“I don’t need her to understand me.”
He smiles. “And that’s why she isn’t the right person for you. To be loved is to be known, Aiden.”
“Fuck’s sake,” I curse under my breath, pinching the bridge of my nose. “This is why you took her? Because you’re jealous?”
“You make it sound like a crush, or some kind of pedestrian attraction. I’ve wanted you for a long time, Aiden. But I don’tneed you in my bed. I want you beside me in my empire. It’s an entirely different kind of partnership.”
“I run my own organization.”
“You head a family, which is almost constantly under attack, and which you have proved you cannot keep safe.”
He’s jabbing at me, using Teddy’s death as a rapier. I can’t deny that he hits with it. Mr. Red does understand me in ways other people do not, and that means he knows how to phrase things in just the sort of way that will drive me insane.
“And, so?”
“So it is time you admitted that you need my protection. Bring your family, all of them, under the Red umbrella. If you continue to stand alone, you are going to be fighting off assassins for as long as you live—which, incidentally, will not be all that long.”
He’s such a smarmy asshole. He is really enjoying his smart little quips and such.
“The villain monologue suits you,” I say. “But the Levin family is not for sale, or aggregation. We stay independent, and anybody who has any sense will stay well clear.”
“Brave words, but poor Theodore already paid the price for that attitude, and now Leo is also close to succumbing to his injuries. It just makes sense, Aiden. It won’t be all that bad, I promise. I won’t make you kiss the ring. An occasional bow will suffice.”
I want to tell him to fuck off so badly, but I refuse to escalate the situation. I know it’s in my best interest, and Ella’s, to just let him keep up all this bluster. It is buying us valuable time, and it is making him feel like he is being effective.
He smiles at me broadly. “I thought I would never be able to get you to the table, because I thought you were untouchable. You never had a real relationship. There was never anybody you seemed to care for. And then she came along and now I can puppet you all over the world at a whim.”
“Hm,” I say, not giving him the satisfaction of much of a response. “I think you will soon find that I am not a very good puppet. I have a tendency to cut the strings.”
“Not this time. Not with her condition.”
“What do you mean, her condition?”
“Oh. You didn’t know? How exciting! I get to break the news,” he smirks. “She’s pregnant. We had a doctor scan her, just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
“I always have female captives scanned in case there is some extra leverage on board. In her case, there was. You’re going to be a father. Or an uncle. Hard to say which, really, the way she’s been going through your family.”
He means to be insulting, but I could not care less. Ella is pregnant. I should have had her scanned too.
“How far along?”
He reaches into a small table beside his chair and plucks out an ultrasound image, handing it over to me.
“Old enough to look like a baby,” he says.
I cannot help but smile at the image. I knew that at some point she might fall pregnant, but there is still something miraculous about seeing the actual proof of it having happened. There is new life inside Ella. A part of me wants to believe that it isTeddy coming back to us through her, that the family hasn’t lost anyone, not really.
“Thank you,” I say.
He laughs. “You shouldn’t be thanking me, old man. Not yet, anyway. We haven’t decided what her fate is going to be. Are you going to join me? Or is Miss Baby-on-Board going to have an unfortunate accident?”
Threatening the life of the woman I love is one level of stupid. Threatening the life of the child she is carrying is about the most stupid thing I could possibly conceive of.
“Does she know?”
“Did we tell her she is having a baby? No. We told her that it was part of the routine medical.”
