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“I asked that too. He said Nyah would hate him. I still don’t understand why he would care about that though.”

Pieces fit together in my head.

The fucking underwear MacGregor had sent Nyah. The fact he’d had her sitting on his lap when we’d been at his home in Scotland. My blood ran cold. “He’s obsessed with her.”

French stared at me. “Are you going to kill me?”

I shoved to my feet. “What? No.”

“Because I’m the only decent hockey player you have?”

I stabbed at my phone, trying to get the stupid thing to call Nyah’s number. I used my shoulder to cradle it against my ear as I willed Nyah to pick up. “Because I’m not in the habit of killing someone who was just trying to help his family. I know a little too much about that. Fuck! She’s not answering.”

I lunged for the door, but French grabbed my arm. “Wait, Luca. There’s something else.”

My heart thumped, a burning need to get to Nyah aching inside me.

But something in French’s expression stopped me.

“What, French? I don’t have fucking time for this!”

He swallowed hard. “I heard crying every time he called me.” He swallowed hard. “I think he might have your baby.

32

NYAH

Dear Diary,

Motherhood is hard enough without adding a Scottish psychopath.

MacGregor held a gun on me, but he didn’t need to. I would have done whatever he wanted, whatever he said, as long as he let me keep my child.

I moved on wooden legs, past Bruno and Viktor lying on the driveway. MacGregor’s men, men I recognized from Scotland, all came out of the woodwork, taking up the places where Luca’s soldiers normally stood.

At some point during the time we’d been gone that morning, MacGregor had taken over the entire property.

I logically knew I was in shock. Could feel it in the way my body didn’t quite seem connected to my brain. I clutched James like he was a life raft in a stormy sea, and didn’t utter a peep when MacGregor guided me inside and locked the door behind me.

I wanted Dax and Lynx and Luca to be here. For them to see their son’s face, for them to know he was okay. Every second that ticked by felt cruel, keeping that knowledge from them.

But MacGregor had taken my phone.

All I could do was hope and pray the three of them would somehow work out what was going on before they came back here and met the same fate as Bruno and Viktor.

James was the thing that kept me going. He woke up from his nap and peered up at me with sleepy, golden eyes that were so much like Dax’s I wanted to cry.

“He’s due a bottle, lass. He eats like a wee warrior,” MacGregor told me with the pride of a father.

I stared at him, at his insane delusions, but knew I had to just go along with whatever he wanted. Not rock the boat. Not poke the bear.

I wasn’t some badass fighter, nor did I want to be one. I was a normal woman. One who’d fallen in love, had a baby, and just wanted to live a quiet life raising him with the men I loved.

I wanted nothing to do with Mafia wars, with killing, with men who owned and sold women for entertainment.

I wanted nothing to do with MacGregor, even if he had brought my baby back to me.

I had no formula in the house, but I’d been pumping milk the entire time we’d been separated. I had no idea how to breastfeed, and now didn’t feel like the time to learn, but I had a freezer full of little milk packages I’d carefully labelled and stored, imagining that there would be a day I got to give them to my baby.