Page 97 of The Voicemail

“What happened?” she asks.

I should tell her to go back to bed. The words reach my tongue and stop there. She sees the phone in my hand. She sees Luca’s face. She sees Bellamy standing near the dining table with bloodless lips and two guards on either side of him.

I hold out the phone. She crosses the room slowly, every step making my hands ache with the effort not to help. She takes the phone and reads the message.

Her face changes.

“What secrets?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

Her hand moves toward her stomach, then stops halfway. She lowers it like the movement costs her.

“The baby?” she asks quietly.

“I don’t know.”

I hate saying it. I hate that I don’t have a better answer. Elena looks down at the gala program again.

“Then I’ll go,” she says simply.

“No.”

The word comes out too fast.

Her mouth tightens. “That wasn’t much of a discussion.”

“You have bruised ribs, a concussion, and raw skin where men tied your wrists.”

“A mild concussion,” she corrects.

Luca coughs once into his fist. I glare at him.

Elena takes a careful breath. Pain crosses her face, but she stays upright.

“I don’t want to go. But if he’s going to threaten my family, then I’m sure as hell going to be there to defend them.”

I look at her bandaged wrists, her split lip, and the bruising makeup won’t fully cover. I think about the baby. I think about every exit at the Whitmore gala, every camera Bianchi wants pointed at us.

Then I think about the promise I made in my bedroom. Her life does not become mine because I am afraid.

“You stay beside me,” I say. “You don’t leave my reach. If I tell you to move, it’s because someone is about to do something bad.”

She nods.

That evening, we enter the Whitmore Children’s Trust gala through the service corridor behind the ballroom. Elena is at my side in a black dress with long sleeves and soft fabric that hides most of the bruising. Her hair is down to cover her cheek. The split in her lip is still visible if someone looks closely, and the bulletproof vest beneath the dress makes her breathing shallower than I like.

I hate this plan. Elena feels my hand hover near her back and gives me one look. I lower it. She takes my arm instead. That works too.

Senator Whitmore sees me from near the stage and goes pale. He has enough sense not to come closer. Bellamy won’t be coming because he’s still in my custody. Claire isn’t here because she’s still with a doctor, telling my people every detail she can remember.

Bianchi stands near the auction display with two men behind him. He smiles when he sees Elena. Her fingers tighten on my arm.

I cover her hand with mine.

“There she is,” Bianchi says. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

Elena lifts her chin and fixes him with a hateful glare.