I press my trembling hand flat against my bare, flat stomach.
The cognitive dissonance should completely break my mind. I should drop to the floor and weep. I should curse the universe for allowing a seed of absolute darkness to take root inside my body.
But as my fingertips graze the warm, soft skin of my lower abdomen, a completely different, infinitely more terrifying emotion entirely overrides the horror.
A dark, feral, visceral surge of pure, unadulterated protectiveness violently erupts in the center of my chest.
It is a primal, biological instinct, completely unhinged and utterly absolute. I look at my reflection in the mirror. My midnight-blue eyes are wide, but they are not fractured. They are burning with a dark, lethal fire. The woman staring back at me is not a victim trapped in a cycle of abuse. She is the Queen of the ashes.
I will not be my mother. I will not run. I will not cower in the dark.
I will raise this child in the sun, and I will teach them exactly how to rule the monsters.
The faint, almost entirely silent rustle of the linen curtains in the bedroom alerts me a fraction of a second before the immense, burning heat of his massive body entirely completely fills the threshold of the bathroom.
Thayer stops in the doorway.
He is wearing nothing but a pair of loose, dark linen trousers sitting low on his hips. The brutal, jagged pink scar on his left shoulder and the sprawling, mottled white burn tissue coating his right ribs are stark visual testaments to the violence he endured to keep me.
His pale gray eyes instantly lock onto my face in the mirror. He reads the catastrophic, heavy tension completely vibrating through my small frame. The feral, hyper-vigilant paranoia that never truly sleeps within him instantly spikes.
"What's wrong?" Thayer demands, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that echoes loudly against the marble. He steps fully into the room, his eyes aggressively sweeping the space, entirely looking for a physical threat that does not exist.
I do not turn around. I simply lower my gaze to the marble counter.
"Look," I whisper, my voice completely stripped of all its strength.
Thayer crosses the bathroom in two massive, predatory strides. He steps entirely behind me, his broad chest lightly brushingagainst my spine. He looks over my shoulder, his eyes following the direction of my trembling gaze.
He sees the white plastic stick. He sees the two pink lines.
The absolute, paralyzing stillness that overtakes his massive frame is terrifying. He completely stops breathing. The heavy, rhythmic thud of his heart against my back simply ceases. For ten agonizing, suffocating seconds, the untouchable Don of Chicago is entirely, completely paralyzed by a piece of plastic no larger than a pen.
Then, the air violently leaves his lungs in a harsh, ragged exhalation.
"Sybil," he rasps, the word completely breaking in his throat, a hollow, shattered sound of pure, unadulterated shock.
He slowly, agonizingly reaches out with his right hand. His large, calloused fingers, the exact same fingers that snapped his own father’s neck, are trembling violently as he picks up the test. He stares at it, his pupils dilating until his eyes are entirely swallowed by the blackness.
"It's positive," I whisper, entirely unable to look away from his reflection.
Thayer drops the plastic stick back onto the marble.
He doesn't speak. He doesn't smile. He grips my hips, his large hands entirely spanning the width of my waist, and slowly, deliberately turns me around to face him.
He looks down at me, his chest heaving violently, the thick muscles of his scarred torso bunching with an overwhelming, catastrophic surge of emotion. The absolute, psychotic possessiveness that defines his love for me violently mutates,completely expanding to encompass the invisible life growing inside my core.
He drops to his knees.
The heavy thud of his kneecaps hitting the polished stone echoes through the room. I gasp, entirely shocked by the absolute physical subjugation of the gesture.
Thayer ignores my reaction. He wraps his massive arms entirely around my waist, burying his face directly against my bare stomach.
"Mine," he growls, the word a dark, demonic, muffled vibration that travels straight through my skin and completely rattles my soul. "You are carrying my blood."
"I am," I breathe, my hands instinctively flying down to tangle in the thick, dark waves of his hair.
He presses an open-mouthed, scalding kiss directly over my womb. A violent shudder rips down my spine. He kisses the center, the right, the left, completely mapping the territory with an obsessive, terrifying devotion.
