Despite the late night, I got up early. Sloane slept in, looking so peaceful with her head on my shoulder, but I didn’t try to wake her. She needed her rest too. After we got out of the tub together, we went to bed and fell asleep only to wake up to her having a bad dream. We’d fucked again, harder and faster that time, which resulted in her not getting much sleep altogether.
Will I ever get enough of her? I had to wonder if it were possible, but I doubted it. No matter how many times we fucked, I wanted her more and more.
Slipping out of bed carefully so I wouldn’t wake her, I watched her carefully and looked forward to getting a pregnancy test soon. She’d been here for one month now, and it would be time to start seeing if she would be expecting. In a twist of irony, it wouldn’t bother me if she wasn’t. The goal was to knock her up, but if it took a little longer, that was all that much more time that I could have her to myself.
I got dressed and left her sleeping to begin tending to business. Even though I could have slept in more, I was restless, as if the adrenaline rush from the danger last night hadn’t fully evaporated.
First, I went to check on my father. He was alive and as well as he could be, stable and recovering in his sleep.
Then, I checked on the nurse who’d literally saved his life. She’d never want for anything, and I personally ensured that the maid assigned to the woman was on task. I also asked around if the men had gotten any more details from her. She’d been hurt and shocked when that intruder snuck in. I knew how details could be blurred or locked away in a moment of high stakes and panic, but she was sticking with the same few details she had to give.
After that, I went down to Damon’s apartment and spoke with him.
“Nothing,” he said as we headed toward his kitchen. I wasn’t in the mood to eat with him, not when I had to get in the office and review the footage the security team had gotten together, but I walked with him anyway. “That fucker didn’t say a single goddamn word and I didn’t go easy on him.”
“I don’t doubt you,” I replied.
“He couldn’t take it. He bled out, but I stayed at it for hours, Maxim. He wasn’t going to say a word.”
I nodded. “Did you get any impression that he could be affiliated with anyone we know?”
He shrugged, but after he rubbed his stubbled jaw, he shook his head. “No. Not really. Even if I were to get a gut feeling… There’s nothing. Not a single thing he did or how he looked made me think of a connection with any other families we know.”
“Could it be the Feds?”
He scoffed. “Fuck no. They last the least amount of time with me in the dungeon. Nik came by when the man died.”
“He was up that late?” I asked, curious. We all kept odd hours, but Nik had seemed so tired when we both checked on Father. Or maybe he was tired inside, not physically. Nik, among all of my brothers, could be the biggest enigma.
“Yeah. He and Saul were with the security footage until late. But when Nik stopped in to talk with me, it seemed like he was convinced those two assholes who broke in last night had to be contractors.”
And that will complicate this investigation so much more now. Lots of crime families hired out for delicate jobs. Most times, hits were placed for the sake of a power play. That it was an honor to claim killing a member of a rival family. Other times, hiding involvement was a more critical need.
Having to look for who could’ve hired a contract killer added more stress to my life, but I was determined not to fail my family. I went to my father’s office and did as much searching as I could do there, but it was early yet. Whoever was behind this slow-building storm against us wouldn’t be found just yet.
After spending time in the office, my aggravation increased until that restlessness was replaced with full-on agitation. Within these walls, I felt stuck and overwhelmed. It didn’t matter how many times I reviewed what the men had found and reported on from last night’s incident. I felt further from knowing what direction to pursue. Worst of all, I had no clear sign of whether my first suspects could be related. The Romanos and Kozlovs were always the initial ones who came to mind as enemies who might have the reach to stage a prolonged war like this against us, but I had nothing to go on as evidence to guess that they were behind my father’s poisonings.
What if it’s not one enemy to be wary of but two separate ones?
I groaned at the idea of a copycat attempt on my father’s life. Too fed up and frustrated with no answers, I left the office and went to see if Sloane was awake. She was just getting up when I strode into the room. Just seeing her and recalling how different she was when I found her, an outsider from the Mafia world, I wanted to escape from the reality of being a ruler within it. Just for a while, I wanted the peace of her company and nothing more.
Nothing more?
For the first time in my life, I considered being accepting of a lot more where Sloane was concerned.
“Get dressed,” I advised.
She raised her brows. “Where are we going?”
“To breakfast.” I adjusted the knot of my tie, determined not to overthink how I was risking a trip out of the house with her. She’d been cooped up inside for a month, only allowed to look out through windows at the city she called home.
Home.
Again, that idea of more felt like the right risk to contemplate.
“We are?” She sat up with a funny smile on her face. If the mention of going somewhere could make her light up like this, I’d do it more often. Something had changed since last night. I couldn’t be sure if it was her selflessness to help my grandmother without being asked to or the slower, more intimate sex we’d had in the bath, but I felt like we were advancing to something significantly more.
“Yeah. I’ve noticed how much you enjoy pancakes. So let’s go get some. I don’t want to be stuck here today.”
“Well…” She shrugged, lowering her gaze. “Go ahead, then. I’ll be here when you’re back.”
I shook my head. “No. Because I need you with me.” As she kneeled to the edge of the bed under my beckoning with a crook of my finger, I cupped her face and kissed her. “I want you with me.”
She grinned, giddy at the prospect of going somewhere as simple as breakfast with me. “I want you with me too,” she replied.
Hell, maybe it’s not the food she’s excited about but spending time with me.
“Get dressed. I’m going to check on something and I’ll be right back.”
She nodded, obedient, but I had to smile at the excitement in her eyes. I left to go to Father’s office and open the vault so I could choose a ring that had been in the family for ages. Beatrice’s was burned, never to be used again with how she’d betrayed Father and the family, risking her sons with her affair. Her lovers had tried to have me and my brothers killed for her lies.
But maybe… it doesn’t have to always be like that.
I chose the emerald and diamond ring, thinking of Sloane’s eyes, and set it in a small case.
Just to see how it feels.
If I could think about marrying her, that was the first step. A primitive one I didn’t necessarily have to act on.
If I carried this ring around as a reminder of what could be possible, I could warm up to changing my mind about marriage and wives and having a woman forever.
After she got dressed and we headed out with a couple of men flanking us, I savored this strange feeling that we were just any other couple. Two people out on a weekend morning for pancakes. If this was all she needed to feel happy, I could bend a little more.
It was because she had opened up so fully, almost getting me to think I could trust her with more than wanting to care about my wounded family members, that I wanted to do this small thing for her.
Just so long as you know you’re never getting away from me. I watched her smile out the window as we were driven through the city to a hole-in-the-wall place that she swore made the best pancakes in the whole state.
“This is different,” she said on the way.
“What is?”
She still held my hand in the backseat as she shrugged. “Going out with you. Makes me feel like we’re a real couple.”
I know. She’d stolen the words from me.
“But I still understand that we’re not,” she added.
Damn it.
I didn’t want her to put a damper on the mood. Refusing to comment and start a little bickering, I sighed and turned to look out the window instead of staring at her like a lovesick fool.
Lovesick?
Fuck no.
I was not going to fall in love with her. Ever since that thought had entered my mind a few days ago, I kicked it out as soon as my imagination ran away with her starring in my future.
She was here to give me a child.
And to… just be there.
Until I could put the worry to rest that she could be hiding something from me, I would not lower my guard.
We arrived shortly, and the second car with two of my men parked further back in the small lot. They would stay as plainclothesmen on the clock to protect us. The driver and the soldier who’d come along in the front seat exited the car before they opened the doors for me and Sloane.
She got out, and I rounded the car to hold her hand again, but as I did that, my phone rang.
It was Saul, and I knew better than to not answer. This soon after a break-in at the house, I had to be reachable at all times. We needed every piece of information we could find about what had happened, so I had to take it.
“Hold on.” I held my finger up to Sloane and stepped away toward the end of the car, pacing as I answered. The men stayed closer to me but didn’t leave her. “Yes?”
“Hey, Brother. I just wanted to check in and tell you that the crew we sent out to check the surveillance cameras from around the block found nothing conclusive—”
Sloane’s scream cut through the air, and I whipped around to find her cowering from a man who’d been walking through the parking lot. She hunched down against my car, her eyes narrowed in fear and anger as the man tried to reach for her.
“No. Brent, stop.” She swatted at the man’s hands. Even though the other guard was at her side and protecting her, he was outnumbered with this fucker having his buddy try to grab her too.
“Stop!” she shouted again as I hung up and ran for her.
“You need to come back, goddammit. I don’t know where the fuck you’ve been hiding,” the man who had to be Brent said, “but you have to come back to the club. You owe us too much to just disappear like that.”
I shoved him back, charging into him. Red tinted my vision at the mere idea of another man putting his hands on her. As he slammed back into the next car, grunting and sliding down in pain from my hit, I lost the proximity to Sloane to fully block her. Another one of Brent’s friends tried to snatch Sloane from where she cowered. She tucked back, trying to stay small and not be touched, but we were surrounded.
Footsteps pounded on the pavement as my men came near, but before I could reach for my gun, busy punching these fuckers who’d swarmed too close, too suddenly, she doubled down to the pavement.
“Don’t!” She took a kick to her leg as she crouched low. Again and again as I fought back the men, she tried to block anyone from hitting her.
I spun out and knocked out the asshole who’d made contact with her on her shin.
“Don’t hurt my baby!” she cried out, making herself curl into a ball as she protected her stomach. “Stop!”
Baby?
That word rang through my mind as the Ivanov soldiers from the other car reached us. We were still outnumbered with Brent’s handful of friends, but my men were more skilled to kick ass with vengeance.
Baby?
Did she say what I thought she said?
Catching my breath, I dropped back toward her after kicking one of the men to the ground. She remained tucked in a ball, her shoulders hunched as she avoided the conflict.
“Take them,” I ordered the men. I didn’t know who they were, what they wanted, or where they’d come from, but they could answer all those questions in the dungeon. For the audacity of touching Sloane at all, they would pay with their fucking lives.
“Sloane.” I stepped back toward her, trying to make sense of what I thought I’d heard her say.
Baby?
My mind wasn’t working fast enough. I was too tired. Too stressed. Too stretched thin that I was hearing and imagining things. Because there was no way Sloane could be acting like this. She would’ve told me if she was fucking pregnant.
Right?
Adrenaline rushed through me all over again as I tried to think of how she could be telling these assholes not to hurt her baby.
“Sloane.” I repeated her name again, focusing solely on her as she trembled in a ball on the pavement. She wouldn’t look up at me yet, and that distance, that lack of eye contact, unnerved me.
It was as if she’d realized too late what she’d let slip.
Ever so slowly, as my men wrangled the men toward the other SUV in the background, she lifted her face toward me. The nervousness that shone in her vulnerable, worried eyes told me enough.
“What did you say?” I asked, trying and failing to keep that cold demand out of my tone.
She stood carefully, leaning against the car for support. I didn’t miss how she wouldn’t reach out to me or try to get close. There was no indication that she wanted to touch me, let alone hold my hand.
“What did you say?” I repeated as anger started to simmer and burn hotter in my blood. My heart raced faster as I stared into her eyes.
“I told them that I… didn’t want them to hurt the baby,” she confessed quietly, almost meek about it.
“What baby?” I asked hotly. It came out as a furious whisper.
“Ours. I… I’m pregnant.”
This was supposed to be good news. The precise announcement I’d been praying to hear from her. She was in my life to give me an heir, but the anxious expression she still wore gnawed at me.
“You knew?” I stepped toward her.
She flinched, retreating a step as she nodded.
How could she keep this from me?
