“You think I’m going there toaskto have her? To beg him to release her to me?” I stabbed my finger at my chest. “I’ll be goddamned if I let that sick fucker hurt her or my child.”
With the level authority he never relinquished, even with me, he stared me down. “Are you implying that you’d like to go to war for her? For them?”
“I’m not implying anything,” I growled. “I’m telling you that I’m getting her back. I will burn this world down, I will welcome any fucking fight he wants to start. She ismine.”
And it was my biggest mistake to ever think about letting her go at all.
She’d lied.
She’d come to betray me and deceive us.
But she hadn’t left empty-handed. She’d been taken from me while she had my child. My heart.
My love.
I would do whatever it took to reclaim her and earn the right to her love again.
32
SOFIA
It will be okay.
I shifted to sit with my back against the wall at a different angle.
I don’t know how, but I know everything will be all right, little one.
Bruises would litter my skin with how they’d beaten me already. No furniture was available for me in this cell that was stained with the blood, guts, and fecal matter of captives the men had tortured and killed down here.
No chair. No bed. Nothing but the dirty concrete floor that bore the marks of misery and suffering.
Leaning against the wall hurt from where they’d hit me. My arm was numb, aching each time I flexed my fingers and hand. But my stomach was fine. I’d blocked it, determined to protect anything from striking me there.
I will make everything all right, little one.
Talking in my head to my baby was a new defense mechanism, and escapism, but it soothed my wounded soul.
I swear on all I am, baby, I promise that everything will be okay.
It was laughable, really. But this burning determination to triumph wouldn’t be extinguished. It didn’t matter how hard they hit me, how many broken bones they wanted to deliver to me, and how many wicked, cruel things my uncle wanted to threaten.
He wouldn’t win.
I would not die, not like this, dammit.
And my child would never be used as anything, never behispawn like I had been for far too long.
So this is what they were talking about.
I’d only known I was pregnant for less than forty-eight hours. From the best that I could tell the passing of the day through the small window in the upper corner of the cinderblock wall, it was almost night time now. I couldn’t have been in here for more than half a day, and I’d taken that pregnancy test yesterday morning.
It hardly made a difference how long I’d been aware that I was expecting a baby. It was a fact my body heeded well.
Not only with the morning sickness and fatigue, but this intense need to fight. To defend.
I was a mama bear, already facing a battle this early in my little one’s life.
And it was fierce.
