While she showered, I called the damn doctor, the family, and the Stonewoods.
I didn’t give a fuck about the bratva. They could wait.
“What did you just say?” Bastian whispered when I relayed the news.
“You heard me the first time.”
“I swear to God, my dad would have killed you both at this point.”
“Or just me and announced you and Katie were having a baby together.”
“Not a terrible idea,” Bastian said, his tone thoughtful.
“Don’t piss me off right now,” I warned.
“Don’t piss you off?” The pitch of his voice rose. “If anyone else said that to me, they’d be dead.”
“I’d be the one taking their head off,” I agreed.
He sighed and then he started chuckling. “We’ve managed to join the families without formalities, I guess.”
“If she keeps the baby.”
“Of course she’s keeping the baby.” He scoffed.
Bastian never failed to amaze me with his loyalty to his family. He’d never wanted to be a mafia king but he stepped up to the plate and swung a home run, making the call to end his father’s life when he needed to. He could have us eliminated too, or at least the baby, to save the family the drama that would ensue. Yet he didn’t even consider it.
My throat tightened when I heard the conviction in his voice. He’d protect that baby just like I would.
“It’s her choice, Bastian.”
“That’s our blood in her now, brother,” he shot back.
“I’m not arguing that.”
He sighed, because he knew I was right. “The only reason she wouldn’t want that baby is because she wants the bratva to trust her and she needs to make sure she can trust us. So let’s make sure none of it is a problem.”
“The bratva will always be a problem.”
“Then, we make sure it’s one she can handle. Meet us at the club. The family will be there in about an hour.”
Neither of us said goodbye before we hung up.
I paced her penthouse, careful not to go near the window she’d said the bratva checked.
I went and sat in the bathroom, letting the steam swirl around me as I watched her rinse off. “Your belly is going to grow.”
“If we decide to keep it.”
“Already have,” I grumbled. Then I winced. “I know it’s your choice ultimately.”
She turned the water off and stuck out her hand for me to give her a towel. I waited a beat and she smirked. “Don’t get distracted, Rome. It’s how we ended up here in the first place.”
I shrugged, handing over the soft cloth. She had always pulled my attention from everything else. It could have been the end of the world and I would still have been drawn to her like a magnet.
“I wonder if you know what a mindfuck you are, Kate-Bait.”
She’d caught up her hair with a clip so that it wouldn’t get wet and now she let it fall over the column of her neck and down her shoulders as she dried off. She wrapped the towel around herself and turned to look in the mirror. “If you mean that I’m attractive and men can’t control their urges, then, I guess I’ve known that since Marvin and Jimmy. It’s not a blessing in this world unless you make it one.”
“I think some are dealt a better hand and it’s the other way around for them. Beauty is icing on top of their cake.”
“Yeah, girls born into a good family with a good face get a lot of good things. I had it for a small time with my father.”
“He was a good man.”
“He was a hard worker and a great father. Maybe it was him immigrating from Jamaica but he never gave up. Not until the end.”
“Maybe him giving up was for the one thing he loved more than his pride, huh?”
She shrugged like she didn’t know what to do with that. I knew she’d forgiven him for leaving her in this world. But I knew her heart missed him too, that it always would. “All I know is I don’t think you could ask for a better man than he was.” She murmured, her voice far off. “I got lucky even if it was just for a short time. Some people don’t even get that.”
I leaned back on the counter and watched her get ready. She moved lightly but always with purpose.
Katie never enjoyed the luxuries, I didn’t think. She hadn’t had them until she was with men like Jimmy and maybe she didn’t want to indulge. Or maybe she just didn’t know how. She’d been surviving for a very long time.
She didn’t move in this penthouse like she owned it or like she wanted anything to do with it at all. She only pulled items from one drawer which made it clear to me that she only used one. She didn’t take up all the counter space but stood at the very end of it in front of that drawer as she brushed her hair quickly and flipped it back out of her face. She applied a touch of lip gloss. “Life is the luck of the draw from the very beginning.”
“I intend to make it less about luck for our kid.” The words flew out of me before I could stop them. Was I right to think I would? Could I control our places in the bratva and mafia enough that my offspring wouldn’t live the life I did?
“No one has that power, Rome. Not even the monster in you can make that happen.” She let what she said hang in the air, and it filled the bathroom with a heavy scent, one of fear and despair.
“If I can protect the Armanellis from others, I can damn sure protect our kid, Katalina.”
The hum that rolled from her had me questioning everything. “Can you protect them from us? Me and you? We’ve been raised by this mob, molded by blood and pain and a ruthless struggle for power. I don’t know any better. Do you?”
“Your dad taught you better. You know more than every single one of us here.”
“I hope you’re right.” She brushed past me to go to her closet and get dressed. She threw on a black jean skirt that was frayed at her thigh and a loose white top before we headed out. “How did you get in without the bratva seeing you?”
“You want me to give up my secret after you wouldn’t give up your address?” I let her scope out the hall before I exited and closed her door.
“My address is on a need-to-know basis. I’m supposed to be keeping a low profile and myself safe.”
I waved my hand around the hallway of the building. “This is safe? You’ve got no security where there should be.”
She sighed and slid her phone from her pocket. “You’re changing the subject. How did you get in? If you want, I can call and ask Cade. I’m sure he knows.”
I ignored her threat. Cade had ended up giving me her address, but no one knew what the fuck I was doing in the dead of the night. “He’s not going to give you the answer you want. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m here now.”
She narrowed those moon eyes at me. She looked tiny in the hallway, about to slide the phone back into her skirt’s pocket, young with almost no makeup on. Her t-shirt was baggy, dwarfing her even more.
“You need to add my number.” I pointed to her phone.
“I don’t know why.” She didn’t fight me, just handed it over so I could enter my cell number.
“Because you might need me.” I waited a beat. “Especially now that you’re carrying my child.”
“We don’t know that for a fact,” she hissed and the laugh that burst out of me caught me off guard. She was so damn quick to lash out. We were both that way with each other and I was already imagining the time we’d have with a kid.
Imagining and looking forward to it. It was a dangerous amount of feelings to have at once for something that might not even come to fruition. “Don’t you think they should start seeing us together?” I walked toward the elevators.
She grabbed my bicep and yanked me back. “Absolutely not, Rome. Maksim is just beginning to give me a little breathing space.”
“They don’t give you shit, woman. You take it. This is your domain, your bratva. Remind them if you need to.”
“I don’t need to. I want their trust and I want to trust them too.”
“So call them.” I crossed my arms in front of me.
“What?” She stepped back like I was insane. I walked up to her and pulled her phone back out.
“Call them and tell them I’m here. Tell them first and build their trust. Give them something to hold onto.”
She rolled her lips between her teeth, so I knew she was thinking about it. We stood there with the air conditioning blasting loudly for maybe a whole minute before she snatched the phone from me and dialed.
“Maksim?” She paused and then whirled away from me, pacing up the carpeted hallway and back toward me as she talked fast. “I’m with Rome. I don’t know how he got in and I don’t care. That’s not the reason I’m calling…Yes, I still think you can handle security for me. Rome knows the ins and outs of every building in the city. He was bound to get in.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed.
“No, I’m not calling about that. I appreciate the job you’re doing. I realize this is a big deal for you and I trust both you and Luka. I’m calling because I need you to let me leave with him and not tell anyone. I’ll disclose more information later.”
She waited and chewed a nail as she nodded at whatever he was saying.
“I do understand. You’re one of the very few I trust at this point and I promise you we won’t jeopardize anything, okay?”
She hung up and shrugged at me, one palm swung up to the ceiling. “I guess we’re good to go. He’s covering.”
With her dark eyebrows raised and her gray eyes wide, I knew she was surprised. She didn’t realize her sway, how much power she had, but also how much she appealed to people. They wanted to be a part of Katalina’s inner circle, she just had to have the confidence to ask them. This was going to be bad but it was going to be fixed. I knew deep in my bones, I wasn’t getting rid of something we’d made together.
When we got to the club, two of the doormen held New Reign’s doors open for us.
Katie walked in but her footing faltered when she saw Dante, Cade, and Bastian in a room with Jett and Jax.
“You called everyone, didn’t you?” she grumbled under her breath.
“All your boys that matter.”
She sighed and her hand shook as she wiped it across her forehead. “I’ll be calling Ivan tonight, then, I guess. We need a plan with my family too.”
“The bratva isn’t your family. I am.” I wove my hand through hers. Katie put on a good show, but her heart was beating fast. Mine was too. My skin against hers seemed to soothe her shaking, and the beast in me calmed.
The queen and her monster.
We were power and chaos bound together. Our dark pasts drove us to darker futures, and we were going to have to fight through the dead of the night to come out on the other side. Or maybe it’d swallow us up and that’s where we’d remain: her ruling and me ripping apart those who threatened us.
Bastian sat at the head of the table and this time I hesitated to go stand behind him. Suddenly, I was pulled in two directions. Katie had always been someone who could take care of herself. Our relationship had been volatile, but I knew my loyalty lay next to Bastian and that she was protected under his rule. In all our hearts, she was still one of us even if she was part of the bratva too.
Now, though, there was an innocent bystander. A baby in her belly. In the belly of a woman Bastian wasn’t exactly sure he could trust. He wanted to. I saw how badly he wanted to, but they weren’t connected. Not like I was to her. No one felt Katalina’s claws and how she hooked them in quite like I did.
“Rome?” Bastian tilted his head at me, not sure why I stood there frozen.
The frigid night wind bit into each of us as we stood in the rain near the loading docks. Storage crates the size of small homes surrounded us, the city traffic noise in the distance.
My father had been jittery all day and when he jumped at a car honking in the distance, I eyed him curiously.
“It’ll be time soon,” Mario murmured.
He was talking about a drug shipment coming in. It was the last of many that month, but we were slowing pulling out. The FBI had been tracking us too closely to continue and we’d embedded ourselves in other businesses. We had hackers controlling gas valves and security for nuclear bombs. We had access to laundering money, deals with big companies, casinos, and we had completely legal dealings with the Stonewoods. There was no reason to continue with the drugs.
“Yes, it’ll be time very soon.” My father said the words with venom and he moved quicker than most everyone.
Except my father’s every thought was one I could see coming.
He’d trained me.
But I’d gone beyond what he’d taught. I’d lived with him since birth. I’d endured beatings and whippings and burnings at his hand. I’d been left locked in closets for days. I’d moved just the way he wanted me to and learned his emotions to save myself.
When he found me too old to punish, he immersed me in this life. His praise for the way I killed drove me to kill even better. I avoided his punishment by inflicting my own.
At this point in my life, I met his cruelty with strategy and outmaneuvered him most of the time.
I saw his plan before he could implement and strike.
Before he could pull the trigger, I’d pulled mine.
“Go to Bastian,” Katie whispered and yanked her hand from my grip. She walked away from me before I could disagree with her.
The Stonewoods and Armanellis had already seated themselves around the large table but Katie circled us instead of sitting down in any of the empty chairs. I grabbed the one next to Bastian, unsure of what the fuck the woman was doing anyway.
We all followed her path like a group of lost boys. No one questioned her circling. We waited with some fucked up baited breath.
Finally, after three whole circles, she stopped at the middle of the table and lifted a tiny leg so she could step onto a chair and then onto the table. She crawled to the middle of it and then stood. Hands on her hips, she looked down at us all. “I’m the center of attention and the topic of conversation, I might as well put myself there literally.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jax grumbled and knocked on the table twice before he continued. “You have to be ridiculous about it, Katie?”
“Go to hell, Jax. You know how messed in the head Brey was when she was pregnant? She called me all the time with the most jacked up anxieties and I was there for every single one of them. You think I’m not going to have those if I’m really pregnant and decide to keep the baby? I will…I’ll have them and worse, I’ll deal with them while dealing with a bunch of fuckers that don’t trust a goddamn thing I’m doing.”
“I’m here to do whatever you want. I know the shit Brey went through. Hormones, pregnancy, giving birth.” He shuddered like they were the things of nightmares. “Brey did it with grace. She’s about the only person in the world I think can do it like that.”
“Exactly,” Katie agreed and pointed at herself. “You think I’ll handle it with grace?”
Jax looked her up and down so long, a sound escaped from deep within me.
“Don’t be stupid,” Jax tossed my way. Then he said to Katie, “I’ve known you a long time, Katie. You can’t do it with grace. But you’ll do it.”
“That’s not good enough.”
I cut off the conversation. “You’ll do it with fury and vengeance, Cleo. But most of all, you’ll do it with love.”
“Ivan won’t agree.” She spun to Bastian at the head of the table and crouched before him. “The bratva don’t want Italian blood flowing through their bloodline, Bast. We could end it easily.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked.
“I want to bring her into this world protected by all of you. If I can’t protect her, I don’t want her.”
“Protect her from me?” We all heard the hitch in his voice, loud and clear. Bastian cared for Katalina, loved her in a way I didn’t think we’d ever be able to rid him of. “You lived in my house, Katalina. I would have fought for you, would have married you. You think I would really be capable of hurting you?”
Everyone’s eyes ping-ponged between Bastian and me. I watched as Katie lowered herself onto the edge of the table and let one leg dangle on either side of Bastian.
She turned to me. “Monster, stay,” she whispered and I knew she was about to do something that would infuriate me. Then she turned back to Bastian and grabbed his hand.
She brought it to her stomach and said softly to the room, “Someone call the doctor. I want you all to hear her heartbeat.”
Cade got up immediately and dialed a number. I didn’t move. I stared at the two of them. They were connected like family and he looked at her like a lover.
She was tempting a ferocious animal. I didn’t control him. I couldn’t. The jealousy in me did.
