POV: Liam
Jackson's presence poisoned the moment before it could become celebration.
He stood in the doorway of my villa, uninvited and immaculate in a charcoal suit that cost more than most people's cars. His eyes swept the scene—the ultrasound photos scattered across the coffee table, the pregnancy tests still in their gift boxes, my brothers and me positioned around Jasmine like a protective formation.
"Well." Jackson stepped inside without asking permission, the way he'd stepped into every room his entire life. "Isn't this touching. A family meeting I wasn't invited to."
"Get out." My voice came out flat and dangerous, surprising even me.
"I don't think so." He picked up one of the ultrasound photos, examining it with clinical detachment—the same way he'd examined quarterly reports or acquisition targets. "A Blackwood heir. This changes everything."
"It changes nothing." Finn moved to block Jackson's path toward Jasmine. "We've already decided—"
"You've decided?" Jackson's laugh cut like broken glass. "Three grown men playing house with the same woman, and you've decided something?" His gaze swept across us with undisguised contempt. "Tell me, which one of you geniuses is the father?"
Silence.
"Ah." His smile turned predatory, the expression I'd learned to fear as a child. "You don't know. Of course you don't. Because that would require basic planning, which none of you have demonstrated in months."
"It doesn't matter who—" Asher started.
"It absolutely matters." Jackson tossed the ultrasound photo back onto the table like it was garbage. "I want a DNA test. Immediately. Before this circus goes any further."
"No." I stepped forward, positioning myself between my father and Jasmine. Every protective instinct I'd ever had roared to life. "We're not doing a DNA test. We've agreed that we're all this baby's father. Together."
Jackson stared at me for a long moment. Then he laughed—a sound utterly devoid of warmth, the kind of laugh that had echoed through my childhood nightmares.
"Three daddies." He shook his head slowly. "You're actually serious. Three daddies for one bastard child, born to a woman who auctioned her virginity online." He turned to Asher. "And you're on board with this? You, the one I thought had a functioning brain?"
Asher's jaw tightened, but he didn't flinch. "We've made our decision."
"Your decision." Jackson's contempt filled the room like poison gas, seeping into every corner. "Let me explain something to you boys, since you've apparently lost all capacity for rational thought. The three of you couldn't keep a company together. Stock crashed forty percent. Artists fled. The board nearly removed you. And now you're planning to raise a child? In this arrangement?"
He gestured at us with disgust, like we were specimens in a failed experiment.
"You're not a family. You're a joke. A punchline waiting to happen." His voice hardened to steel. "Society will eat you alive. The press will crucify you. Every school that child attends, every job application, every relationship they attempt—they'll be the freak with three fathers and a mother who sold herself to the highest bidder."
"That's enough." Jasmine's voice cut through, steady despite the pallor in her cheeks. I'd never loved her more than in that moment—standing up to the man who'd terrorized my entire family for decades.
"No, I don't think it is." Jackson turned his full attention to her, and I watched his predator's gaze assess her with cold calculation. "You've done quite well for yourself, haven't you? Wormed your way into my sons' beds, their company, and now you're carrying what might be my grandchild. But understand something—I will not allow the Blackwood name to be dragged through this particular mud."
"You don't get a vote." My hands had curled into fists without my permission.
"I get every vote that matters." Jackson's smile was ice and cruelty combined. "I'm still the majority shareholder. Still the man who can make your careers flourish or disappear. Still the one who decides whether this company survives the next quarter."
He straightened his cuffs with deliberate precision—a gesture I recognized from a thousand boardroom power plays.
"Here's what's going to happen. You're going to get a DNA test. Whoever the biological father is will marry her—properly, legally, in a way that doesn't make us look like degenerates. The other two will step back and pretend this polyamorous experiment never happened." His eyes found each of us in turn, delivering the threat with surgical precision. "Or I pull my funding, crash the stock, and make sure none of you work in this industry again."
"You'd destroy your own sons?" Finn's voice cracked, and I heard the boy he'd once been—the kid who'd spent his childhood trying to earn approval from a man incapable of giving it.
"I'd save them from destroying themselves." Jackson moved toward the door. "You have one week to come to your senses. After that, I stop waiting."
He paused at the threshold, looking back at Jasmine with something that might have been grudging respect—or just another form of contempt.
"You're clever. I'll give you that. But this fantasy you've constructed?" He shook his head slowly. "It ends. One way or another, it ends."
The door closed behind him with a soft click that sounded like a gunshot.
Silence filled the space where his contempt had been.
I stood frozen, fists still clenched, rage and helplessness warring in my chest. Fifteen years of building something separate from him. Fifteen years of trying to prove we didn't need his money, his approval, his poison. And with one conversation, he'd reminded us all exactly how much power he still held.
Finn collapsed onto the couch, head in his hands. Asher hadn't moved, but his knuckles had gone white where they gripped the back of a chair.
And Jasmine—Jasmine stood in the middle of it all, one hand pressed against her stomach where our baby grew, face pale but eyes blazing with that fierce light I'd fallen in love with.
"He can't actually do all that," Finn said, but it sounded like a question. "Right? He's bluffing?"
"He's not bluffing." Asher's voice was gravel. "He's never bluffed in his life."
I crossed to Jasmine, needing to touch her, to ground myself in something real. "We don't have to do what he says. We can fight this."
She looked up at me, and the determination in her expression made my chest ache.
Jasmine's hand trembled against her stomach. "He's right about one thing," she said quietly. "We can't keep pretending the world will accept this. Something has to change."