Page 201 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 2

Pain exploded in my left thigh, white-hot and immediate. My leg buckled beneath me, and I went down hard, my knee slamming onto the marble floor. I gasped, my hand instinctively going to the wound. Blood seeped through my fingers, warm and slick.

I looked up at Winston. He stood there, the gun still in his hand, his expression unchanged. Calm. Clinical. Like he’d just swatted a fly.

“That,” he said quietly, “was a warning.”

I tried to stand, but my leg wouldn’t support my weight. The pain was sharp and insistent, radiating up my thigh and down to my knee. I pressed my hand harder against the wound, trying to stem the bleeding.

“You shot me,” I said, my voice hoarse with disbelief.

“I grazed you,” Winston corrected, setting the gun on the table beside his bourbon. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. This is just a reminder that I’m still in control. Not you. Me.”

He walked closer, and I saw the scars on his face in the light—the ones he’d earned over decades of violence, of doing what needed to be done. The jagged line that ran from his eye to his jaw. The puckered scar on his forearm. The faint marks on his knuckles.

He looked down at me with something that might have been pity.

“These scars,” he said, running a finger along the line on his jaw, “are proof that I get the job done. That I don’t mind shedding blood to do it. That I’ve survived things that would’vebroken lesser men. You need to remember that, Amai. You need to remember who the fuck you’re dealing with.”

In that moment, I felt completely helpless. Completely powerless. I had no moves. No leverage. Nothing.

Winston had Priest.

Winston had the gun.

And Winston had just proven that he was willing to use violence—even against his own son—to maintain control.

Footsteps thundered down the stairs. A moment later, my mother appeared in the doorway, her eyes wide with shock and fury.

“What the hell did you do?” Mama’s voice was shrill, panicked. She rushed toward me, dropping to her knees beside me. Her hands hovered over the wound, trembling. “Winston, what the fuck did you do?”

“He’s fine,” Winston said dismissively. “It’s a graze. Blood loss won’t kill him.”

“Blood loss—” Her voice broke. She turned to glare at him, her face twisted with rage. “You shot our son!”

“He attacked me,” Winston said, his tone matter of fact. “I defended myself. I didn’t kill him. A lil blood loss ain’t gon kill his ass.”

There was something almost absurd about the way he said it—so casual, so matter of fact—that for a moment, the situation felt surreal. Like I was watching it happen to someone else.

But the pain in my leg was real. The blood on my hands was real. And the cold, clinical expression on my father’s face was real.

“Defended yourself?” Mama’s voice rose to a scream. “He’s your son! You don’t shoot your own child!”

“He’s not a child,” Winston said coldly. “He’s a grown man who forgot his place. And I reminded him.”

Mama stood, her entire body shaking with fury. “You’re a monster. You know that? A goddamn monster.”

Winston picked up his bourbon and took another sip. “I’m a realist. And right now, Amai needs to understand that his actions have consequences. Not just for him, but for everyone around him.”

“Consequences?” Her voice was venomous. “You want to talk about consequences? You’ve destroyed this family. You’ve turned your sons against each other. You’ve made them into weapons instead of men. And now you’re shooting them when they don’t obey you?”

“Odette—”

“Don’t youOdetteme.” She pointed a shaking finger at him. “You’ve gone too far this time. Too fucking far.”

She turned back to me, her hands gentle as she examined the wound. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No hospital,” I said through gritted teeth. The pain was manageable now, a dull throb that I could compartmentalize. “Call Dr. Arceneaux.”

Mama nodded, pulling her phone from her pocket. Her hands were still shaking as she dialed. “Jean-Paul? It’s Odette Landry. I need you at the house. Now. Amai’s been shot.”