Page 74 of Thin Lives

She gasped, a burning pain searing through her lungs when she couldn’t take in even a little bit of air to breathe. Affonso simply smiled his cold grin again, and grasped a little tighter.

“Shall we have a reminder, Emma?” he asked quietly.

Her gaze flitted to the closed door of her maternity suite. No one was coming to help her, and Affonso had probably locked the door behind him when she was distracted with admiring her son.

“Do let me remind you who this child belongs to, now,” Affonso continued, never releasing his hold on her throat even a little bit. “While he was inside your body, he was yours to take care of and do with as you wished. But now that he is outside into the world and alive, I will do with him what I wish. If you plan on making this hard, then I will make it exceptionally easy by making you disappear.”

Emma’s eyes watered, but she kept a firm hold on Cross, refusing to drop him and claw at Affonso’s hand like her instincts were demanding.

“I’m his mother,” she croaked.

“You are the whore that created him,” Affonso replied coolly. “And believe me, he will grow up thinking just that, if I have any say.”

Finally, Affonso let her go, and at the same time, took the baby from her arms. Emma lurched forward in the bed, ignoring the pain shooting through her lower regions at the action.

“Give me him back, Affonso!”

Affonso gave her a look over his shoulder, before his attention was back on the baby in his arms. “Cross, Cross, Cross … my boy, you are a handsome thing, aren’t you? Let’s go for a walk, bambino.”

“Affonso,” Emma muttered through clenched teeth, “do not take my child from me.”

“I’m simply taking him for a walk,” her husband replied.

Lies.

The man was a goddamn liar in the worst way.

He wasn’t just taking Cross for a walk as he proclaimed, he was warning her again.

Affonso could take her child.

He could hurt her.

Hurt the baby.

Anything.

And she could do nothing.

“You’re a bastard,” Emma told him.

Affonso didn’t bother with a reply.

Emma was scared that if she did more—fought him more—he would do far worse to her, Cross, or Calisto than just simply choking her.

What could she do? What?

Calisto

The first call had come in late in the night—well after three in the morning. Calisto had answered it with sleep thickening his voice and confusion muddling up his mind. He had barely heard the words of the caller on the other end, but he heard a few important ones.

Ones like Emma, baby, and hospital.

He remembered asking about Affonso, and if his uncle was there, or if he was asking for his family to come in for the birth and wait in the family rooms. He got a clear “no” for that.

Calisto, despite feeling like he should get his ass out of bed and go to the hospital anyway, had rolled back over, and tried to go back to sleep. He’d mostly just tossed and turned for a couple of hours, something prickling at the back of his mind like it usually did lately. It wouldn’t let up no matter what he tried.

Ever since that day in Emma’s walk-in closet, when he had that memory of them together in an unfamiliar bed, Calisto couldn’t stop thinking about the woman. More often than he knew he should, and in ways that were not at all innocent.