Page 125 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

I smiled despite the fear that I didn’t want to believe it myself. But Callum McCarthy was prepared to sell me once, if he knew I had two babies inside me, he’d lock me up until they were old enough to sell. And only three men were capable of keeping me safe.

Bratva men.

Men who weren’t afraid of the world I grew up in. Lincoln and Hudson were so far out of their depth, they thought a legal contract was enough. It wasn’t.

Lincoln stepped in, broad and warm, his hand cupping the side of my neck for one careful second. “You don’t have to prove anything today.”

“That’s unfortunate. I was wearing my proving pants.” Again, a joke. What was fear always better wrapped in fun?

His thumb brushed my pulse before he kissed me, then he pulled back and our eyes met. “Mary.”

“Please go to work and call me later.”

After kissing Hudson, the elevator took Sienna and me down to the private car entrance. There were three Range Rovers waiting. I stopped walking. “This is excessive.”

Sienna opened the rear door. “Yes.”

“You agree?”

“I didn’t say it was wrong.”

I climbed in. The door shut with a heavy sound. Sienna got in beside me rather than the front, which I appreciated more than I wanted to admit.

The convoy pulled out into London traffic. Rain slid down the darkened windows. The city moved around us in wet sidewalks, red buses, and people hurrying beneath umbrellas.

I kept my phone in my lap, screen down. I didn’t know why my heart was jumping; my father hadn’t called again.

Sienna glanced at my hands. “You can turn it off.”

“Then he wins.”

“Does he?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. He always wins something.”

Her lip curled at one side. “You look like you’re the winner to me.”

I looked at her properly. “Do you have a family?”

“Yes, but I don’t see much of them.”

“Distance or because they’re awful?”

“Complicated.”

“That’s a polite word for awful.”

She smiled. “Sometimes it can be.”

The car slid past the river, then into heavier traffic heading out of the city. I touched my stomach. Sienna noticed.

“Are you running from someone?” I asked.

Her gaze moved from the window to me. “What makes you say that?”

“Because you look like me right now. On edge.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m protecting you. I have to be careful.”