Chapter 2 - The Sound of Shattered Glass
The executive penthouse of Monroe Holdings was designed to intimidate. Floor-to-ceiling ballistic glass walls wrapped around the entire perimeter of the forty-second floor, offering a panoramic, cinematic view of New Orleans that stretched across the murky expanse of the Mississippi River all the way to the misty horizon. Today, however, the sky matched the mood inside the room—heavy, bruised with charcoal storm clouds, and weeping a cold, unrelenting drizzle against the panes.
Trace lingered near the elevator doors, his hand hovering near his hip where his sidearm was concealed, his eyes darting anxiously between Rebecca’s heavily pregnant frame and the broad, motionless silhouette of Roman Monroe standing by the far window.
Roman hadn't turned around when the private elevator chimed. In this building, assistants knocked, heads of security announced themselves, and rivals sent warnings through lawyers. Nobody arrived unannounced on the forty-second floor unless they had a death wish.
“I told you I didn't want any coffee, Elena,” Roman’s voice cut through the cavernous silence like a shard of broken plate glass.
It was a voice that commanded boardrooms, settled bloody dock wars, and sent shivers down the spines of hardened criminals. It was deep, gravelly, and entirely stripped of any warmth.
Rebecca didn't answer immediately. She took one slow, agonizing step forward onto the plush wool rug, the muffled thud of her flat shoes completely swallowed by the heavy carpet.
Trace quietly backed into the elevator alcove, letting the steel doors slide shut halfway, sealing his exit while leaving her entirely exposed in the center of the lion's den.
“I’m not Elena,” Rebecca said.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
Roman’s entire body went rigid. The crystal tumbler of amber bourbon he had been holding in his right hand shattered instantly, the fragile glass imploding under the crushing grip of his fingers. Shards of crystal rained down onto the carpet alongside a dark splash of liquor, but Roman didn't flinch, didn't curse, and didn't look down at his bleeding palm.
Slowly, deliberately, he turned around.
For eight months, the corporate world had whispered that Roman Monroe was losing his mind. Rumors circulated through the French Quarter and the financial district that the ruthless tycoon was burning through a bottle of scotch a night, sleeping at his desk, and driving his remaining captains to the brink of exhaustion with his relentless, paranoid hunts for Preston Dane’s ghost.
Now, seeing him face-to-face, Rebecca realized the rumors didn't even scratch the surface of the truth.
Roman looked older, leaner, and dangerously feral. His silver-streaked dark hair was slightly longer, falling messily across his forehead. Deep, bruised shadows carved out the skin beneath his dark, piercing eyes, and a sharp, untamed stubble darkened his jawline. He wore a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing the intricate, dark ink winding up his forearms, but the top buttons were torn open as if he had been suffocating.
His eyes locked onto Rebecca.
They swept upward from her sensible flat shoes, past her swollen legs, past the oversized wool cardigan she wore to mask her shape, and finally came to rest squarely on the undeniable, massive curve of her eight-month pregnant stomach.
The color drained entirely from Roman’s face, leaving him looking like a carved marble statue. The air in the penthouse seemed to instantly evacuate, leaving a suffocating vacuum of pure, unadulterated shock.
“Bex...”
Her name escaped his lips not as a command, not as a shout of rage, but as a broken, hollow whisper that sounded like a dying man gasping for his final breath.
Rebecca clutched the canvas tote bag tighter against her chest, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She had rehearsed a dozen speeches during the long, lonely drive from Baton Rouge—crisp, professional, detached explanations detailing how she had uncovered Preston’s embezzlement scheme, how she had fled out of sheer terror for her life, and how she had returned solely to clear her legal name and secure a safe distance.
Every single rehearsed word evaporated the second those dark, haunted eyes met hers.
“You’re alive,” Roman whispered, taking one tentative, disbelieving step forward from the window, as if he expected her to dissolve into thin air like a cruel hallucination brought on by exhaustion and cheap whiskey.
“I’m alive,” Rebecca echoed, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts to keep it steady.
Roman took another step, his gaze dropping back down to her swollen belly, the sheer magnitude of what he was seeing finally crashing through the walls of his denial. His breathing hitched, his broad chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow gasps. A tremor racked his right hand—the one still dripping with a mix of bourbon and fresh blood from the shattered glass.
“Whose...”
He couldn't even finish the question. The very thought seemed to physically choke him, his voice cracking with a raw, primal vulnerability that nobody in New Orleans would ever believe the fearsome head of the Crescent Syndicate capable of possessing.
“Whose is it, Bex?” he finally forced out, his voice dropping into a dangerous, ragged growl that vibrated across the floorboards.
Rebecca swallowed hard, standing her ground despite every maternal instinct screaming at her to turn around and run back to the elevator.
“If you’re going to accuse me of stealing your money, Roman, you might as well accuse me of stealing your child too,” she retorted, her voice flashing with sudden, defensive heat. “Because according to your security team eight months ago, I was capable of anything, weren't I?”
Roman flinched as if she had struck him across the face with a lead pipe. The color returned to his cheeks in a hot, angry flush, replaced instantly by a wave of crushing, unbearable remorse.
“I never believed you took the money, Rebecca,” he snarled, though the fury wasn’t directed at her—it was directed entirely at himself. “The moment you vanished into the rain, I knew something was wrong. But Preston had planted false audit trails, forged my signature on internal termination orders, and cut your digital access before you even reached your car. By the time my people realized the access logs were manipulated, you were already gone.”
“Preston told me you ordered my execution,” Rebecca shot back, tears finally stinging the corners of her eyes, hot and angry. “He showed me the intercepted secure comms. He told me you discovered my personal savings account had a discrepancy and concluded I was selling classified shipping manifests to your rivals!”
Roman’s fists clenched so tightly at his sides that the bleeding cuts on his palm opened wider, dripping dark crimson onto the carpet. “And you believed him over me?”
“I believed the man who had a hit squad hunting me down the interstate!” she yelled back, her voice echoing off the glass walls.
For three agonizing seconds, the silence between them was deafening. The storm outside lashed against the windows, a sudden roll of thunder shaking the entire forty-second floor.
Roman closed his eyes, tilting his head back as a deep, shuddering groan tore from his throat. When he opened them again, the anger was entirely gone, replaced by an ocean of raw, terrifying devotion.
He didn't care about the ledgers. He didn't care about the fourteen million dollars. He didn't care about his bleeding hand or his shattered glass.
He only cared about the woman standing before him, carrying his child, whom he had lost to the dark shadows of his own dangerous world.
“Bex,” Roman whispered, his voice cracking as he took two long, decisive strides forward, closing the distance between them. “Please... tell me that’s mine.”
Rebecca looked up at him, her lower lip trembling. She reached into the canvas tote bag, ignoring the ledgers entirely for a moment, and pulled out a small, folded stack of thermal paper.
She held out an envelope containing the latest obstetric ultrasound scans.
Roman stopped inches away from her, his chest brushing against hers, his tall frame trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. With agonizing slowness, his blood-stained fingers reached out and took the envelope from her hand.
He pulled out the black-and-white printout, his dark eyes scanning the blurry, beautiful image of a tiny spine, a beating heart, and a small profile clearly visible on the screen.
The ruthless billionaire, the man who ruled the shadows of Louisiana with an iron fist, dropped to his knees right there on the expensive wool carpet, ignoring the broken glass, ignoring the blood, and pressed his forehead gently against Rebecca’s swollen stomach.
A choked sob broke from his lips—a sound so raw and broken that it tore straight through the remaining walls of Rebecca’s heart.
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“I’m sorry,” Roman whispered against her clothes, his warm breath seeping through the fabric of her sweater. “God forgive me, Bex... I’m so sorry.”
Rebecca closed her eyes, a single tear spilling over her lashes and tracking down her cheek. With a shaky sigh, she raised her hand and let her fingers tangle softly into his silver-streaked dark hair, pulling him closer as the storm raged outside the glass.
