I lost my patience, my thoughts, my damn mind when it came to her. None of my actions were justified. They were uncontrollable at this point, though.
She’d got on the damn table like a meal and offered her life to him. It felt like her motive was just to piss me off. I knew it wasn’t. I knew she was pushing their trust in her own way, building the connections she needed to confirm in her own mind how she would protect her baby.
Still, the jealous monster in me and the overprotective side I couldn’t turn off wanted to war with her for it, to blame her and act like she was being frivolous with her life.
We finally left the room after she’d righted her clothing and I’d tucked my dick back in my pants.
Cade had drivers lining up for us outside the large club doors.
“We fall back on our contracts and stand by them,” Jett said as he walked to his vehicle. “I don’t care what happens with the child. My wife and my sister-in-law will have another viewpoint, I’m sure.”
“Brey will be calling you.” Jax nodded. “Take care of yourself…and that baby, Katie.”
Jax folded into the SUV. He said the words everyone who loved her would. They wanted that baby to see the light of day.
I was going to make sure it did.
She had to know a mini version of her was going to be a damn gift to this world. Or I had to make her see that.
We filtered into tinted-out SUVs, and I informed Katie I’d be going home with her again. She didn’t agree that it was a good idea, just told me I was hiding the whole time then. We stopped at a drugstore to get pregnancy tests.
Every single one showed up positive.
I smiled the whole time, couldn’t stop it if I tried. She was having our baby and the thought blossomed to a reality, one that I found I really wanted. By the third test, she rolled her eyes. “It could still be something that’s off with my hormones.”
I laughed at her denial, but left it alone. The next morning we would see. Cade had found a doctor that we’d be going to see.
We dressed in silence the next morning, her nerves palpable in the penthouse. She asked Maksim to cover again as we loaded up and drove to a small practice on the outskirts of town.
We filed into the small brick building. The bushes and foliage around it made it appear like a little house. The lawn was well kept and the porch had baskets of petunias of all colors hanging from hooks in the roof.
The man that answered the door wasn’t the regular doc we saw. “You must be Katalina.” He held his hand out to her.
She stepped in and shook it. “You must be my OBGYN.”
“For now.” He chuckled. “I’m retired so I’m not technically going to deliver any baby you might have in there.”
“Let’s make sure there’s a baby first, no?” She raised her eyebrows and motioned at all of us. “They’re a little presumptuous.”
“Ah. I see. Can I get any of you a drink, and can I ask who you’d like in the room with you?”
She turned to look at Dante standing there with his arms crossed, Cade with a small smile on his face and a phone in his hand. Bastian leaned against the doorframe, one side of his mouth lifted like he was enjoying the show.
The woman, she smiled too like she knew just what button to press. “They can all come in if they want.”
“You are out of your fucking mind,” I growled.
“What? Don’t you all want to see the little thing?”
The doctor backed away, hands up, and said, “I’ll grab everyone waters and leave you to discuss. Cade, I assume this goes on the books as a visit and there’s insurance if anything happens.”
“As always, Doc.”
“No one’s going in that room with you except me.” I grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the couch so I could shove her down into the seat. I sat next to her and pulled her up against my side where she belonged.
“Oh, don’t be so damn conservative. It’s not like they haven’t seen a woman before.” She held a finger to her chin. “Well, actually, I’m pretty sure he has to stick a pretty big wand up me to figure this out.”
“I’m there,” Dante joked and Cade laughed.
“I’ll pass.” Bastian suddenly looked a little queasy.
“You?” I laughed at his squirming. “Of all people, I thought you’d be fine with it.”
“With an old man sticking something up you?” His nose scrunched up. “I’m good.”
“If it was a young man, would you feel better about it?”
“For fuck’s sake,” I said to myself. This was the shit I would be dealing with for the rest of my life. I knew it. “We’re trying to have a damn baby together. Me and her. You think that shit is something you say?”
“Rome, if you think for a second all these guys aren’t going to be privy to the shit I’m going through during this pregnancy, you got another thing coming.”
“We need to figure out how long you can keep working out,” said Dante.
“She can’t work out starting today,” I answered for everyone. The doctor didn’t need to give an answer to that.
“I can work out all the way through my pregnancy.” Katie rolled her eyes and completely ignored me.
The doctor walked in carrying a large ceramic tray of waters in his wrinkled hands. “I’m happy you’re optimistic about this, Katalina.”
He passed the glasses out, and we all mumbled thank yous, but none of us took sips. We weren’t easily trusting. He looked like Santa Claus, big and burly with rosy cheeks and a white beard. He could have looked like Jesus for all I cared. I didn’t trust anyone outside the family. It was a necessity to have him, and Cade had vetted him. I didn’t care. Even though I had to trust him to stick whatever the fuck he was going to into my girl’s body.
“You can potentially work out if there are no complications,” Dr. Santa Claus continued. “I’ll need blood work from each of you to test for any genetic complications, and we should figure out if you will want genetic testing which can identify abnormalities quickly.”
“Supposedly that gives us the sex of the baby too?” Katie asked, taking a big gulp of her water. She waggled her eyebrows at me as she did. That woman knew we were all treading lightly but she was throwing it in my face like she could read the man better than each and every one of us.
Maybe she could.
I wasn’t sure anymore.
“Alright, where should we go to get this over with?” Katie asked. “No heartbeat today right?”
“It depends on how far along you are. When’s the last time it was your time of the month?” he inquired as he waved at us to follow.
When Dante and Cade stood, I pulled at my neck. “You both better sit the fuck down. I’m not playing. Don’t you dare follow us.”
“Guessing he’s the father,” the doc whispered to Katie, and she giggled as she walked through the door he’d opened.
I followed close behind. I didn’t say a word to him, just sat down on the plush loveseat set up in the stark white room. A small square screen was attached to devices I knew nothing about.
The doc washed his hands in the sink in the corner of the room and slipped on latex gloves. “We can start with an abdominal scan if you’d like. Or go right to the transvaginal scan. I recommend the abdominal scan first if you haven’t emptied your bladder lately, Katalina.”
She shrugged. “Okay, abdominal scan first. You need me to strip?”
Katie was never shy with her body. I had to chuckle at her boldness. I hated and loved it about her.
“You can keep the clothes on for now,” the doctor said as he motioned for her to lie down on the long medical chair near the screen and devices.
She looked at me while she did, an uncertainty suddenly there in her eyes. “Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Or maybe it’s something,” I said and snaked my hand into hers. She fisted it unconsciously, like a nervousness had wrapped her up and tensed her body.
“I have here a conductive gel that allows for me to rub the scanner over your stomach. It uses sound waves—”
I stopped him. “That going to be a health hazard to her or the baby?”
She sighed. “Rome, he’s the doc. He’s not going to put me at risk.”
I didn’t even glance down at her. I kept my stare on him, the stare that most of the time had grown men begging me for mercy.
The doctor’s eyes darted toward the door and his hand shook a little. “Of course it’s safe. I stake my profession on doing what’s best for the patient and the baby.”
We all sat in silence, like Katie and the doctor knew I needed a moment to process the information, process how much I trusted him. His degrees were on the wall of the room, I’d seen a few pictures of family in his home, and Cade had run background checks.
Beyond that, my gut leaned toward trusting him. He didn’t sweat with fear. The man was old and maybe a little jumpy because of who we were, but not leaping from the ground at the slightest sound. He didn’t hold any guilt in his eyes.
“Go ahead.” I nodded toward the scanner he held in one hand and the gel in the other.
He explained it would be warm and that there would only be a little bit of pressure.
Katie nodded, her voice gone. She was holding her breath as he put the scanner onto her body for the first time.
“It’s okay to breathe, Katalina,” I murmured, then wondered if that was true. “Right, Doc?”
“Yup. Breathe away.” He rolled the scanner up and down her body and explained, “Sometimes, if we’re too early in the pregnancy, we can’t find a heartbeat this way and will have to go the transvaginal route.”
“Or maybe we just didn’t think it through,” she told him.
“Well, of course you did. You took pregnancy tests, right?” he asked.
“Yes, but I know there are false positives.” She glared at me. “He’s making this out to be something it probably isn’t… This is probably…”
“Ah, a father’s intuition.” The doc stopped Katie from saying anything further. “You see that star on my screen right now?”
The doctor turned his 12-inch standing screen toward us. We saw the small-ass shape of a bean-like body. In the middle of it, a small star twinkled brighter than all the darkness around it.
I rubbed my thumb in Katie’s palm as she gasped and asked, “What is that?”
“A father’s intuition proved right.” The doc smiled at me. “Looks like you’re indeed pregnant and that little star is the heart, beating pretty strongly. I’m going to take some measurements here.”
He pressed a few buttons that seemed to capture the fetus from different angles. Then he was on the screen, drawing lines across.
We let him work as we absorbed the news. News of new life, of change, of complete pivots that would have to happen.
My heart probably beat as fast as that little star was going.
“She’s going to be fierce,” Katie whispered, looking down at our intertwined hands. Her eyes jumped up to meet my gaze like she’d realized she said it out loud. “If we keep her, of course.”
“She’ll be a monster and a queen, Kate-Bait.” It rumbled out of me before I could contemplate anything else.
The doc’s head snapped up when he heard a noise outside. He squinted out the window and I turned fast enough to see an SUV rolling slowly up his drive.
“Get behind the counter now,” he ordered.
The doc’s command didn’t fall on deaf ears. I was used to moving quick, had to with my job, and I knew that SUV wasn’t ours.
The ticking of the clock was slow, loud, ominous as I swooped my arms around Katie and lunged behind the counter across the room, carrying her like a baby.
The doctor ducked behind it too, just as the first bullet broke the window pane.
The shattering of glass had her jumping in my arms and covering her ears. She hadn’t expected it, not like the doc and me had.
As bullets flew in and hit the counter, the doc said, “I was never sure a day like this would come, but I got a bulletproof wall installed here just in case. We’re safe behind this counter.”
I set Katie down, and her gaze burned bright, not with fear but with rage. She said, “I didn’t bring a gun. I can’t protect her.”
“We’ve got eyes. It’ll be over soon,” I told her, but my hand hovered over my own gun, ready to pop off a shot and bring one of them down at least. I wanted one of their heads.
All of them.
On a damn platter.
As I was about to take a peek to see where I could get a clean shot, return fire began and bullets ceased to fly into our room.
We heard Bastian screaming obscenities, and Dante burst in to see us huddled there. “We’ve got them. Underground gang. Katie needs to go now. Her location is about to be made which means everyone is about to know she’s having a baby.”
My hand flew to the man who sat beside me, a doctor who was supposed to be a secret. I crushed his windpipe as I asked the one question he had better answer correctly “You leak this location?”
Katie’s hand was at my wrist immediately. “He has a family, Rome. Fucking pictures of them out there on the mantle. He just saved our asses. It wasn’t him. Let him go.”
The man sat there, eyes bulging but not fighting back whatsoever. “I wouldn’t. She’s pregnant. She’s got a nine-week-old baby in there.” His eyes filled with tears, but not at the thought of losing his life. And I saw no guilt in his eyes.
I let go. “If I find out you had anything to do with this, I’ll reign hell down on you, Doc.” I got up and pulled Katie up with me.
The doc stayed sitting there, as if fear had overcome him and he couldn’t move.
Dante called out, “We’ll send payment for the damages, Doc. Have a good day.”
No one said a word as we exited the room and filed through the living room to our cars. Bastian eyed my arm around Katie’s neck, and when we got to our SUV, he followed us to the door. “You carrying the Armanelli bloodline, Katalina?”
She stared at him. Then her gaze swung to the enemy SUV that had been riddled with bullets. Two men still in their seats were mutilated with bullets and completely lifeless. One car door was open where our men must have pulled out a hostage for intel.
“I’ve got my bloodline in me, Bastian,” she said. “No one else’s. And that means I’ll decide what to do with the baby.”
Bastian took a small step toward her which she met with a step forward of her own. She didn’t back down, nor did she cower.
Katalina became a mother in that moment. I saw it in her eyes, saw how her vision changed. Her stance to protect was stronger and more vicious now.
Bastian backed away, willing in the end to have Katalina as an ally and let her make her own decision rather than turn her into a full-blown enemy.
“Rome should provide some type of security for you.” Bastian sighed. “We need you safe as a partner if nothing else.”
She turned to me to protest but I shook my head before she even opened her mouth. “I go where you go now, baby.”
“Rome, I still have to talk with Ivan—”
“Do whatever you want. I’ll be next to you the whole time.”
She stomped her foot. “This is fucking ridiculous.”
“This is real. There was just a drive-by because someone’s tapping our shit and has figured out our partnership is solidified now.”
Katie threw her hands up. “It was because of the contracts!”
Bastian and I both hmphed, and that lit a fire in her blood that turned her cheeks red.
“Baby, you got a light in you that is going to snuff out all the darkness, huh?” I said.
“What if it’s an explosion rather than a lighthouse that leads to safety?”
“We’ll wear our bomb gear, no? Now, figure out who you’re calling on the way home so we can get it out of the way and start celebrating the baby in you.” I wasn’t backing down.
She damn well knew it too because she stormed past me and swung her car door open to get in. She left it open and screamed, “Let’s go, you fucking animal.”
