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The priest looked up and did a double take. “Luca? Your uncle…” He shook his head. “Shot him. Then married her…”

I wanted to shake the older man by his priest collar.

He’d pay for his sins. He’d die at my hands, just like the guards down in the basement. And everyone else who had forced Nyah into this marriage.

“Where!” I demanded.

He pointed to the open doors. “Gone.”

I ran for them, trampling flowers, and for the first time in way too long, I burst out into the sunlight.

I blinked furiously, trying to clear the glare from my eyes, Dax and Lynx standing either side of me.

Only for my gaze to slam into Nyah’s right as a car stole her away.

My motherfucking uncle behind the wheel, covered in my father’s blood.

3

NYAH

Dear Diary,

The Guerra maternity ward… One star. Would not recommend.

“You can stop with the performance now,” Enzo snapped as he pulled into the driveway of the Guerra mansion.

I couldn’t answer him, my jaw too set in pain until the contraction passed. But when it did, I glared at him from the back seat of his car. “Someone should give me a fucking Oscar if this is a performance. You piece of—oh!”

Another pain, hot on the tail of the last hit me, and I changed my tune entirely. “Enzo, please. I need to go to the hospital. These pains are so close together.”

He got out of the car and yanked open my door, not an ounce of sympathy on his hardened face. “Get up.”

I managed to shake my head, but there was nothing else I could say or do when I was mid contraction.

Enzo rolled his eyes. “Viktor! Bruno! Get over here.”

The two guards rushed over like the obedient little soldiers they were. I felt nothing but disgust for them. Carlos’s body wasn’t even cold and they had barely flinched. So much for loyalty. Apparently, it just moved straight from Carlos to whoever was next in line.

Enzo patted my cheek. “You really should work on your poker face, you know. Your disgust is written all over it. Don’t be a judgy bitch. They just know who pays their checks, and it’s not Carlos anymore.” He nodded at them. “Take her to the cages.”

I snapped my head up to stare at him in horror. “The cages…no…no!” I remembered every single thing that had happened to me the last time I had been locked in the Guerras’ basement prison. My scar throbbed at the memory of having their family crest branded into my skin. “Enzo! I need a doctor! I can’t have this baby in the cages!”

“When your time actually comes, I’ll get you a doctor. But until you stop your dramatics, it’s the cages for you.”

Viktor and Bruno took me by the arms, hauling me out of the car and up the marble steps, into the foyer of Carlos’s grand home.

Enzo’s grand home now.

Another pain hit as we crossed the shiny floor, and my knees buckled. I couldn’t keep up with the punishing pace Viktor and Bruno set.

They didn’t seem to care.

They caught me when my body threatened to go down, and it didn’t seem to bother them an iota that I screamed and begged and cried through the agonizing pain intent on tearing me in two. I couldn’t walk, but they had no hesitation in dragging me down the basement stairs, ripping open a cage door, and tossing me inside like I was a mangy dog.

I hit the freezing cement floor with a bone-jarring thud, and my brain flashed back memory after memory of the last time I’d been down here, freezing, naked, hurt.

It had been Luca who’d saved me. Who’d taken my punishment for me, who’d made sure Dax was there to take care of me.