“That was not a part of the plan, sir,” he said through gritted teeth.
Cini’s lips pulled down into a frown as she looked from me to Elio with a look of confusion on her face before turning back to her father looking for clarity.
“Luscinia’s change of designation was also not a part of my original plans for you either, and yet here we are,” Amante replied with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Everything that we had been putting into place over the past couple of weeks would have to be moved up yet again and I just wasn’t sure such a thing would even be possible.
Edison Keane had agreed to help, but he was going through his own issues with his people right now, issues that wouldn’t be solved any time soon.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that we were being commanded to marry Cini—no, in fact, if it were any other day I would be ecstatic. It was exactly what I had wanted to do for years.
But turning her into an incubator for Amante’s perfect heir?
No fucking way.
“And what will you do with this heir once they are born?” Elio asked, his expression sliding back into a neutral one again.
“And what if the baby is a girl?” Cini’s voice cut through the conversation. It seemed she had connected the dots and all of the excitement had drained from her face, leaving her looking shellshocked.
It always surprised me to hear her speak out loud because she hated it so much. I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d heard her do it and two of those times would be today.
“It won’t be,” Amante said, minimizing her concerns. “And my heir will live here with me as it should be.”
So, not only was he treating his daughter like a broodmare, but he was going to take away our hypothetical child after they were born.
My inner-alpha growled at the thought and I had to keep myself from doing the same thing out loud.
Years and years of bending to the will of the man in front of me should have prepared me for this sort of endgame, but even still I was shocked by how callous he was.
“You can’t just separate a mother from their child,” I said, my voice hard with anger. “It’s not right.”
Amante’s blue eyes chilled as he glanced over at me. He rarely ever spoke directly to me—I was the youngest in my pack and the one raised outside of his influence the longest. If Alesso hadn’t stuck up for me as much as he had when I was younger, I suspected I wouldn’t have survived to adulthood. “Neither of my children grew up with a mother,boy, besides it isn’t as if she will be far away. She will live in the Amante mansion for the rest of her life.”
So the marriage itself is just a sham,I realized dazedly. He had no intention of actually letting us live as a pack. He just wanted us to provide genetic material for a baby that we wouldn’t be allowed to raise ourselves.
Bile rose in my throat as every cell in my body seemed to resist the very idea of a child that looked like Cini growing up the same way she and Alesso had.
“That’s ridiculous—” Elio began but he was quickly cut off by Amante.
“And that is quite enough. I do not actuallyneedyou four to create my heir at all, but I know my son was fond of you, so I thought I would give you the privilege of being related to his successor. But if you don’t wish to do so then I suppose I will have to find someone different to do the job.”
Elio looked as if he still wanted to argue with Amante, but Cini stopped him with a raise of her hand, her eyes swimming with unshed tears as she stepped in front of us like she was shieldingus from her father’s potential rage. As if her too-thin body could do such a thing.
“I’ll do it,” she said with a surprising amount of confidence as she sealed our fate.
Amante’s angry expression melted into one of satisfaction. “Good. As it should be.”
I glanced over at Elio and the other two members of my pack who stood on the other side of them and our eyes met.
There was a silent agreement at that moment: there was no way in hell that we were going to allow Amante to do this—even if we had to burn the whole damned family to the ground in order to protect Cini. We would do it.
***
“We still need to talk about you kissing Cini,” Elio said once we stepped into the elevator that descended into the basement of the building our pack had bought through a shell corporation.
It was one of many that we had slowly been collecting over the past few years. Once Elio, Dante, and Ranieri were released from prison we received a letter in the mail with a key to a safety lock box and the name of a bank three states away.
Apparently, Alesso had been planning for all contingencies—even his own death—and had made sure that we, and his little sister, would be well taken care of.
