Page 8 of Breeding Justice

I had learned that when they had first trapped me in the building in Brickell and we had been playing all those…sex games. God, that felt like a million years ago. Now my husband sat next to me, my boyfriend in front of me, and his boyfriend (and my other boyfriend) were in charge of keeping my child safe.

The thought of Sebastian hit me like a punch to the chest. I had told Hassan to run, to take him and Zane and disappear, but doubt gnawed at the edges of my resolve. What if they couldn’t run far enough? What if Vito found them? What if SJ cried out for his mother in a world I wasn’t alive to see? The air felt thinner with every breath, the walls of the room pressing in like a vice.

If I thought about it for too long, it made me dizzy.

The guards outside spoke in low tones, Italian rolling off their tongues like a lazy threat. I didn’t speak Italian and I couldn’t make out everything, but I caught enough. Vito. SJ. Moving ussoon. Separately. My stomach twisted so hard I thought I’d be sick.

Skylar looked up, the expression on his face worry.

“Do you think he’s okay?” he asked in a whisper.

“Zane?” Bash asked. “I’m sure we would’ve heard about it if he wasn’t.”

“How?” I asked.

“Vito would be gloating about it,” Bash said. “No, in this case, no news is definitely good news.”

I sighed. Bash knew more about this world than I did, and I really could only hope he was right about this. The phone call to Hassan had been terrifying…and now it had been a night, and we had been fed, and someone had brought us water. But beyond that, nothing. Vito had asked Hassan for Sebastian, but I hoped Hassan would listen.

I hoped he was running with Zane. Even if I never saw them again, and the thought made my insides twist with worry, at least they would be safe. At least our son would be safe.

Skylar twisted his body toward the door. e leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed, his ice-blue eyes locked on the door as if daring the guards to come back in.

“They’re cowards,” he muttered. “Not even brave enough to stay in the room. What’s the point of all this if they’re not gonna take a swing?”

“Maybe don’t give them ideas,” I snapped, my voice low. I didn’t look at him; I couldn’t, not when I needed to focus on keeping myself steady.

Skylar scoffed. “What? You think if we sit here quietly and twiddle our thumbs, they’ll just let us walk out? Fuck that. First one through that door, I’m biting his nose off.”

“Please don’t do that.” My voice was sharp enough to cut, but my hands were trembling against the ropes. I glanced at Bash, who sat a few feet to my right. He was still, so still he might as well have been carved from stone, but his eyes flicked toward me.

“You know he’s not going to stay calm,” Bash said, his voice a low rumble. “It’s not in his nature.”

“I’m right here,” Skylar said, feigning offense. “And yeah, it’s certainly not in my nature. I’m not built for patience, Bash. You know that.”

“Skylar,” I said, cutting in before they could devolve into another round of their usual back-and-forth. “If you start something now, we lose any chance of getting out of here alive. You think Vito’s men care if we bite or swing or spit in their faces? They’ll just take it as an excuse to shoot us and call it a day.”

“And what’s your plan, Justice? Bat your eyes at them and hope they fall in love?” Skylar shot back, his tone biting but his smirk faltering for just a second.

“My plan,” I said, forcing myself to keep my voice steady, “is to stay alive long enough to give ourselves a chance to think. A way to get out of this. If that means playing nice for a little while, then yeah, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

Skylar leaned back, shaking his head in disbelief. “Playing nice. You’ve been around Bash too long. That’s not how this works.”

“Aw, thanks, Skylar. You think I’m nice,” Bash said, no venom in his voice. “Look, Justice isn’t wrong. We can’t make a move until we know what we’re up against.”

“Oh, we know what we’re up against,” Skylar said, his voice rising. “A bunch of trigger-happy arseholes who think they can scare us into submission. I say we give them a reason to be scared.”

“You’re not scared,” I said, meeting his gaze head-on. “Good for you. But SJ is out there, and so are Hassan and Zane.If we get ourselves killed now, what happens to them? Zane is injured, Hassan is running and Sebastian is two-years-old, Skylar. Beyond biting people’s noses, what is your plan?”

For a moment, the room was silent. Skylar’s smirk slipped entirely, replaced by something rawer, sharper. He looked away, his jaw working as if he were chewing on words he didn’t want to spit out.

Bash’s voice broke the tension. “We stay calm. We wait. And when the time comes, we’ll make our move.”

Skylar muttered something under his breath, but he didn’t argue this time. I leaned back in my chair, my body aching with exhaustion and tension. Every part of me wanted to believe Bash’s steady confidence, but I’d seen enough to know hope could be a dangerous thing.

I couldn’t shake the memory of the guards’ voices, the words I’d managed to catch. Moving us. Separately. The thought sent a jolt of fear through me, sharp and electric. If they split us up, our already slim chances of survival would shrink to nothing.

“Justice,” Bash said softly, pulling my attention back to him. His dark eyes were on me, steady and sure. “You holding up?”

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