Page 9 of Thorns of Blood

Santiago’s home in Venezuela was anything but warm.

Until now.

I stood frozen, staring down at the small, helpless baby in my arms. And suddenly I felt lost and awkward. It wasn’t exactly a feeling I was familiar with. Nor was this warm emotion in my chest. I hadn’t felt it since?—

Since the night I lost my own baby.

A fierce protectiveness washed over me for the little one in my arms. I couldn’t protect my baby then, but I would protect this one.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” I called out to Santiago, who’d just shoved the bundle at me, not even warning me it was a baby. A real, breathing baby.

“A girl,” he barked, not bothering to look my way as he stood to the side, arguing in hushed tones with Gio DiLustro. For the first time in my life, I didn’t really care about the business of mobsters or their schemes.

Instead, I was fascinated by every little wrinkle on the baby’s face, scared that I would drop her. Or hurt her.

I’d never held a baby before. Never even seen an infant in person. My mother’s compound in Siberia wasn’t exactly family oriented.

She stirred in my arms, cooing and wrinkling her forehead, and I couldn’t help but smile. And then she sighed—the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard—and I felt my heart float away.

“Shhh, shhh…” I whispered, pressing my lips to her forehead like I’d seen once in a movie. “We must remain quiet.”

As if she understood me, she quieted down, and I smiled proudly. “We’ll make a survivor out of you.”

The loneliness and pain of the past few years suddenly seemed to dull with this baby in my arms. Without thinking, I brushed my fingers across the baby’s bald head, then gasped in amazement.

“It’s so furry, ” I murmured.

She blinked, unseeing, and I wondered if maybe something was wrong with her sight.

“Babies don’t have fur.” A voice startled me, and I brought the baby closer to my chest before lifting my eyes to meet Gio’s dark, cruel gaze. Usually I was more attuned to my surroundings, but something about this child made the world disappear. “Although this one might, since she comes from a long line of bitches,” he sneered.

Santiago laughed, but I failed to find anything funny. “Leave it to you, Gio, to call your late wife, daughter, and granddaughter dogs.”

I dug through my memory. My mother had made my twin and I learn the names and family members of every criminal organization, and that included the DiLustro family. Considering Gio’s wife had been dead for a while, I assumed this baby had to belong to Emory Amara DiLustro.

“Good luck with the child,” Gio said, ignoring my husband’s comment, then turned on his heel and left without a backward glance.

My mouth parted in shock. There weren’t too many things that managed to surprise me anymore, but a man leaving an infant in this hellhole certainly did.

“He’s not taking her with him?”

“Obviously not.”

We stood alone in the middle of the foyer, Santiago studying the infant clinically, almost as if she were an object. It rubbed me the wrong way.

I jutted my chin out. “Then the baby’s staying with me.”

My husband’s cold, dark eyes lifted and he shot me a glare. “You can’t give me a healthy child, yet you want to care for another man’s bastard.”

I gritted my teeth, hiding my anger underneath a mask of indifference. The sting of his words hit deep, especially knowing I could have had a healthy child. If not for his mistress.

Now Amara—my Mara—was the only thing I cared about in this world. I might be a lot of things, but I was no fool, and Santiago and his guards weren’t exactly fatherly material. So I would do everything in my power to keep Amara with me.

“I read somewhere that having children around increases a woman’s fertility.” Lie. At this point, I was infertile and there was no fixing it, but I was determined to keep the little girl with me.

“Maybe you can show me some gratitude and I’ll let you keep it.”

“Her,” I corrected.