Page 28 of Scorned Beauty (Scorned Fate #5)

“No,” I said firmly. “Show me now.”

The agent led me into the house. I forgot that Trevor was beside me until he said in my ear, “The owner of this property is a dead end. I think Grigori's been using shell companies to hide the movement of his trafficking rings from his boss.”

His boss meaning Ivan. If anything, the former pakhan accepted the blame for letting someone like Grigori loose, and that was why he stepped down to let Kirill take over.

Sandro didn’t have to remind me he once offered to take out Grigori because he was concerned for Sloane, but I had my own agenda then.

I’d assigned Sloane to a corner designating her as the woman I had sex with.

She didn’t influence my policies as a boss.

Except Sloane refused to remain in the corner and she forced me to choose before I was ready.

I chose wrong, and I fucked up.

It was late spring in New York, and the basement was cool and humid. When we reached the bottom of the steps, a single light bulb illuminated the area.

A ragged inhale blew past my mouth and I couldn’t prevent the burning in my eyes.

Bile, like churning acid, backed up my throat as the stench of copper assailed my nostrils. People had died in this basement. They were tortured first. And I tortured myself with thoughts of Sloane as a captive. Was she locked up? Chained? Did they starve her? Was she cold?

There were cages, but also a chain attached to the wall. They treated people like animals in this space. Impotent rage engulfed me when I spotted the dried blood on the floor, smeared almost two feet wide. Whoever was hooked to that wall couldn’t have survived.

A darker, more concentrated patch of blood was a few feet away.

I shuddered another exhale as my mind filled in the blanks of what happened here. I wondered what nightmare Sloane endured, all because I fucking refused to help her find Billy.

I was still processing the horror unspooling in my head when someone hollered at the top of the stairs. “The dogs found something!”

I raced up the stairs despite the lightheadedness threatening me with collapse. Despite Trevor yelling my name. Despite the scream that wanted to tear out of my chest.

Across the parking lot, I spotted the K-9 and ran toward it. What did it find? A body? A grave? Clothing?

I reached the fresh grave and what followed was a blur.

The rush of the ocean in my ears. My chaotic breathing.

The odor of lime and earth. Someone hauled me up.

Got in front of me, yelling at me to get a grip.

I stood dazed and stared at my hands, at the dirt under my fingernails. I’d been digging with my bare hands.

My fault.

I did this.

I fucking did this.

Sloane’s suffering was because of me.

This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t about to find Sloane in a grave. Never to see her vivid green eyes again or hear her husky voice that lulled me to a peaceful sleep.

Barking around twenty feet away jolted me out of my trance.

“We have another one!”

I closed my eyes, drained and resigned. “Sloane and her brother.” My voice cracked.

Trevor stood silently beside me and put a hand on my shoulder as we waited.

It would take another forty-five minutes for the forensic archeologists to arrive.

The feds set up a command center under a tent.

I didn’t leave the site as they worked. It was a shallow grave and perpetuators had used lime to mask the smell and speed up body decay.

If this was what an out-of-body experience felt like, then I was living it.

It was as if I’d become two beings. One in my physical form: stoic and emotionless in watching the proceedings.

While my soul stood beside it: screaming, roaring, and raging.

They unearthed a black-tarp-wrapped form.

An exhale loosened my chest as my consciousness fused together. The body was too big to be Sloane, but my relief was short-lived when the technician revealed the face of the person who was buried.

Billy.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Sloane had asked for my help to find Billy and I viciously turned her down. But like that night of her disappearance, I willed my mind not to think of regrets. I forced my limbs to take me to the second burial site.

The techs who were dressed in biological hazard suits were carefully laying the body on the ground beside the hole. The shape could pass for Sloane’s build.

God no. I mumbled a prayer despite the desolation drowning me.

“Let me do it,” I said. I wasn’t running from my guilt. If Sloane was beneath this plastic, I wanted her face to haunt me for the rest of my life.

It was nothing less than I deserved.

After donning gloves, I gripped the blade in one hand and sliced the tarp. Exhaling, I dropped the blade and opened the slit.

Oxygen deserted me for a split second and I rocked and fell on my ass, crab-walking backward from the body.

“It’s not her,” I gasped, turning over on all fours as an overwhelming relief washed over me. “It’s not her.”

Hope came flooding back.

Trevor peered at the corpse on the ground. “Wait, is that…?”

“The missing witness.”

The feds told me it would take them six days to get back the results from the blood in the basement and longer for their coroners to do autopsies on the bodies. Kirill wasn’t happy that I went behind his back, but he was the fucker who was obstructing the progress of the investigation.

But money buys everything including a rushed DNA analysis, and I could have the results within twenty-four hours.

I was telling myself that if the bigger map of blood was Sloane’s, then her body would be in one of the graves. My bet was it was Billy’s. He had a longer time to bleed out. Cold, I know .

I was pacing the living room of the penthouse. I was promised the results before midnight.

Ginger was sitting like a sphinx on the leather ottoman as if she was waiting with me for the results.

I banned everyone from coming into my penthouse. I wanted to be alone in my misery. I wanted to suffer alone in my guilt and self-loathing.

I took a swig of whiskey when my phone rang with the number from the private DNA lab.

“Mr. De Lucci?”

“Yes.”

“This is Carter. Lucy’s friend.”

“Yeah, I know who you are.” What could I say? My sister offered her help, and I pounced on it even when I had other companies lined up who could do the work, but I discovered this Carter guy was the best in his field. I didn’t know how my sister found these people, but maybe she should work for me.

“I’m sending you the results on a secure link you can download, but I want to confirm that the set of DNA coming from subject A?—”

“That’s the one closest to the wall?”

“Correct. I can confirm is William Scott.”

“And the second set?”

“This is where it could get tricky.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s fetal tissue mixed in it.”

“Fetal…” The implications of what this meant ripped a hole inside me so agonizingly visceral, I could barely speak through the crippling pain squeezing my rib cage.

“Subject two was pregnant.”

“Was?” I could only manage one-word responses now.

“The maternal DNA was confirmed to be Sloane Scott’s.”

“Pregnant…”

“So, in the interest of saving time, I asked for permission from Lucy to use her existing data in our database.”

“You could have called me…” I finally strung a few words together. I was reeling. Spinning. Thrashing in a sea of unexpected loss and stew of emotions I couldn’t identify.

“This was faster and I can retest…”

“Just tell me!” I roared, the thread of control finally snapping. I had to know. But I already knew the truth, didn’t I? Because karma had a way of doubling down on my guilt and shame. “Am I the father?”

“Lucy and the fetal tissue share a match, so you are potentially the father.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not in forensics, but it appeared it was a miscarriage.”

“The baby did not survive?” I whispered brokenly.

“I’m sorry, Mr. De Lucci.”

My hand lost its grip on the phone.

Sloane had been pregnant.

The news slowly registered in my head, but my body was already processing the sweeping devastation liquefying my insides, draining the blood from my head, and threatening to suck me in its undertow.

My knees crashed on the wooden floors, and even then, I couldn’t keep the rest of me upright. Piercing pain in my gut and chest hunched me over and I crawled on all fours. Crawled across the floor to a dark corner and wept. Wept for the baby— our baby —who never had a chance to live.