Page 28 of Captive Vows (The Dubinin Bratva #1)

LUKA

D id he just say what I thought he said?

Is she really ? —

Gabriella settled against me as the car sped off. She scrambled to sit upright, clutching at the armrest. Rocked by the shocking bombshell of what that Rivera asshole said, I was too slow to react and assist her. To help her.

Is that true?

Is she carrying my child?

How the fuck ? —

I didn’t have the time to ask her. With those Rivera thugs trespassing on my turf, I had to handle the issues of an enemy too close for comfort. My phone rang. Of course, it did. I was always on. Instead of demanding an answer from Gabriella about what that man said, I answered Emil’s call.

“They started trouble at the back of the resort,” he said, reporting in like I trusted him to always do.

Everyone in my organization was held to the same expectation to be quick to share intel.

They were held to the standards of honesty, too.

Something I had a nasty and sinking suspicion Gabriella hadn’t thought to consider.

She’s been lying?

All this time?

How long?

With half of my attention on what my son reported, I tried not to get sucked in and carried away by the tidal wave of confusion.

Thinking back to when I’d first slept with Gabriella, then when she’d seemed to have her menstrual time, something I would only know because she’d tell me before we fucked, I realized she hadn’t had her period.

Maybe that one time, which hadn’t lasted long, now that I thought back to it.

When I was married to Maria, she’d been so eager to start a family with me. We’d tracked her ovulation and cycles to better ensure the beginning of having kids. That was how she’d given me Emil so quickly. I’d knocked her up on the first try. We’d been expecting a daughter when she was killed.

But with Gabriella and how I hadn’t focused on anything long-term with her, it hadn’t even crossed my mind.

All I’d homed in on was teaching her how to please me and how she could take her own bliss from my touch.

I hadn’t slowed down to consider protection since she was a virgin and wouldn’t have any diseases to give me.

I hadn’t paused to consider not knocking her up because I’d been so impatient to have her after taking a gradual approach to getting her submission.

All while Emil talked, filling me in on the latest trouble the Riveras planned at that location, I steamed and stewed over this revelation.

She’s fucking pregnant?

And didn’t think to mention it to me?

Rage and fury built and mixed within me on the drive. Once we arrived, I was too shocked and disappointed to face her.

I got out, waiting for her to exit. Giving her only a stern glower, I directed her inside with a point of my finger. “Go. Wait inside.”

Still on the phone with Emil, who was back at that resort property handling the aftermath of the Rivera attack and ambush, I nodded and exhaled a long breath. “All right. We are back now and I’ll speak with you when you get here.”

Ivan strode toward me, face serious and eyes narrowed. “Is she all right?” He shook his head. “I was just updated about the ambush.”

“She’s fucking pregnant?” I roared.

He went still, staring at me like I’d spoken another language. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Are you asking or telling me this?”

I huffed, stalking through the house with him at my side. “Oh, so it’s news to you, too?”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” He didn’t miss a beat, matching my stride and not slowing until my office door was in view at the end of the hall. “Allen!” Facing me as we entered my domain, he shook his head. “Uncle, what are you saying? Gabriella is pregnant?”

“It fucking seems that way.” I paced, too worked up to sit still.

“With your child?” he asked as Allen appeared.

I narrowed my eyes. “Yes, with my child. For fuck’s sake.” She was a virgin when she came here, and she had no freedom to be anywhere without me. Of course, it would be my child.

“All I know is what was reported moments ago. Lopez is stirring shit, trying to tell the Riveras that they can have her, which is ridiculous since she’s here, with you and—” He ran his hand through his hair, furrowing his brow. “What?—”

“The fuckers who came to try to take her said she was expecting. That they’d take her and her child. My —” I gritted my teeth, pacing once more and so furious at this sudden change of events that was throwing me off balance.

“ They told you that she was pregnant?” His brows hiked high. “And you believed them?”

I shook my head. “It’s not a matter of believing them. It’s a matter of her never having her cycles. Of her—” I growled, pissed all over again that she’d kept this from me.

“Wait.” Allen lifted his hand. “Did you ask her? Did she confirm?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I haven’t asked her.

” But it was all too telling how quiet she got and how she didn’t rush to tell me that wasn’t true.

I hadn’t given her the chance to speak up since I was focused on the phone the whole ride out of there, but as soon as I had everything under control, she’d be fucking answering me.

“How could they know?” Ivan asked, keeping a clear and level head despite the heightened senses and rush of this news. “If she hasn’t told you or anyone here about her being pregnant, how the fuck would the Riveras know?”

Allen shook his head, just as confused.

“How would Miguel know?” Ivan asked, more like he was postulating out loud instead of expecting a reply.

“She hasn’t been in contact with him,” Allen said.

“She’s never tried to contact him. Or anyone else.

” He would know. I put him in charge of surveillance in my stead.

Nothing got past Allen in this household.

But now, he arched one brow, lifting a finger to indicate that we should wait.

“Let me go speak with the housekeeping staff.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t give a fuck about them being catty right now.” They’d always given her a hard time. I was aware of it. So was Allen. All that had mattered to me about that was the way Gabriella ignored them and never let the jealous house staff’s attitudes bother her.

“No, no.” Allen shook his head, backing up to exit the office. “One of them was acting strange the other day. Secretive. It made me suspicious but not overly so. Now, though…”

I flicked my hand at him, dismissing him. “Go. Go bring her to me.” If this maid had a clue about Gabriella’s secret, I wanted to hear it now.

“She didn’t give you any hints? Nothing?” Ivan seemed determined not to assume the worst of Gabriella for lying to me.

“Nothing,” I growled.

“You have been away and busier than usual lately.”

“But not so much that she couldn’t fucking tell me if I’d knocked her up.” She shared a bed with me every night. She could’ve had every chance to mention this detail.

Allen returned with the maid. At the first glance of the nervous, crying woman, I knew it.

It was all I had to see.

She was guilty. Scared. And probably regretting her mistake in this matter.

“Speak.”

Allen pushed her until she fell to her knees. Sobbing and trembling, she lowered her head.

“I won’t repeat myself,” I growled.

I’d had it with liars and rats. Traitors would never belong in my sphere. If she thought tears would help her case, she was mistaken. My patience was running thin.

Ivan stepped up close and pressed the end of his gun to her temple. “Start talking now .”

She vibrated, shaking like a leaf. Yet, she looked up at me and licked her trembling lower lip. “I wondered why your guest was seeming so ill in the mornings.”

It was none of your fucking business.

You’re here to serve my household, not wonder about fucking anything.

My expectation to count on my organization included those in my home.

“Then one day, I caught her snooping in some of the restroom closets to the other guest rooms.”

I narrowed my eyes, suspicious that this was a lie. Gabriella never asked questions, never snooped or pried. She had a healthy respect for ignorance being bliss.

“When I checked back through the closets, I noticed that a case of pregnancy tests was messed with. I knew she’d taken one. I waited until after she seemed to have used it and found the test stick hidden in the trash.”

Hidden.

That was the one word that stood out to me. Gabriella had tried to hide this from me. This maid did as well.

I had no patience for liars.

None.

“Go on,” I ordered.

This confirmed that Gabriella was pregnant and that she’d hidden it from me. It proved this maid thought she could be deceptive about it as well, not reporting to her superior or even Allen about this if she couldn’t face me directly.

But it didn’t answer why Miguel or the Riveras would’ve been informed about this pregnancy.

“Then I…” She lowered her head again, crying. “I’m so sorry.”

“Tell me!” I roared.

“Then I…” She sniffled, taking a few seconds to gather herself to keep talking.

“Then I talked to one of my friends. Someone I know who works for the Rivera Family. I… I mentioned it to her, and they were interested. Mr. Lopez approached me when I walked home one night after my shift here. And he paid me for the pregnancy stick. He gave me extra for telling him that I wouldn’t tell anyone else.

I need…” More sobs broke her speech. “I just need the money to get out of debt and all. I just needed some money.”

I didn’t give a shit. What she wanted or felt like she needed wasn’t my concern. The second she decided to turn against my interests, she was gone to me. She was nothing but a waste of space to get rid of.

Meeting Ivan’s gaze over her head, I nodded once. He acknowledged me in kind, dipping his chin in reply.

She was dead. This maid would be replaced, killed for her sins. Not for keeping things from me, but for fucking selling a secret to the enemy that I had another heir on the way.

Allen and Ivan gestured for another guard to drag the woman out of my office. Defeated and knowing it was game over for her, she didn’t scream and fight to get free. Crying silently, her face etched with lines as she sobbed, she let them remove her from my office.

“Leave me,” I ordered. Ivan was a confidante. I could always rely on him. He was, almost like Emil, a good man to speak with about difficult or challenging issues. Right now, though, I didn’t welcome his presence. Nor Allen’s.

Furious with Gabriella’s deception, I wanted to be alone to think this through. To walk myself through the steps of how I could accept this news and move on with it, adjusting to the fact that I’d be a father again.

It wasn’t that surprising. We never used protection. It just hadn’t come to mind.

Now, it was the big boulder weighing down on my conscience. Consumed with the reality that Emil would have a half-sibling, I tried to envision this future.

Gabriella, vulnerable and her stomach swollen with my child.

This baby, another asset and part of the family.

My child.

Rage wouldn’t leave me, because each time I thought back to these recent moments of her pulling away from me, I damned her for trying to hide this from me.

She was mine , goddammit, and that meant all of her. All her secrets. All her troubles.

Her blessings too.

After a long while of thinking about how the woman I was coming to love could’ve done such a shitty thing as hiding her pregnancy from me, someone knocked on my door.

I glanced up in time to catch Emil and Ivan entering my office.

Word had to have spread by now. Ivan would’ve told Emil that he would no longer be my only child. But I wasn’t in the mood to talk it out with him. Business matters still had to be dealt with first.

“I want you to figure out what the fuck Miguel Lopez is plotting by aligning with the Riveras.” Those Italians would forever be a thorn in my side, but I required more intel before planning any retaliation. I had to know what the end game was here.

“Of course,” Emil replied, nodding at me before turning to leave.

“Anything else you need at the moment?” Ivan asked, hesitant to go.

They’d likely just come to check in with me. I appreciated the support, but there wasn’t anything else that could be done for me at the moment.

“I need to speak with her.” I stood, letting all my anger simmer and fuel me to seek her out.

Only after I’d heard her explanation for why she’d fucking lied to me would I be closer to deciding how to handle this grievance.

In turn, it would most definitely push me further from falling into this idea of loving her.