Julia
I hear the door fly open, smashing off the wall behind it and nearly making me jump out of my skin. I whip my head up, wrapping the covers around myself, and preparing for whatever onslaught Andreo has decided I deserve today.
It has been…well, I don’t know how long, exactly, since he took me.
I have been distantly aware of the days and nights passing, but I’ve hardly been able to keep track of any of them.
I’m so frightened, clutching on to survival mode as best I can—it’s like I’ve been thrown back in time to all those years I spent in my parents’ house, knowing that one wrong move could cost me everything.
The very idea is enough to make me sick, and Andreo, lurking over me at every turn, has hardly made it easier.
He has kept his distance—for the most part.
But I can tell that he’s growing frustrated with the lack of movement I have shown in his direction.
For all his attempted sweet-talking about how we belong together, how he’s glad that we’ve finally found each other again, there is a thudding undercurrent of threat with every word.
As if he’s only willing to wait so long before I catch the fuck up with him and realize that I need to be with him.
As if I would ever even look at him again, after the way he treated me, after how he humiliated me on our wedding day. I can see it now clearly, the kind of person he is, and I refuse to go back and let him pick up where he left off with his cruelty toward me.
But now, as he stands there at the end of the bed, there’s something else in his eyes.
Something dark, dangerous—something that makes my stomach curl into a knot.
I sit upright, staring at him, my lank hair hanging in my face.
I haven’t showered since I’ve been here, and I feel disgusting, but there’s no way I’m going to risk getting undressed when he could have cameras anywhere.
“What is it—”
“You’re fucking pregnant?”
A cold shock of horror rushes through me as he spits the words out, with more venom than any of the curses he has thrown my way in the time I’ve known him.
My eyes widen, and I shake my head, my first instinct to deny, deny, deny. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” he snarls, stalking toward me, eyes not moving from mine for an instant.
“That doctor who came to your house—someone saw him when he arrived when we were staking the place out. I thought he was just looking over you, but…” He shakes his head slowly.
“He was confirming your pregnancy, wasn’t he?
” he demands, closing the distance between us, shoving his face close to mine.
I draw back in terror. I’ve never seen him this angry in my life. It’s not the kind of anger where he’s punching walls, trying to intimidate me, it’s something worse than that. Something that seems to rise from somewhere deep inside of him, something I don’t recognize, can’t control.
“I…I don’t know…”
“Yes, you fucking do!” He yells in my face and I nearly jump out of my skin, tears pricking my eyes.
I hate how useless I feel. I should get to my feet and fight him on this, scream at him that he doesn’t know a thing about me and even if I was pregnant, what business would that be of his?
I owe him nothing after the way he treated me, and I’m not going to let him try to scare me into feeling guilty about this.
But instead, I just sit there on the bed, knees tucked up to my chest, too terrified to say so much as a word.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” he mutters, beginning to pace, hands twisting in front of him. “I can’t fucking believe this. You fucked my father, Julia?”
I don’t reply. I don’t need to. He has already made his mind up.
And it’s the truth, anyway. If he really intends to hold me here for as long as he says he will, then there’s no way that he won’t find out eventually. Maybe it’s better to get it out in the open now, though the thick atmosphere of fury in the room seems to suggest otherwise.
“You fucking whore,” he mutters, his voice edged with snarling rage. “You fucking whore, Julia. I should have known you would do something like this. Just desperate to use our family any way you can, hmm? Was that your game? Make sure he can’t get rid of you by getting yourself pregnant?”
I’m frozen as I listen to him speak, pure, unrelenting terror keeping me pinned to the spot. I know I should fight him on this, but I can’t. And anything I say right now, I know that it will just be twisted to pieces to try and justify whatever he’s planning next.
“Well, he’s dead,” he tells me bluntly, shoving his face close to mine again. “And trust me, I probably did that child a favor, sparing them from a life with him as a father.”
He sneers slightly, and I almost want to point out that he’s shitting on himself as much as Antonio—that he’s the product of that same fatherhood.
But I know that he’s not thinking clearly right now, that he’s just throwing out whatever he can because he wants to hurt me, because he wants me to think that I owe him something because I let my feelings for another man turn into something more.
“There are plenty of men who would kill you for this, you know,” he tells me, and he’s almost mild in his tone—which makes it even more terrifying.
I stare at him. “Are you going to?” I ask. It’s almost a dare, something I’m willing to risk if it means getting out of this mess. But I have to live for my baby. My child is the most important thing right now, as hard as it is to believe.
Andreo eyes me for a long moment, as though considering his answer—and then shakes his head. “No.”
I breathe a sigh of relief as he draws back.
That’s something, at least. Even if Antonio is—I can’t even think it, not even now, after days have passed.
But even if he is gone, I still have a duty to protect his child in any way I can, and that means looking out for myself, as hard as it might be to do that right now.
“I’m going to need an heir, after all.”
It feels like cold water has been dumped over my head. My hands are shaking as I try to muster a response, and Andreo just stands there, watching me, as though enjoying the terror that’s coursing through every inch of me at the sound of those words coming out of his mouth.
“What—what are you talking about?”
He lifts his chin. “I’m going to need someone to pass down this business to,” he replies bluntly. “Once I have it consolidated. And this kid, they’re going to be my sibling. Might as well choose someone I have a blood relation to.”
“No,” I plead with him, finally finding my voice again. “Andreo, listen to me, this child—”
“My child.”
I tense my hands in the sheets. The way he’s talking, it’s like the choice has already been made, and the idea that this might already have slipped past the edges of my control is more than I can take.
“They’re not your child, Andreo. They never will be.”
He smirks slightly. “We’ll see.”
“No,” I protest, pushing myself upright, getting to my feet, cold horror grasping at me at the thought of what he’s saying. “No, I’m not—this child, they’re not yours, Andreo. They never will be. I’m not letting you—”
And then, all of a sudden, he grabs my face, sinking his fingers into my skin and silencing me in an instant. My blood runs cold, and I realize that there’s nothing I can say here, nothing that will get him to see sense.
“I don’t think you understand,” he snarls, lip curling with disdain. “You might have gotten yourself knocked up by the first man you met, but I’m not like you. I’m an honorable person. And I’m going to make sure this child has the life they deserve. Understand?”
He shoves me aside, sending me falling back into the bed, and I try to steady myself as the tears threaten to fall.
I bite them back, willing myself to fight it, to hold off, not to give him the satisfaction of seeing that I’m hurt by this.
I keep my face turned away from him as he moves to the door, the choice clearly made, whatever protests I might put up nothing more than a distraction to him.
“Glad we’ve figured that out,” he tells me coldly.
And with that, I hear the door slam, and I dissolve into tears, pressing my face into the pillow to try and muffle the sound.
I can’t let him hear me like this. I can’t let him see how easy it is for him to break me, to reach into my heart and squeeze it to a pulp at the mere mention of what he might inflict on my child.
I manage to drag myself back up onto the bed, pulling the covers over myself, hiding beneath them as best I can. All I can think about is how I’ve already failed my child without even giving them a chance.
I swore that, when the time came for me to have kids, I would make sure that they didn’t endure anything like what I went through when I was growing up. That they wouldn’t suffer like I suffered, that I wouldn’t leave them to go through the same hell I did.
But this? This might even be worse than what I went through.
Growing up with a man like Andreo? A violent, controlling man, connected to the darker parts of this city’s underworld, who can leverage that power to get what he wants?
I don’t know if I will ever be able to escape, let alone get my child out of this mess.
Or worse…what if my child doesn’t want to leave?
What if, when they see the kind of life he lives, they decide that they want nothing more than to stick it out with him?
If they’re seduced by the power and the money and the influence that comes with it, and they shed any attempt to be decent in pursuit of more, more, more?
I can barely let myself think about it, mind rushing in a hopeless mess.
My thoughts drift to Antonio. For all his faults, all his uncertainty about this child, he at least cares about me.
Enough to try and protect me. Enough that he kept me safe.
And I know he would have done the same for this kid, as hard as it might have been for me to see that. But now?
Now, I don’t know what I might be staring down the barrel of. And frankly, I’m just praying that I never have to find out.