Chapter 28 Sofia
SOFIA
I’m dead.
I’m a dead woman walking.
Living on borrowed time.
I am going to die.
He’ll kill me for this, all of it.
I laid my hands over my stomach, wishing I could spare this little one’s life if I had no hope to survive.
Andre glowered at me with so much malice, so much anger and fearsome rage, that I knew it as well as I knew my name.
He was going to kill me.
There was no chance he’d accept this news well and let me go.
Fuck around and find out, Sof.
I shouldn’t have expected any of this to end well.
Play with fire and get burned.
And this was precisely why I hadn’t wanted to get involved with him. At all. This was the very reason I’d clung to common sense and resisted him regardless of how much I’d yearned for him and desired him.
I’d gotten it all out now. It was all off my chest. Every huge secret, each one of the horrible lies I’d kept from him.
Except that one.
Confessing my love for him now wouldn’t go over well. Besides, it was pointless to share the sentiment with him when he’d already stated that he’d never believe me again.
“What?”
He seemed shellshocked, but not bowled over.
“I’m pregnant.” I pointed at the bathroom, hating how shaking my finger was as I extended it. “I wondered why I felt so off, so I got a test from Natalie’s bathroom and took it this morning.”
Still, he stared at me, furious and focused.
“It’s yours,” I added, as if that needed to be said. “I was a virgin when you… when we…” I shrugged. He got the point. “And you’re the only one I’ve…” Also, an unnecessary point to make.
“You’re pregnant.”
I nodded, hating the suspense of his looking at me like this.
“A Giovanni is carrying my child.”
Bile rose up my throat and I swallowed the acrid taste right back down. My stomach pitched at the tormented rage in his voice.
“I… am,” I clarified, verbally agreeing that I was from a rival family. And that we had fallen so far in that desire and lust and my fantasy of love that our forbidden affair resulted in a new life.
A bastard, in his eyes.
An abomination and mistake, according to him.
But a sweet blessing for me.
“No.” He shook his head. Pacing again, he ran his hands through his hair and stared at the floor like a crazed man. “No. Fuck no.”
I laid my other hand on top of the one already covering my stomach.
If he was trying to tell me no as in this baby couldn’t be… he’d have to kill me before he thought he could harm it. I refused the concept of terminating or rejecting this life.
Frantic to survive and desperate to get back to that common ground we’d once had, I grew firmer in my resolve.
Try me.
Try it, Andre.
I dare you.
I would be gone before he could attempt to order what should happen next.
Uncle Roberto never cared to enlighten me about politics, but I heard enough. I had been born and raised in a crime family. I knew how important heirs and bloodlines were. How a bastard could topple a fortune and legacy.
This new life inside me was a baby. And I would protect him or her with all my life.
That wasn’t my bleeding heart at play. This wasn’t my concern for someone else.
This was the first growing ember of motherhood that was taking root in my soul.
Try me, Andre.
The only way he’d get rid of this baby was to kill me first.
And that seemed inevitable with how he struggled to process all the bombshells I’d confessed to him in the last hour.
It’s all my fault. Rubbing my fingers over my stomach, I fell into a sharp, aching depression as I mentally spoke to my child. I took all the blame for this mess. It was all my damn fault.
For ever noticing him. For wanting to help him when he was wounded. For wishing I could save everyone and care about too many others.
For wanting to help, not harm.
Surrendering to what I thought had been magic between us was my only mistake.
“No.” He repeated it one last time, and I tensed.
Any second now, he’d raise his gun and kill me for being a spy. I’d witnessed him deliver “justice” just like that in another circumstance, when he saw that man in his office.
“No,” he growled.
I braced myself for a hit, knowing I’d failed Esmeralda too. She’d told me to live my life to the fullest, for both of us, and here I’d be dead before she would.
There was no way he’d let me live. No chance he’d look at me and want to spare my life.
“Fucking—” He cut himself off as he strode toward the door.
Without a look back at me, he rushed out and slammed the wood panel after him.
I jumped at the hard sound.
Then as silence filled the room, I struggled to keep my panic at bay.
He’d be back.
That wasn’t the end of it.
He would return and shoot me. Or order a guard to. Maybe I’d be hung? Tortured.
I stood and pressed my hands over my stomach. Unafraid for myself but worried about failing my baby and being unable to spare him or her, I sought a way to escape.
The windows were too high. No other doors would give me a shortcut anywhere else.
I was trapped in here, waiting with dreaded suspense for the dangerous man to come back with that murderous glint in his eye to finish dealing with the mistake he’d made in wanting me.
I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
I can’t believe this is how it’ll go.
I’m sorry, little one.
I love you so much.
And I will until my last—
The door opened, and I spun around so quickly, I staggered a step to the side and blinked.
It wasn’t Andre back to shoot my brains out.
Renee.
She stood there scowling at me just like she had on my first day here. Disapproval lined her old face. We’d become more of friends, but based on whatever orders she was given to unlock and open this door now, she showed how she’d reverted to her previous prejudice of me.
“What a shame. You would’ve made beautiful babies with his blue eyes and your pretty hair.”
I lifted my chin. “My son or daughter will be beautiful no matter what,” I replied back in Russian.
She arched a brow as she scowled. “Is that so?” Tipping her head to the side, she ordered me to go with her. “He doesn’t want you in his room.”
But does he want me… alive?
I didn’t protest, expecting him to want me as far away as possible.
Renee didn’t offer me any further judgment as she led me to the maid’s room I had stayed in when I first came here to work. I’d already taken my things out of the small space, and I didn’t take the chance to bring any clothes or essentials with me.
I doubted I’d be in here long. I doubted I’d live long enough to care where I was sent to stay. Defeat coursed through me, waging war with my stubborn determination to save my baby, with whatever eleventh-hour miracle that I could find.
She opened the door and jerked her thumb for me to enter. Behind her, a guard waited.
I let out a shaky breath and walked into the room. Nausea returned tenfold. With all this stress. Without any water or food…
The door pushed closed after me.
I stopped in the center of the room and listened to the definitive click of the lock being engaged.
I was still alive.
Still trapped.
Why?
Hanging my head as my heart cracked and chipped into more unrepairable pieces, I let my broken spirit take over.
Why would he spare my life?
Why isn’t he kicking me out?
Why… does it have to be like this?
I dragged myself to the bed and lay down. Squeezing my eyes shut tight, I tried to breathe through the dread and agony, realizing one new fact of life with bitter clarity.
Karma was a bitch.
And I was about to pay for all my sins without a hint of the love I tricked myself into thinking might be within my reach with the furious man I’d betrayed.