Page 42 of Borrowed Bride

“Facial recognition flagged her at an airport. Her name wasn’t on any of the manifestos, so we checked the private charters, and we found her.”

“Take me there,” I demand. “Take me there right now!” As I move to sprint back up the steps, my father catches my elbow with a surprisingly strong grip and pulls me back.

“Marco, you can’t be serious. What about the Ricci’s?”

“She’s more important,” I snarl, jerking my arm free. “I have to get to her. I have to talk to her, explain?—”

“Explain what?” My father’s face darkens. “She’s an outsider, Marco. You knew this. She’s not worthshit. Look at the mess she brought with her, huh? A street rat bringing her messy life into ours like it means nothing. Your maid got shot,yougot shot. This here is a real problem, I was kidnapped for fuck’s sake!”

“We don’t know who shot me yet,” I grind out.

“That’s beside the point. Why do you think the Ricci’s were bold enough to attack me, hm? Because we’ve slipped. Because you disrespected everyone with that rat?—”

His words end when my fist slams hard into his face, sending him reeling backward into Ben. “Don’t talk about mywifelike that,” I snarl, then my furious gaze moves to Ben. “Take me to the fucking airport.”

Ben doesn’t need to be told twice, and he leads me down to the car and then tosses his phone into my lap as he drives.

The picture of Gianna on the screen makes the rest of the noise in my head fall silent. She looks sad, pale and strained. I don’t blame her for running. I don’t blame her for being scared, but I need to talk to her, to show her I’m okay and that I can protect her.

I stare at her narrow eyes, the slope of her nose, and the slant of her chin. She’s dressed much like she was when she first met, and I can only assume she found an old contact to help her get on this flight.

Each beat of my heart is like dragging myself through razor blades. Each breath scrapes my throat and she is my only focus.

I need to tell her I love her. That I will do everything in my power to protect her.

We reach the airport two minutes before her flight is due to depart and Ben doesn’t need to be asked to drive straight through one barrier and onto the tarmac itself. He seems to know where he’s going, and in any other situation, I would applaud his preparation, but right now, Gianna is my focus.

We race down the smooth tarmac, gliding toward our target and narrowly avoiding several public planes. Ben races us through another fence and we skid onto the tarmac of the private planes where a single, solitary plane sits.

No, not sits. It’s moving.

“Drive!” I yell at Ben, unsure what the hell we can do but as Ben slams his foot down on the accelerator, the plane lifts off the tarmac and glides into the sky like a white dove. Ben slams on the brakes and I stumble out of the car before it’s even fully stopped, tripping over myself as the love of my life is carried far away.

“Gianna!” I scream, as if my voice could somehow reach the plane that takes her further and further away from me with every passing second.

The ground rises quickly and I crash to my knees as the remaining shards of my heart crumble into dust.

I lost her.

What have I done?

17

GIANNA

I’ll never grow used to the chemical scent that exists in a hospital. It’s so sharp that my nose burns as I crack open my eyes and take a slow look around the room.

Pale light creeps in through the half-shut blinds, trembling due to the force of the rain pouring down outside. An endless gray sky stretches out like a turbulent ocean, and I gaze at it from where I lie, working through a drug-addled, sluggish mind.

It’s been eight months since I left Marco. Eight months of running and hiding, using every trick in the book to survive. Those tricks grew fewer and fewer as my belly swelled with new life, and soon, there was nothing left for me to do but scrape together my last few dollars and try to make it back to familiar territory.

I failed.

Stress, exhaustion, and malnutrition tossed me into early labor in the middle of a supermarket in a small town well off the beaten path. My last memory is of a terrified store clerk yelling into her headset about an ambulance. Everything after that is a blur: doctors and nurses asking me questions I couldn’t answer,demanding insurance information, and then a mask over my face as they tell me my baby is coming.

My daughter came into the world via C-section at 4:32 in the morning.

I slowly adjust myself on the bed and wince as a dull pain—kept at bay by the painkillers in my blood—throbs across my lower abdomen. It’s jarring to see a much smaller bump under the covers. I press my hands over the area as my mind races through the fog, struggling to organize my thoughts.

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