Page 80 of Beyond Enemy Vows

"Niko?" My voice cracks.

His arms loosen their hold as he stumbles backward. I reach for him, confused, and my hands come away wet with blood. It spreads across his white shirt.

Niko falls to his knees, his face a mask of pain and confusion. I drop beside him, pressing my hands against the wound, but the blood seeps between my fingers, hot and unstoppable.

"No, no, no," I beg, my voice breaking. "Please, stay with me!"

His mouth moves, trying to form words, but only blood comes out. His eyes, those beautiful eyes that have looked at me with such hunger and tenderness, begin to dim.

My head jerks up, searching desperately for help, and I freeze.

I see Ares standing there. My brother's face is expressionless, the gun still raised.

"Ares, please," I sob. "Help him. He didn't do anything. I love him. I'm pregnant and you just?—"

My brother's eyes flicker, but his arm doesn't lower. Instead, he shifts his aim slightly.

The gun is pointing at me now.

"You betrayed the family," he says, his voice hollow.

I close my eyes as his finger tightens on the trigger.

The shot explodes into blackness.

I bolt upright in bed, a scream dying in my throat. My heart hammers in my chest like it's trying to escape. Sweat soaks through my shirt, plastering it to my skin. For a moment, I'm completely disoriented, still feeling Niko's warm blood on my hands.

The room is still dark, morning light barely bleeding through the curtains. It takes a few seconds to realize it was a dream.

Just a dream, I tell myself. A stupid vivid pregnancy dream.

Actually, a nightmare. And the terror feels real. The grief feels real.

I push the covers off and swing my legs over the side of the bed, waiting for the room to stop spinning. Morning sickness crashes over me in a nauseating wave. I breathe through it.

In through the nose, one, two, three. Out through the mouth, one, two, three.

When the nausea subsides enough, I stand on shaky legs and make my way to the bathroom. The cold water I splash on my face helps ground me in reality. I'm home. I'm safe. For now.

But Niko isn't.

I walk barefoot out into the living room and sit on the couch, pulling my knees to my chest. My hands automatically wrap around me as if I'm trying to hold it all together.

The meeting last night still comes flooding back into my mind.

For the first time ever, my brothers included me in family business. Real business. Not the sanitized version they usually share, but the raw, ugly truth of what they do. What they are planning to do.

I hold myself tighter, trying to push away the memory of sitting at that table, watching their faces as they calmly discussed killing the father of my child.

All I could think about was that there was no way he knew about this. That he even remotely had anything to do with it. I was so confident in that, I didn't even need to second guess myself. There's just no way.

So as I sat at that table, listening to them talk about him like a threat that had to be neutralized, I felt like I was floating outside my own body during that meeting, watching this strange version of myself sit there silent while they planned violence. A stranger who nodded at the right moments, who didn't stand up and scream the truth, who didn't beg them to stop.

But something else stuck with me too. Something that made my blood run cold.

It was when Theo said, "Stavros is the most powerful and dangerous man we've ever gone after. We should plan to lose men."

I remember looking at him and asking what that meant, and he hesitated. Theo never hesitates with business.