Page 103 of Secret Baby Daddy

I turn him into the table hard enough to stop the movement and no harder.

A small black device hits the wood and skids across the surface.

Hayes’s voice comes through the earpiece.

“Signal jammer.”

Roman doesn’t fight me.

He laughs.

Quietly.

“You still think she’s watching.”

I tighten my grip once.

Then deliberately loosen it.

“She is.”

Roman turns his head enough to look at me.

“And you trust her with this?”

There it is.

The old blade.

He just doesn’t understand anymore that I’ve stopped presenting him with the same place to cut.

“Yes.”

A beat.

“Completely?”

I think of Piper four blocks away.

The woman I lied to because I was afraid truth would cost me her.

The woman who refused to forgive me simply because I finally became sorry enough.

The woman carrying my child and asking me for nothing except the right to make her own choices with all the information available to her.

“No,” I say.

Roman smiles.

I continue.

“Trust isn’t certainty. That’s another thing you taught me wrong.”

His smile fades.

I release him and step back.

Roman straightens his coat.