Chapter 79 Antonio
The world outside the car window is a smear of grey and green, a watercolour painting left in the rain.
Trees, fences, fields, they’re all just streaks of meaningless colour.
The only thing in focus, the only thing with any sharp, terrifying clarity, is the grainy, black-and-white image trembling in my hand.
A sonogram.
How?
The word isn’t a question; it’s a scream trapped in the silent, air-conditioned tomb of the Bentley.
It echoes off the walnut trim and the soft leather, a silent, furious roar that only I can hear.
My knuckles are bone-white on the steering wheel, my other hand crushing the edge of the proof they gave me.
Proof of my failure. Proof of their violation.
This is a trick. It has to be. A sophisticated, cruel piece of theatre designed to unhinge me completely. They took a picture from some other woman’s file, doctored it, printed it out. They’re monsters, but they’re thorough monsters. This is just another layer of psychological torture.
I force air into my lungs, a ragged, shuddering breath that does nothing to calm the earthquake inside me. I try to latch onto logic, to the cold, hard facts I’ve always governed my life by.
She was given a contraceptive. A mandatory, powerful dose before the auction. Conrad Blake himself oversaw it.
My eyes drop back to the sonogram as I trace the outline of the sac with a trembling finger. A life. My life. Mine and Grace’s. Conceived god only knows when.
No.
The denial is a fire in my veins. I won’t accept it. I can’t. Because if I accept it, the fear will consume me. It will hollow me out into a useless shell, and I cannot be useless. Not now. Not when she is still in their hands.
I need a fact. One solid, immutable fact to pull me back from this precipice.
With a snarl that tears from my throat, I fumble for my phone where it lies on the passenger seat. My movements are jerky, uncoordinated. I stab at the screen, pulling up the number I haven’t called in months.
It rings. Once. Twice.
“Antonio,” Conrad’s voice slithers through the speaker, smooth as oiled silk. He sounds amused. He was expecting this call. “To what do I owe the…”
I don’t let him finish. My voice is not my own. It’s a guttural, fractured thing, ripped from a place so deep and dark inside me I didn’t know it existed. “You gave Grace the contraceptive, right? That night she was auctioned…”
The line is silent for a beat. Then, he laughs.
It’s not a chuckle. It’s a cruel, delighted sound, the sound of a man watching a prized dog fight from the sidelines. It’s a laugh that says he’s been waiting for this moment, savouring the prospect of it.
“Oh, Antonio,” he purrs, the laughter still dancing at the edges of his words. “How does it feel?”
The question is so absurd, so utterly disconnected from my own, that it takes me a second to process it. Rage, hot and blinding floods my vision, turning the streaking world outside a hazy red.
“What?” I bark, the word a pistol crack.
“How does it feel,” he repeats, slowly, savouring each syllable like a fine wine, “to know your precious wife is in danger now? Helpless? At the mercy of men who don’t share your particular obsession? Is the bitch pregnant, too? Is that the little crisis that has you finally calling me?”
The world stops. The car, the road, the sky, everything ceases to exist. There is only his voice in my ear, and the image in my hand.
He knew. He set this up.
The last vestige of hope, the desperate lie that this was a trick evaporates.
It’s real. Grace is pregnant. My child is growing inside her while she is captive, terrified, alone.
A sound rips from me, something between a snarl and a sob. It’s the sound of an animal caught in a trap, gnawing its own leg off. “You son of a bitch…”
“Now, now, Antonio,” Conrad chides, but his voice is dripping with malicious joy.
“This is what you would call poetic justice, no? Payback for your appalling lack of decorum where my wife was concerned. This…” He pauses, and I can picture his smug, satisfied smile.
“This evens the score. A wife for a wife, no?”
My mind is fracturing. I can feel the pieces of my control, my last vestiges of sanity, splintering off. The image of Grace, not just my wife but the mother of my child, alone and scared is a loop of torment behind my eyes.
I am losing my shit. The carefully constructed walls of my composure are crumbling into dust.
“I will flay you alive,” I whisper, the promise so low and venomous it seems to drop the temperature in the car. “I will tear your world apart brick by fucking brick.”
“I don’t doubt you’ll try,” he says, utterly unimpressed. The arrogance is staggering. “But that won’t find her, will it? Time, I imagine, is a factor you can ill afford to waste, and I might be willing to help.”
The offer hangs in the air, putrid and tempting. He’s offering me a rope, knowing it’s coated in poison.
“What?” The word is ground out between teeth clenched so tight my jaw aches.
“I have resources. I can make calls, but this situation wipes the slate clean between us. We are even. No more grudges, no more posturing. You get your pregnant wife back, and I get my peace. A fair trade.”
The phone feels like a live wire in my hand, buzzing with his vile proposition. I see it all so clearly now. This is what he wanted all along. Not just revenge, but capitulation. He wants me to come to him, to owe him, to acknowledge his twisted sense of justice.
He wants me to say yes. He wants to own this fucking victory.
The red haze of my rage doesn’t clear. It crystallizes. It hardens into something cold, sharp, and infinitely more deadly. This man does not get to help me.
I bring the phone closer to my mouth, my lips peeling back from my teeth.
“Go fuck yourself, Conrad.”
I don’t wait for his reply, I disconnect the call and hurl the phone across the cabin. It smacks against the far window with a dull thud and falls silent onto the leather seat.