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My brother? “Marco?”
He nods, then grimaces. God only knows the kind of pain he’s in. “Leo wants to end the Romano empire and send whatever’s left across the fucking ocean. And I want to help him.”
I lick my lips nervously, wondering if Leo told this man that he wanted me to get out too. “Kane would have killed him if he’d been caught.”
The guy wheezes out a laugh. “He thought the same thing. So did I, until I saw him with you.”
I jolt. “What…”
“I thought he was using you. But he’s in love with you, Alice. That cold, dead bastard is in love with you. They all are, and they’ll spare him if you ask them to.”
My heart thumps against my chest. I’m terrified to believe it, but this tortured, probably dying man may be telling me the truth.
“Do you want me to ask for mercy?”
The guy’s jaw works again, but before he can get a word out, the door opens, and I turn to see Ari staring at me with narrowed eyes. My stomach sinks. I trust he won’t hurt me, but he won’t go easy on me either. He stalks forward and grabs me by the hair, holding tight enough that I can’t move but not pulling so it stings.
He lifts a finger to my face and ticks it back and forth.
I bare my teeth at him. “I’m not a fucking prisoner anymore, asshole. Let me go.”
To my surprise, he does. He takes a step away, but nothing more than that. Instead, he turns to look at the guy on the bed, then grins before putting his hand on the small of my back to direct me toward the stairs.
It’s a long, slow climb, and James is waiting for me at the top with his brow furrowed. I don’t meet his gaze as I shoulder past him, and I can hear the both of them following too closely behind for me to make an escape.
I step into my bedroom, and they’re right there with me.
“House arrest?”
“Don’t get an attitude with us, darling girl. You know what the fuck you did.”
I spin around and pin them both with a glare. “Either I’m a prisoner here, or I’m an equal, but I refuse to be second class at Kane’s whim.”
James swallows, then looks over at Ari, communicating with their eyes for a long moment. “It’s not up to us. But you’re not the only one under orders.”
I want to remind him that no one defined any kind of orders or rules. I think this is some kind of test to see what I’ll do or how I’ll react when I’m faced with the reality of my decision. Or maybe Kane knows everything about Leo, and he’s waiting to see what side of the line I’ll end up on.
Well, joke’s on him because even I’m not sure yet. I’m still processing everything that guy said.
“Who was he?” I finally ask.
Ari lifts his hand and spells his name too fast for me to catch the first time, but he spells it three more times, and it eventually clicks. ‘Rhys.’
“He is—hewas—Kane’s second-in-command,” James says. “Until the night of the engagement party. We found out he’s been sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“You mean he’s been fucking Leo.”
James says nothing, and Ari just shrugs and walks over to the bed, flopping onto his back before digging into his pocket for his smokes. I take them out of his hand the second he has them, and I throw them out the door.
“I’m pregnant, asshole.”
Ari holds up his hands in surrender, which is a surprise. I expected him to get angry with me. Instead, he rolls off the bed and drops to his knees, pressing his face to my lower stomach. I can feel his mouth moving like he’s speaking silently to the thing growing inside of me.
He rises after a beat, kisses me sharp and painfully, leaving the taste of copper in my mouth, and then he leaves. It takes me a second to look over at James, whose face is doing something complicated.
“We didn’t want to hide anything from you,” he says after a beat. “And we don’t think you can’t handle it. But Kane—”
“Still doesn’t know if he trusts me,” I say. I feel suddenly exhausted. Like all the fucking and then finding the guy in the basement—my old prison cell—has just drained me. I slink toward the bed and curl up on my side, and I don’t even have the strength to fight James when he spoons himself behind me.
