AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Allowing myself another minute to watch her sleep, I pushed away all thoughts of the three women who took up too much time and space in my life. My patience was threadbare, but I would endure for a little longer for the sake of my future with Abi. Once my surrogate mothers were dealt with, we could start our life together.
Abi sighed in her sleep, reaching for me. I swallowed a pained groan, wishing I could lie back down and let her use me as a pillow for the rest of the day. But her alarm would go off soon, and I still had a few things to tend to.
Disposing of Lynch and Morris had been easy enough. Nothing a good pig farm couldn’t take care of. Something I’d learned when I was six was that pigs would eat anything, including human bones. I hadn’t eaten pork since that day, but they had become a valued ally.
Lynch might have been a computer science professor, but I’d been hacking since I was eight. A few emails to the right people from her personal computer and she was now on leave to take care of her father, who’d suddenly had a heart attack. As for Morris, I didn’t even waste my time or resources on his disappearance.
Forcing myself to walk away, I left the dorm room. When I got to my car, I pulled out one of the five phones I always kept on me. One was just for the feeds of all the cameras I had on Abi. Another was for Polina and Daria. Pulling out the one that was reserved for personal business—my father—I hit connect.
“He’s having a good day,” Walter said without preamble. “Was a little confused last night when the granddaughter came over unexpectedly.”
Discomfort, what I’d come to discover was concern, made my skin feel prickly. But I was unsure who the concern was directed at. My niece. My father. Both? Having emotions was overwhelming. At times, I wondered why I’d longed to feel them. Numbness had its perks.
“He already had breakfast with the wife. Ryan is currently in his office, but your father keeps calling him Christian. Other than that, he’s having a good day.”
I always worked alone. It was how I’d been able to stay off the radar for so long. Trust was something I didn’t give lightly. There were perhaps a handful of people I could rely on. Walter was one of them.
“And the girl?” I grunted.
“She’s fine, boss. I think she’s getting used to his confusion. Definitely doesn’t scare her like it did the first time.” He sighed. “Tough kid. Doesn’t let much spook her. Her mom’s a little badass, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“It’s not just her DNA,” I muttered. I suspected Anya was already working on Wrenley the same way she’d done with Samara. My sister’s mental health wouldn’t have been nearly as chaotic if Anya had left her alone. “Report back to me if you see the girl acting differently when around her grandmother.”
“You think she’s hurting the kid?” he gritted out.
“I think she has a different definition for ‘hurting’ than you do, Walter. In her mind, she is preparing the girl for the role she will one day have to step into as the Vitucci heir.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad thing, boss.”
“Kids should be allowed to be kids. Especially innocent little girls.” I tightened my fingers around the steering wheel. Fuck, I hadn’t considered what Anya would do if Abi and I were blessed with a daughter.
What our mother had done to “prepare” my sister for life as a Vitucci had turned her into a psychopathic serial killer. Samara was unbreakable. She could be tortured for days without spilling a single secret. I’d once watched a recording of her giggling through an entire twelve-hour interrogation. She’d been taken from a sleepover at a friend’s house and kept for an entire weekend before Anya even knew she was missing. Those bastards hurt her, made her bleed, broke her bones. And she didn’t shed a single tear. Her manic laughter had echoed in my ears for days after seeing the video.
Anya was responsible for that. Not the kidnapping and torture itself, but whatever she’d done to train Samara had caused her to turn off something inside her mind so that she didn’t feel pain. Anya only trained the girls in her family. Always saying that the enemies would expect the men to already know how to use a gun or how to choke a person to death with their bare hands.
But a weak, tiny woman? No one would ever suspect them of knowing how to defend themselves. They wouldn’t imagine someone like Nova Hannigan Vitucci, so small and blond, her smile gentle, could break a man’s neck once she got her legs wrapped around his head.
Yet that was exactly what she’d done to Manuel Ramirez.
I didn’t want that for my niece, Nova and Ryan’s daughter, but it wasn’t my place to stop it from happening. Nova would know if Anya was teaching her, because Anya had started Nova’s education when she was ten. Samara had barely been out of the toddler stage before her own tutelage had begun.
I would kill Anya before she even thought about doing the same thing with my baby girl.
My sweet princess who could already be growing inside her angelic mother.
“Let me know if you feel something off when Wren is with Anya,” I told Walter.
“Sure thing, boss.”
Disconnecting, I drove to the small house I rented. Showering off Abi’s scent was almost as bad as leaving her. Clutching at my skull, I breathed through the pain of losing that connection. I’d get it back later, when I was back in her bed, her pussy wrapped around my cock again, but until then, my mind would be in chaos.
After changing clothes, I grabbed my messenger bag and drove back to campus. Abi had switched up her routine over the past two weeks, going from running alone to including Samara. I liked that she was being safer by running with a friend, and I continuously reminded myself that if my sister was going to murder Abi, she would have already attempted it. But since Abi wasn’t interested in Elias Reid, Samara wasn’t threatened by Abi.
A good thing for Elias, or I would have already fed his body to the pigs. I couldn’t begin to imagine what I would do if Abi wanted anyone but me.
Catching a glimpse of Abi’s vibrant dark red hair, and Samara’s black ponytail swinging down her back, I paused on my way to the computer science building. My sister was smiling as Abi talked animatedly beside her, both of them sipping iced lattes. Samara had a soft glow to her as she watched her friend, one I’d never witnessed from her.
She genuinely cared about Abi.
