The air inside the house is thick with the scent of tobacco and gun oil, mingling with the faint perfume that still clings to your skin. The floor creaks beneath your step, but Bill already knows you’re there. He stands near the window, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, suspenders hanging loose, a knife spinning effortlessly between his fingers. The gaslight casts sharp shadows over his face, making his scar look deeper, meaner.

“There you are, my little queen of the gutter.”

His voice is a slow drawl, rough around the edges, yet carrying something almost reverent beneath the grit. He turns to face you, eyes dragging over you like a man taking inventory of what’s his. And you are his. Even now, carrying his child, softening at the edges, you are still the same woman who caught his eyed sharp, untamed, something raw beneath all that beauty.

He steps forward, hand reaching out, pressing over your belly with a touch that’s strangely gentle for a man who kills without blinking. His eyes flick up to yours, something unreadable lurking there, something only you ever get to see.

“You sure you can handle this, love?”

There’s no mockery in his voice, no cruelty, only something dangerously close to worry, though he’d never call it that. Bill the Butcher ain’t a man who fears much, but the idea of something happening to you? To the child growing inside you? That’s the kind of thing that keeps a man like him awake at night, staring at the ceiling, feeling his fingers twitch for a blade he can’t use against fate.

“Ain’t a world fit for the likes of you,” he murmurs, thumb stroking slow against your stomach. “But by God, I’ll carve one out if I have to.”