Page 18 of Killer Love

“Yes,” I answer.

She sighs with relief. “So do I.”

And there she is. That little girl with adventure in her eyes. “You want to escape,” I say.

She shakes her head. “That’s not possible. We’d never make it off the grounds — unless you feel like you can dispose of nearly fifty armed men on your own tonight. No, the only real escape would be a quiet, self-inflicted death in the middle of the night, but…” Her eyes harden with purpose. “I have a better idea.”

“I’m listening.”

“I despise the Zappia family,” she says. “Them and everything they stand for. I will not dedicate my life to it. I refuse to. Gio…” She pauses on the name. “Gio desires an heir to continue his family’s legacy and he’ll take it from me. I want to deny him that but even more… I want to humiliate him.”

I study her eyes, so full of hatred and loathing but they glimmer with silent hope. “How?”

Sofia hesitates. “I will have a child, but it won’t be his. A little dirt in the blood will be enough to sully the family’s reputation for generations and tear Gio to shreds.”

“And where do you plan on finding this dirt?” I ask, furrowing my brow.

She falls silent and her cheeks glow with the slightest pink. “From you, Luka Lutrova.”

I take a step back. “Sofia…”

“I won’t ask you for anything else ever again,” she says, her voice full of desperation. “You have my word on that.”

“Why don’t you just leave?” I ask.

“You think I haven’t tried? Every exit is protected. The wall is too high to climb. I haven’t seen the ocean since I was five years old.”

I pause, trying to imagine a life like that, but I honestly can’t.

“Even if I did make it out,” she continues, “there’s Rosalie. She was just a baby when they brought us here. This family is all she knows in the world. She’d never leave and I couldn’t live with myself if I abandoned her here. As a madam of the Zappia household, I can move her into the main house and she’ll no longer be a servant here. It’s not much, but it’s certainly a better life and if I… if I took my life, then she’d surely take my place next to Gio, and I’d rather she be dead than suffer that.”

“Sofia, what you want from me… it’s considered treason — to both our families.”

“No one will ever know the child is yours. Only me and you. Not even the child, if that’s what you want.”

“And if I refuse?”

She inhales a shaking breath. “Then, I’d beg you to forget this conversation ever happened and you go on with your business.”

My chest tightens. “Then, what happens to you?”

She looks down. “I will not live my life in chains. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep that from happening. I’m not sure what, but…”

“This won’t change anything, Sofia,” I whisper. “Even if I help you, you’ll still marry him tomorrow.”

“I’m a very patient woman,” she says. “I will give him my body if it means that my soul laughs every time he looks into our child’s eyes and sees nothing of himself staring back. That betrayal will see me through until the end.”

I breathe a soft laugh. “Sofia, you are sinister.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” I say. “This humiliation is harsh and cruel.”

“As it should be.”

“I’d love to watch the Zappias fall as much as anybody, but there are other ways.”

“As a Zappia woman, my womb is the only power I possess.” Her lip trembles but she stills it with a quick breath. “I have no say. I have no rights. I have no choice but to comply with the will of Zappia men. Tell me, Luka… do the Russians treat their women this way?”

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