Page 80 of Captured By the Bratva

What can he want back that would be in?—

I stifled a gasp as it clicked.

Zoning out as he moved to the paintings, slicing his knife through the canvas then checking the edge where the artwork connected to the frame, I knew.

I figured it out with his rampant destruction of all these pieces. He didn’t need to destroy the others, but I was so stunned that I couldn’t speak. I was so shocked that I couldn’t point out which ones were mine.

Because he was after my artwork. He was convinced I’d taken them back home with something of his inside them.

Smuggling.

That had to be it. This plan with Steven. I had been nothing but a pawn in it all, a vessel for them to smuggle drugs here. Irecalled enough Italian to understand the Rossini ordering his fellow thug to look for them in the mess. Vials. Envelopes. Thin packages. All believed to be hidden within the artwork.

Oh, my God.

I felt disoriented, unable to draw in a deep breath as the truth settled upon me.

I’d been used so horribly in all this. All that time Dom had transported my artwork throughout Europe, he’d been hiding and stashing drugs in my artwork throughout it all. I doubted he personally had done it. If he had, he’d know which pieces were the Trojan horses. Someone he employed had to have arranged it.

Steven wanted those drugs. Dom did too. The long-term plan had gone sour, though, and now it was a race to find the evidence.

Oh. My. God.

I struggled with this realization, so thrown off by how I could have ever gotten mixed in with all this.

No wonder Dom was so eager to convince me to travel with him. No wonder he insisted on bringing my artwork and convincing me to spend all that time away from home.

And Steven. He’d known about it too, never once considering doing the right thing of warning his daughter that a crime lord was using her to smuggle drugs.

That had to be why he’d wanted me to get an envelope for him at one of those sex clubs. Payment, I bet, for these drugs. These very same drugs that likely caused those guests to fall and struggle when the cops ambushed them.

“How…” I found my voice, confused and eager to understand. “How did you know I was at that club tonight?”

Another Rossini spoke up, scowling at me as he picked through the debris from torn canvases and busted frames from Dominic’s enraged ruination. “We didn’t. We were therehanding out the drugs to see if your father would show up, mad that we were overriding his product.”

“We happened to be there, and there you were,” the other man said, one of the two I’d seen at the club, “the answer to all our problems.”

“Not so fast,” Dominic shouted. He hurried toward me, fuming as he smashed more paintings down. “We still haven’t found those drugs, and I’ll be damned if your fucking father beats me to them.”

I panted, frantic to breathe steadily during the intense rush of adrenaline and fear. As he neared me, I cowered back. The need to puke returned. And my God, I was going to faint.

I blinked, thinking through the overwhelming sensations that claimed me.

I’d felt them before.

This wasn’t only lightheadedness from being scared.

I’m… pregnant?

I lowered my hand to my belly, thinking back. I’d felt like this when I was pregnant with Emily. Just slightly out of breath enough that I noticed. And the on and off nausea, never so bad that it stopped me from being functional, but appearing suddenly when it came.

Oh, my God!

I recalled the last period I’d had, well before I met Ivan. I’d missed my monthly, but I’d dismissed it as a bodily reaction to all the stress of the last month and a half.

Of all times.I couldn’t believe it. Of all times to realize this,now, when I was in danger. Right this minute, when the deranged crime lord who’d raped me wanted to find illegal drugs he’d had hidden in my artwork.

Ivan.He’d knocked me up, likely from that first night he’d taken me.

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