sob before nodding. “Is that...”
I can’t talk through the frantic throbbing of my pulse. It’s thumping out a crazy tune, stunned by the date and name on the ultrasound images in Dimitri’s hand. If the date on Smith’s watch is anything to go by, my scan was yesterday. Nine days after I was freed from the hell that killed our baby, and four days after learning Fien’s true paternity.
It takes me a couple of seconds to talk, but when I do, my voice is so full of hope, I may very well die if I don’t hear the answer I want. “Is that our baby?”
There’s no chance in hell I can hold back my sob when Dimitri smirks, then nods. His response is almost too surreal, too calm, too fucking outrageous ever to believe it’s true.
How is he not freaking out?
Why isn’t he fuming mad?
I trapped him exactly how India tried and failed. Shouldn’t that make him angry?
I take a mental note to have Smith scan me for mindreading devices when Dimitri mutters, “You can’t snare a man in the trap he set, Roxanne.” There’s no trace of emotion in his voice when he says, “You can congratulate him on his victory, then hope like hell your stroke of his ego gives you a couple of months of freedom before he traps you again.” He bites on my lower lip, slides his tongue across his teeth marks to soothe the sting, then presses his curved mouth to my ear. “The future belongs to those unscared to make it theirs. My future is with you, Roxanne, and whether you agree or not, yours is with me.”
His comment should fill me with dread. It should make me panicked. I’m in love with a mass murderer who’d rather slay me than see me with any man who isn’t him, but that isn’t close to what I am feeling.
He killed my boyfriend, tortured my parents, and has threatened to kill me more than once, but I love him, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Dimitri
Four Months Later…
* * *
A tap sounds at my office door before Roxanne’s head pops through the gap. “Hey, Smith said you wanted to see me.”
I gesture for her to enter, loving that even walking past dozens of women paid to cater to our ‘guests’ every whim hasn’t dampened the sparkle in her eyes I re-lit when I told her our baby had survived both the carnage of her captivity and his mother being shot in the stomach without the slightest scratch. She knows whores are a part of this industry, but she also accepts that I have no interest in them.
The latter is responsible for her blasé response.
No fear.
Even with my son growing in her stomach, and my daughter on her hip, Roxanne doesn’t hesitate to put the women who step over the line she deems unacceptable into place.
If you touch what is hers, expect to pay for your stupidity with your life.
Same goes for me.
I won’t just kill you, though. Your entire family will be extinct. Your father, your brothers, hell, I’ll even kill your second cousin if you do my family wrong because family comes first of all.
If you don’t believe me, ask Maestro’s family. You’ll have to find them first. Trust me when I say that won’t be easy. The Italian Cartel doesn’t leave bodies because corpses can talk. Take the toddler in the wall at the Shroud family ranch as an example.
Is Megan related to me? Unfortunately, yes. Is she my sister? Hell-to-the-fucking-no. Our connection is a consequence of the fucked-up world my father raised me in. Babies, made-to-order wives, underage whores, if you could make money from it, my family dabbled in it in some way.
That’s all done and dusted now. My father is dead, killed in a way too deserving for him, but without a single ounce of remorse felt. Most people believed he died in a joint FBI/Ravenshoe PD operation, only I know that isn’t the case.
I’m not a fan of dark, hidden crevices until it conjures up a way to take down the man responsible for my family’s utmost turmoil.
Fathers are supposed to protect their children.
They’re supposed to save them from harm.
My father did no such thing.
If he had the chance to profit from it, he ran for it, but shacking up the only surviving member of his family with a vindictive bitch who couldn’t give her husband’s actual royal lineage an heir was a new low