Page 11 of Forced Pregnant Bride

I wasn’t allowed to flinch or blink.

And even now, as I walked up to the boy’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder, he didn’t blink, just watched me intently, confusion settling between his eyebrows. He was going to make a good workforce, and if he was as diligent and vibrant as I perceived him to be, he could climb up the ranks in a matter of months.

My father liked to commend that I was a good judge of character. I could sniff out the good ones from the bad ones. Intuition, or whatever they called it, hadn’t failed me in years.

Jayden Skye was mafia material.

I tapped his shoulder once and headed to the car. Arlo took the wheel, with Kristian in the passenger seat and Vasili in the back, seated beside me.

I was still deep in thought, considering how to start off Jayden’s training, when Kristian’s heavy voice floated into the bubble.

“Can’t remember the last time I had a pure one.”

“The innocent ones are always best. They end up knowing how to serve better,” Vasili chimed in, his sight locked on the view outside the window.

I met Arlo’s watchful gaze through the rearview mirror, silence holding steady between us like he had something to say. I waited, and nothing.

Then, I immediately caught on.

It turned out that the little bee hadn’t only caught my eyes. My men got stung, too, injected with her beauty that managed to spread through the mind like quick poison.

My jaw flexed, kicking against the idea of them talking about her—strange, considering I’d never minded what the men thought about the women we’d encountered.

When we’d gone full throttle with the car to Oliver’s house, it was with every intention to show guns at the door and force the young one into immediate submission. I was prepared for chaos. If I had to drag the boy out myself, I would have.

What Ihadn’texpected was to be momentarily defenseless against the rays of blonde hair, innocent blue eyes, and black-and-yellow striped pajamas that imprinted themselves in my mind like a hot, searing trademark.

Next time—and that was if they forced me to return to that doorstep—I was bringing a fucking bulletproof vest.

Chapter 5 – Serena

“Who were those men?”

That was the first thing Jay had asked five nights ago after the unannounced visit of the men in black.

Quickly, I’d wiped the tears off my cheeks with the back of my hands. My feet stopped moving, pausing by the counter. I was about to put the cake away, ready to chuck it inside the fridge, when he stormed into the house, confused, concerned, and angry at the same time.

I’d wished him a happy birthday, but Jay didn’t care, not about the wish or the cake I’d spent hours baking. Instead, we’d spent the wee hours of his birthday talking about the Russian mafia and the debt our late father owed.

We sat in the living room tonight, the same cloud of gloom and uncertainty hanging over our heads as more rain pelted the glass windows. He parted the curtains with his fingers again—for the fifth time exactly—and the view was the same: rain, dark, cloudy skies, billows of what appeared to be dusty wind, and a black truck with bright white headlights.

“They’re not going to give up, are they?”

Dropping to the couch, he curled into the blankets, wrapping and hanging them over his shoulders as he reached for the cup of hot chocolate on the center table. Taking a sip from mine, I ticked off an item from the neatly drawn check boxes on my daily to-do list, shaking my head.

“No. Apparently, they won’t. They probably don’t even know what that phrase means—to give up. You should have seen them, their eyes….”

A quick flash of brown made my fingers pause with the pen, reminding me of his heavy presence in the room. Shaking my head and thoughts of the intimidating midnight man out ofit, I resumed with the checkboxes. “They were so intimidating. And they meant business.”

After some moments of silence, my brother shuffled on the couch, the butt of ceramic thudding on the center table when he dropped the mug.

“Is this it?”

I frowned, ticking off another box. “Is what it?”

“This…. I mean, we’re just sitting here, drinking hot chocolate, while watching them openly stalk us, and we aren’t doing anything about it. So, is this it? Our fate? We have two days left. Two days before they come back here, marching to our doorstep.”

Sighing, I rubbed the spot between my eyes and the bridge of my nose. I dropped the book, and when I looked up, I wasn’t surprised to find his eyes on me.

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