Page 40 of Borrowed Bride

The utter agony I felt at seeing him get shot and the sickening coldness at touching his motionless body alerted me to one very true, very real fact.

I love him.

I don’t know when it happened, or how. But I love him.

“I’m not?—”

“Don’t.” Cherry holds up one well-manicured hand. “I don’t care. He’s mine, you understand? I took out Tara as a warning, but I will kill them both if you don’t leave right here, right now. This is bigger than you know, and I won’t have you fucking me up any longer. You can’t protect anyone, Gianna. I remember how fucking toxic your loyalty is.”

And then, like a cruel twist of fate, my hand instinctively rests on my stomach, over the child I now know I’m carrying. The child Marco can never know about. Not in this world. Not with Cherry hunting us.

Given the carnage around me, her threats hold weight and fresh, hopeless tears prick my eyes as I wrestle with my decision.

“If I leave,” I whisper. “You won’t kill them?”

Cherry smirks again, catlike. “Not tonight. No. So do what you do best, Gianna, and abandon the people that took you in. They’ll be safer without you around.”

What hope do I have? I have nothing. I can’t protect Marco and I put Tara in danger.

I blink quickly, trying to clear the tears and half hoping Cherry is just a mirage from my guilt, but she remains there, staring at me and standing between me and the hospital.

If this is what she does to send a warning, I can’t fathom what she will do if I don’t obey.

So I do.

I leave.

“Fine. I’ll go.” On trembling legs, I turn from the hospital, from Marco, from everything I thought I could have.

With every step, my heart fractures, but the weight of the life growing inside me demands this sacrifice.

Now I have to do everything in my power to make sure no one finds out about this baby.

16

MARCO

Gianna is gone.

Those three little words are scarred into my mind, surrounding my soul like barbed wire.

I woke up from an operation to have three bullets removed—two flesh and one internal—to find the woman I’d fallen in love with, the woman the world thought was mywife—was gone.

Anton found a note left on the windshield of the limo stating that watching me get gunned down so soon after Tara made this world far too real and dangerous for her. It broke her heart, and so she left.

Part of me understands. The fear I felt the moment those bullets impacted my body armor, and my world turned black, was chilling. I was out for two days and woke to a missing wife and a missing father.

Every person I know is on it, searching the entire city for any sign of them because neither of them are safe. Whoever took my father is asking to be sent to the bottom of the ocean in an oil barrel, but Gianna? She flees to be safe, but I know for a fact she isn’t. Not after what happened to Tara. This Cherry woman has proven herself dangerous and she’s shot to the top of my hit list.

“Anything?” I bark at Ben as he enters my office with a phone in hand. “Have you found her?”

“No,” Ben replies quietly and he hands me the phone. “But we found your father.”

“Leo?”

“Nah, a smaller family. The Ricci’s? They’re based on the outskirts and as far as I can tell, they have ties to no one.”

“But they kidnapped my father?” I mutter, scrolling rapidly through the information on the screen. “A bold fucking move.”

---