Page 75 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

“Are any of them high up in these crime families? Do they make the rules? Do they give the order for the trigger to be pulled?”

I look down at her, feeling a strange stirring sensation in my chest. Gender equality is far from my concern in this life. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying myself about whether or not a crime family has an egalitarian structure. It’s all bad.

But she makes a point.

“I don’t suppose it matters the gender of the assailant if the bullet hits you in the right spot.”

“I don’t suppose,” she sniffs.

I walk her to the door of the compound, and it opens quickly. Lucchino, one of my most trusted—which means nothing—is there, obviously waiting for my arrival.

“Have you swept the place entirely?” I ask.

“Yes. We have made sure there is no surveillance, no hidden tricks or traps. We scanned the place with heat-seeking equipment. No hidden bodies. Gibbons and saltwater crocodiles, mainly.”

“Crocodiles?” Lindsay asks, suddenly going a bit more tense in my arms.

Neither of us responds to her question.

The exterior of the house is made predominantly of concrete and steel. It is designed to withstand gunfire, explosives and any number of ways that might be used to root people out.

As soon as the door closes, she arches her back, and I set her down quickly to avoid dropping her. “What are you doing?”

“You don’t need to carry me. There’s nowhere for me to go. Do you think I’m going to fight you both in a demonstration of my hand-to-hand combat skills?”

“They aren’t nonexistent,” I say. I look at Lucchino, and gesture to the wound on my face.

“Like I said—” she looks up at me “—I know how to survive. And that would include knowing when not to fight two gorillas in suits.”

Lucchino looks insulted. I don’t feel insulted, but perhaps that’s because I’ve spent several hours in her presence now, and I understand that this is simply the way she communicates.

“We will meet in the study,” I say to Lucchino. “And I will make sure that everything is secure to my standards. But first I will deal with her.”

I pick her up again, simply because I know she hates it, a reminder to her of exactly who is in charge here. And then I head up the stairs. The inside of the house does not look like the outside. Rather, it’s warm, and made to look like a classic villa. There is wood trim and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, fireplaces. All to make you forget that you are actually in the bunker.

“You…” She’s twisting and flailing in my arms, but I expect it now, so there’s no hope of her flinging herself out of my arms and down the stairs, though it seems that she’s trying her best to do so.

“You will settle down,” I say.

“Or what? If you kill me, it runs entirely counter to your goal, doesn’t it?”

“You are staying here, whether or not you want to. The manner in which you stay here will be entirely up to your behavior. If you think that I have qualms about leaving you in a single room, where I will provide you with a bedpan and a tray of food once a day, you’re incorrect.”

“One tray of food wouldn’t be enough for the baby.”

“We would make it a laden tray.”

I carry her down the hall, to a room all the way at the end. Each door in the house is also bulletproof. And handily soundproofed. So that once I lock her in there, I won’t have to listen to her indignant shouting, of which I am certain there will be much.

I open up the door, and carry her to the center of the room, where there is a large four-poster bed. I deposit her down onto it, and she howls in indignation.

“How dare you? How dare you carry me around like a sack of produce?”

“At last, you understand your value to me.”

She looks at me, her beautiful, stubborn face screwed up into an expression of mutiny.

She is altogether outraged. I know that if she had a weapon she would gladly use it against me. For the first time, I find myself grateful that she is the mother of my child. Because the child will inherit a measure of grit, that is certain.