“What the fuck are you saying?” I cut him off in a rush, annoyance loosening my tongue. “That you didn’t kidnap me? That you didn’t know I was fucking pregnant? That Remo didn’t tell you about me begging to live, to tell you about my pregnancy? That he fucking kidnapped me?” It was the only logical explanation to this shitstorm. Either Lorenzo knew that his brother kidnapped me and Remo didn’t tell him I was pregnant or Lorenzo didn’t know about both the kidnapping and the pregnancy. “What the fuck are you—”
A shout from the room across the hall had me sidestepping him and rushing out the door just as his phone rang. I entered the other room to large curiosity-filled green eyes staring up at me from the floor. “Is my little babba awake.”
“Mama, pick baby up.” Two little hands reached out to me, his chubby fingers opening and closing in soft clenches, asking to be picked up.
Laughing, I leaned down, wrapped my arms around his tiny waist and picked him up as I straightened. I nuzzled his plump cheeks, enjoying the velvet smoothness against my nose and inhaled his baby sweetness.And out of the darkness came the light.My chest tightened, remembering those words that came to mind, when my son, the rainbow in my bleak existence, was born. I’d cried for days following his birth then he took possession of my emotions and I fell in love.
“Din, mama.”
I frowned. “What’s that, babba?” He was slow to start talking and the attending pediatrician, who visited at least twice a month, confirmed it was normal. Now my little baby’s vocabulary was growing, everyday he’d utter a new word. Some I understood, others would make me laugh.
“Din, mama,” he repeated before his hand lifted and his forefinger extended to point at something.
I followed its direction, and my hand flew to my mouth, muffling my gasp. My knees buckled forcing me to lean heavily against the wall behind me.
“He’s trying to say Rayden, Zena.”
The soft words washed over me like that first brush of panic on a ship about to sink. There was none of the usual humor in his expression or lightness in his tone, and I gulped down the nerves forming in my throat. For the second time in mere minutes, I stared at another man I thought I’d never see again, my heart flooding with crazy pumps of happiness I couldn’t describe. Tears blurred my vision. I shook my head, not daring to believe my eyes.
“What are you doing here, Rayden? How are you here?” I asked, drinking in the mature features of the man, his best friend, Austin, and I called baby face because of just how innocent he looked.
A couple of months ago, I’d snuck a quick call to Rayden using a mobile I found in the guest bathroom by someone who’d broken the rules. Nothing came of it. Then two weeks ago, by way of the usual note, I’d asked my captor to consider a birthday outing. Surprisingly, on the day a soldier said he was there to take me out. If I didn’t follow their instructions, I’d be locked in a cellar. I couldn’t risk that but once I got to Enigma, the restaurant I chose for lunch, I saw Rayden’s cousin, Trent, and his wife, who was somehow alive. The fact that she didn’t recognize me when we met in the bathroom, didn’t stop me leaving a cryptic for Rayden with her. Only, he didn’t make it to meet me at our favorite place. Now, seeing him in the flesh again was surreal.
He ignored my questions. “Is he yours?” an undisguised tightness lined his words.
Slowly, I nodded, watching his Adam’s apple bob repeatedly as though digesting my words were a hard swallow.
“So, you want to tell me.” He paused and going by the fury in those darkened green orbs, I got the feeling he was trying to rein in his anger. “You want to tell me how this,” he gestured to the baby, “is even possible given I thought you were dead?” His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.
For just a moment, I wished I’d practiced how to handle this meeting, the words I’d use to calm him, console him, make him believe that I never meant to hurt him. Then again, not knowing what your next day was likely to bring, I didn’t bother to try.
“How living with your absence had become a nightmare I craved because I could do nothing to make you believe I was sorry for my reaction,” he muttered.
The pain in his eyes made every hair on my body twist in agony and I welcomed the tiny pricks of aguish it brought with it. Because I could never truly rewind this moment, but I tried to. “I was kidnapped, Rayden,” I whispered. “Imprisoned here for the last three years.”
Instead of understanding, my words seemed to have the opposite effect and his jaw clamped as he gritted out, “I might be younger, Zena but I’m not stupid. That baby is old enough to have been conceived before your supposed death,” sarcasm dripped in ounces from his words. “Who’s the father?”
I gulped. This wasn’t the right time to share that. He’d never understand.
