, impatient. I help, shrugging out of expensive fabric that suddenly feels like a barrier I can't tolerate.
Her back hits our bedroom door. I pin her there, one hand braced beside her head, the other sliding up her bare thigh.
"Tell me you're mine," I say against her neck, needing to hear it. "Tell me Aiden's bullshit doesn't change what we are."
"I'm yours." The words come breathless, beautiful. "We're ours. He can't touch that."
My fingers find the edge of her underwear, slip beneath. She gasps, gripping my shoulders, and the sound goes straight through me.
"He violated your privacy," I murmur against her collarbone. "Breached your medical records. Used our baby as a threat."
"Yes." She arches into my touch.
"So I'm going to remind you what intimacy actually looks like." My fingers move with purpose, finding exactly what she needs. "What it feels like when someone touches you with permission. With love. With complete fucking devotion."
The contrast is deliberate—Aiden's invasive breach versus this, my hands on my wife's body with consent and worship and partnership.
"More," she breathes.
I give her more. Pressure, angle, rhythm—three years of learning her body means I know exactly how to make her fall apart.
"That's it," I say, feeling her tense. "Let go. I've got you."
She shatters against the door, crying out my name, and the sound is everything. Proof that this is ours, that what we have can't be breached or weaponized or stolen.
Before she's fully recovered, I'm lifting her. Her legs wrap around my waist as I carry her to the bed, needing her horizontal, needing to see her spread out beneath me.
We land in a tangle of limbs and half-removed clothing. She works my belt with shaking hands while I finish undressing her—bra unhooked, underwear stripped away—until there's nothing between us.
"You're beautiful," I say, settling between her thighs. "Strong and fierce and carrying my child. How did I get this lucky?"
"Pretty sure I'm the lucky one." She reaches up, traces my jaw. "You could've had anyone. Could've stayed in your corporate empire. But you chose this. Chose us."
"Best decision I ever made." I enter her slowly, carefully, always conscious she's pregnant. "You okay?"
"Perfect." Her legs wrap around me, pull me deeper. "Don't be gentle. I need to feel you. Need to remember we're real and this is ours and Aiden can't take it from us."
Understanding crashes over me. This isn't just sex—it's reclamation. Taking back what Aiden tried to poison.
I move, and there's nothing gentle about it. Hard, deep, possessive thrusts that drive her up the bed. My mouth finds hers, swallowing her moans, my hands gripping her hips with intensity that might bruise.
This is what intimacy looks like when it's chosen. When it's built on trust and love instead of violation and surveillance.
"Mine," I growl against her lips. "You're mine, this baby's mine, this life is ours and no one gets to take it."
"Yes." She's climbing again, I can feel it. "Ours. Not Aiden's, not Vivienne's, not anyone else. Just ours."
I shift angle, hit the spot that makes her eyes roll back. She comes hard, nails raking down my back, crying out without restraint.
I follow seconds later, burying myself deep with a groan that sounds like relief and triumph and home.
We collapse together, breathing hard, hearts pounding in sync. I roll to the side, pull her against my chest. My hand finds her stomach again, protective even in the aftermath.
"Tomorrow starts the counterattack," I say quietly. "IT audit, security overhaul, legal action against Aiden. I'm dismantling every access point he's exploited."
"And today?"
"Today we remember what we're fighting for." I kiss her temple. "This. Us. The family we're building."
She laces her fingers through mine, presses them both to her stomach where our baby is growing.
"He can't win," she says. "Not against this."
"No," I agree. "He can't."
We lie there in afternoon light, wrapped around each other, connected in every way that matters.
Aiden can breach our systems. Vivienne can wage her campaign. The world can judge and speculate and threaten.
But this—this intimacy, this trust, this absolute certainty that we belong to each other—is untouchable.
And that's the fortress they'll never breach.