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I nod and squeeze her thigh. “It’s like you're in a trance, and there’s no pulling you out of it.” I tell her.
“I’mscared.” she admits.
“Of what?” Parker asks.
She sniffs, and her eyes water. “I always wanted children. When I bought this home, I imagined them running down the halls, calling to me. “Mommy!” they’d scream, and I’d yell back,‘In the kitchen, darlings!’”She replies with a small, breathy chuckle, but then her eyes flutter. Her tongue pokes out as she wets her bottom lip. She lowers her voice to barely a whisper. “When the bad thing happened to me, I spentevery daywaiting for my period to show up. I was on the pill then, not my IUD. So I was always very aware of when I was to start my period. I would have a few warning cramps a day or two before. I had it marked on mycalendar every month, and it always showed up on time, every month. Every twenty-eight days like clockwork.Neverlate. It may start in the middle of the night or throughout the day, but my period was as dependable as myself.”
She takes a shaky breath but doesn’t look at either of us. “I still hadn’t gotten all of my memories from that night. I had just known what had happened… It was but a mere week and five days when I had no warning cramp. Parker had taken Mama to Kensington, and I took advantage of him being gone. I took an Uber and went to see a doctor in the outskirts of London." She clears her throat. “The building was old and fenced in and needed a fresh coat very badly. There were picketers outside screaming vile, disgusting things. They didn’t even know me. They didn’t know my circumstances. They just…” The bitter vitriol in her voice is clear, but she still sniffs, a tear rolling down her cheek. Balling her hand into a fist, she wipes it away with the back of her hand quickly.
Parker takes it and places a soft kiss on it. I squeeze her thigh to urge her to continue.
“I was given a choice. And I took the choice that meant I wouldn’t be attached to someone that had done something so…repulsive. Because at that point in time, what could I have said to my mother? ‘Hello, Mumsy, remember when you asked me to go to dinner with the Prime fucking Minister and his barrister wife you wanted me to network with to possibly move home to be closer to you, and I faked sick? Well, just wanted to tell you, I snuck out to see a concert instead, and I got drugged and raped, and now I’m carrying their devil spawn! And guess what? I don’t even know who the father is!’” She says it like she’s telling a fucking joke, scoffing only to continue. “I only would have disappointed her.”
Parker's eyes narrow as he sits up, pushing his plate away to the center of the table and placing both hands on the one he’s holding.We can’t say anything. We have no right to say anything.
“I hardened my heart, and I made that choice.” She says with tears in her eyes, snot dripping out of her nostrils. “And then I wasgratefulwhen my panties were soiled in crimson.” Another sniff. “It was when I came back to New York that the memories flooded back to me all at once. Kane’s face. His breath. His touch. The red.” She shudders. “I made a choice I never thought I would have to make. Otherwise, David would have hand delivered me to Kane with a pretty bow around my middle.”
“Duchess.” She looks up at me sea glass eyes rimmed red, cheeks rosy. I grab a napkin and wipe her nose, then yank her into mylap. “Now the reason. The real reason you didn’t want to look at me earlier. The reason you're scared.”
“I’m scared because what if it’sourchild, Maks?! A child I want with all of my heart, one I fall in love with as soon as the two pink lines pop up… and, as some kind of cosmic karma, the universe takes them away, or it turns out I can't have them?” she sobs, reaching around my neck and yanking me to her as she sobs into my shirt. “I want to have your child.Lotsof them. I want this to be a real marriage. Well, as real as it can be with Parker involved, but Ifeelmarried to him, too, in my heart. I want to give him babies, too. But he’s snipped, and you’re in a position of power. This is all so fucked.” She groans into my chest.
I clutch her to me and look at Parker, who has a very inappropriate grin on his face.
“I can get un-snipped.” he drawls, and I roll my eyes.
“I can’t ruin Maksim’s reputation, Parker. He's aPecan.” she growls, and I hold back my laugh.
“The devil of New York has a blonde wife and is half Russian. His kids could be blonde.” I find myself saying.
She snaps away from me and wipes her nose with her sleeve. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we will cross any bridge that we come across as we get there, Duchess. The first childdoeshave to be mine, so they can be my legacy, but the rest…”
“And if it’s a girl? What happens then?”
“The world is changing, Sabrina. Do you know why I had DazeandKallum at that meeting?”
She sniffs. “Because of the drugs in the crates.”
“Partially. The truth is, Daze is running Inferno a lot better than Kallum is running Pandemonium. I’m going to switch them. Kallum will be moving back to Boston, while Daze gets Pandemonium back in shape. Most of my men are scared of her – not because she’s a woman, but because she’s fierce and can cut a man faster than look at them. She runs a tight ship. The Mafia are loyal toblood. Maybe there hasn’t been a female Capo dei Capi yet, but it doesn’t mean there won’t be. Who's to say ours won't be the first?”
“She'll be a badass like her auntie Raven.”
I shake my head and rub more circles on her back. “She'll be a badass with a good heart like her mother, sposa mia.”
She sniffs again and dries her eyes. “So just our oldest needs to be yours?”
I nod while I tuck a wayward rose gold strand away from her face. “You are our world, Duchess. Whatever we can give you is yours.”
“I want to go back to school and study medicine.” She blurts out.
“Then go back to school, Duchess. Just stop hiding from us, okay? I may still be navigating all of this, but I won’t judge you for your past, little moon. Everyone in this room has one. I’ll be damned if I’m the first to cast the stone. You are all the good things I never knew I needed. I told you before, but I’ll tell you again – there is nothing you could do that would deter me from loving you or wanting to be with you. Ever. Do you understand me?”
She plants a salty kiss on my lips and then my neck, shuddering with a heavy sigh so full of relief I can feel the tension in her body leave. “Can we start practicing now?”
Parker stands up quickly. “Thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter Thirty- Four