I shot a look at my cousin.
There she was, a queen of the underworld. Her face was unusually pale. She clutched her belly, horror radiating from her like a putrid stench.
No, I couldn’t allow her or her husband to be hurt because of me. Once upon a time, she stepped up to save me.
I rose now, forcing my shaking legs to hold me. “Ivan, calm the hell down,” I snapped. “Let’s just talk about this, okay? No one is shooting anyone.”
For how terrible my reality suddenly was, at least my voice was steady. In fact, it almost sounded commanding to my ears. Or maybe that was just how I wanted it to sound.
His black eyes, like twin daggers, slid in my direction. The feel of his gaze on my skin was the cold lick of an icy whip.
I refused to back down in the face of this monster.
Because that was what he was. I was delusional to be swayed by his smiles and unholy, breathtaking body.
“You stole him.” Gone was the man who brought me flowers. I looked, but didn’t see him in the mask of pure, unadulterated blackness.
“I did no such thing,” I bit back. “A priest contacted me about an orphan. I adopted Brady five years ago and have raised him asmy own ever since. Not me, nor any member of my family, was involved in taking him from you. So lower your weapon.”
“What weapon?” Ivan mocked and raised his hands.
I didn’t look. Fine, he wasn’t actually pointing a gun at my cousin’s husband, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t freaking lethal.
“Brady is my child, and I’m not letting him go with a stranger. Not even if that DNA test proves you’re his father,” I countered, letting him feel the full weight of my displeasure.
“Then I will take him.”
It was suddenly cold. No cloud veiled the sun, no wind fluttered off the lake. And yet the temperature dropped dozens of degrees. It whispered over my skin, sinking down to the bone.
“He’s coming with me,” Ivan insisted.
I could see it in his eyes. The certainty of the claim. There was no good way out of this. There would be a fight. Blood would be spilt. And in the end, Brady might be stolen.
“As if he’s better living with you?” I countered, letting out a manic laugh of despair. “You should have kept that information to yourself, let him come back with me to the country where no one knows who he is. Now your men know. That means your enemies will too. However he was taken from you can repeat itself—and that is something I cannot allow.”
“I’ll keep him safe.” For the first time since he stepped out of his truck, Ivan’s voice took a different tone.
Maybe it was the maternal instinct coursing through me, but I thought I heard the echo in this man’s tone.
“Keep him safe?” I snarled. “By kidnapping him? Scaring him half to death!”
Ivan’s lips drew in a flat line.
“You should have come to me privately.” I threw my hands up. “We could have figured this out.”
“You would never have allowed the boy you raised to come to me,” Ivan sneered. “You would have figured a way out of it, andthat isn’t happening. The boy is mine. And it’s time I took him home.”
That was the sad, bitter truth.
Made Men were pridefully protective of their heirs. If what this man said was true, and there was no room for doubt in my mind, in a cruel twist of fate, Brady belonged to this man.
But he was also mine. My son. The infant I soothed, the toddler I cuddled, the child I raised.
“Fine,” I said, not even giving myself a chance to think through what I was saying. Because if I did, I might just faint. “Since you’re so willing to kill whoever stands in your way to get what you want, Brady can go with you peacefully. But I’m coming too.”
Chapter 8 – Ivan
Boris:The Italians are jumpy.
