Page 94 of Claimed By the Villain

“What?”

“You said you only got your memory back two months ago. I haven’t seen Taylor in much longer than that. We only talked on the phone. So how did you know I came to see my redhead friend?” I ask, repeating the way he referred to her.

The smile he gives me sends my heart to my throat.

We’re already beside his vehicle.

Martin shakes his head. “You’re so clever, Jackie,” he says, his friendly tone vanishing into something sinister. “I underestimated you. I could’ve used you in my business someday. Made you my right hand. But you betrayed me. Actually, you betrayedusby marrying our father’s killer.”

“What?”

A sting in my shoulder. My legs go weak.

Moments later, I hear tires screeching nearby, and two men jump out of a van. But Martin seems focused on me and continues, “Shame you have to die.”

One of the men from the other vehicle, now close to us, says to my brother, “Don’t mourn yet, you pedophile son of a bitch. At least, not yet. But I promise, you will.”

Chapter 50

“How did you find out?” I ask Tur as I prepare to step into the abandoned warehouse in New Jersey, where they’ve brought Martin.

Martin is alive.

Martin was my hidden enemy.

Martin tried to take my wife away from me.

That last thought makes me want to snap the neck of the man I once considered a brother with my own hands.

I was out of town with Beau when I got the call from the bodyguards saying Jackie was no longer in the room with Taylor and hadn’t left through the hospital’s main door.

Then Tur called, telling me he and Abaddon had saved my wife from an attempted abduction. I hadn’t even known the two mercenaries were working together to hunt my enemy, even though I had hired them separately for the job.

What he said after that first explanation, though, is what froze my blood:Martin Alston is alive. He’s your secret enemy.

While Tur took an unconscious Jackie back to our house, following my standing order to always protect her first, Abaddon brought her bastard brother here.

By now, my wife is sedated, on her way to Louisiana with Beau, to stay with Amber.

I try not to remember what he told me. Beau said that before she blacked out again, this time under a doctor’s hand, she kept repeating over and over that I killed her father. Which is true.

I can’t think about Jackie right now, or the risk she faced, because if I do, I’ll lose my mind.

Beau also told me that before the doctor sedated her, she revealed she’s pregnant, afraid whatever they injected might harm the fetus.

I’d already suspected it, having seen her vomit a few mornings. Obsessive as I am, I researched causes of morning sickness.

I waited for her to tell me. In fact, I was eager for it.

I never pictured myself wanting kids, because I had a shitty childhood, with parents who should’ve been banned from coming within a mile of a child.

Besides, what kind of example would I be for a son?

But when I suspected my wife might be carrying my baby, something shifted inside me. I realized I wanted everything from her, with her.

Today, I almost lost them both.

Maybe you’ve lost them anyway,a voice warns.