I gently brush a strand of hair from her face, trying to hide the turmoil raging inside me. “Somehow, we’ll figure this out.”
She nods, but I see the fear in her eyes. The same fear that's coiling in my gut.
As I watch her straighten her robe and prepare to face Alessandro, I wonder how all this happened.
I was supposed to guard her, not fall for her. Not get her pregnant. Not imagine a life where she's mine.
The thought of Maksim touching her, claiming her as his wife, possibly raising our child as his own, makes my blood boil.
But what choice do we have? Run? The Dantes and Bratva would hunt us to the ends of the earth. Stay and fight? Against two of the most powerful crime families in the country?
"I'll figure something out," I promise as she heads for the door. "I swear it."
She pauses, looking back at me with those storm-gray eyes. "Don't make promises you can't keep, Cristian."
Her words only highlight that I’ve failed her.
She knows it.
She’s lost faith in me.
I don’t blame her because she’s not wrong.
I have failed her.
After she's gone, I slip out onto the balcony and into the night. She’s gone to me now.
She and our child.
The thought of it is untenable.
The idea that my child will call Maksim father terrifies me.
I need a plan.
And I need it now.
I barely sleep and the next morning, first thing,
I’m at a drug store trying to decide which pregnancy test to get.
In the end, I buy two, just in case we need to verify.
Getting into the Dante compound is easy enough. I'm expected, after all.
Getting the tests to Valentina without being seen is the challenge.
We arrange it with careful texts, coded language that would mean nothing to anyone intercepting our messages.
She slips into the garden shed where I'm waiting, the back door left unlocked for our thirty-second window when the security cameras pan away.
"Did you get them?" she asks.
I press the boxes into her hands. "Two different kinds. Just to be sure."
"Thank you." She clutches them against her chest. "I'll… I'll let you know."
The wait is excruciating.
