Page 79 of King of Hearts

I never had. This was just a game, and my time was up.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I tappedout a beat on the table, mimicking Leo’s favorite song. My mom was droning on and on about something that didn’t fucking matter, and I was trying to show some modicum of respect, but she was testing my good will. She’d sent Angela to my house, to my fucking home to try to stir shit up. It was absolutely unacceptable, and she needed to understand that it wouldn’t be tolerated.

“Are you listening to me?”

I laughed. “No, Mama. I’m not.” I stood, pulling out my cell phone. “You crossed a line tonight, and for what?”

My mother stared at me with watery brown eyes, the dim light from the living room barely casting enough light for me to see the concern in her eyes. “For your future, son. How can you not see that?”

“A future I don’t want!” I yelled, slamming my hand on the table.

I hated myself when her shoulders moved with a wince. My father had been violent with her, always angry and brutal…I never wanted to be like him. I never wanted his blood flowing through my veins, and yet as this entire shitstorm with Ivan pressed against me, I found myself turning more into a monster than a man. I wanted to protect what belonged to me. I had to; it was a constant burn in my chest, a hollow sensation in my veins, an urge that wouldn’t go away. I’d kill for it. I’d lose everything for it. As long as they were safe.

“How can you say such a thing? You worked so hard for it, only to have it ripped away from you by this cursed gang.”

I rubbed the stress out of my forehead. “A gang my father and you ran, side by side. Don’t pretend you didn’t have a hand in it. It’s in my blood, and yet you act as though you have any right at all to make these calls for me.”

My mother crumpled into a chair. We were in her small apartment; they lived modestly and would take nothing extra from me or the family business. It was my stepfather’s only method of standing on his own against El Peligro. She rested her hands under her chin while tears welled in her eyes.

“Why won’t you do this?”

I crouched down in front of her chair and took her hand in mine. “Because I love her. I love them both. I don’t want a life that doesn’t have them in it.”

My mother cried in response. In her mind Taylor only led down one path, and the baby would only guilt me into staying. She didn’t understand that I had fallen in love with the idea of being with them, of starting a life with them. When Angela had come to try to stir shit up, something in me had snapped. I’d gone numb for a moment at the idea of Holden winning Taylor back, and everything went quiet in my mind for too long, long enough to miss that she’d started kissing me, long enough to realize the future I wanted was already within my grasp and I just had to wrap my hand around it and take it.

I just needed to clear my fucking head and figure out how to convince her. December was days away, and Ivan had stopped calling…which made my gut churn. When I’d told him that Taylor had the baby and we needed time to recover, he had made a comment about how that had no bearing on this and I needed to man the fuck up.

He was right, but only in terms of how I consistently chickened out around Taylor. I was worried she still felt the way she had that night she went into labor…like this was fake, and she just wanted a way out. If she was looking for a way out, that meant she didn’t want me in, and that nearly ripped my black heart out.

Still…fuck.

What did I have to lose just explaining this shit to her? I supposed more rejection, but maybe if I hadn’t dicked around about a sloppy marriage proposal, she would have taken me seriously. Now, Holden was going to come over and start playing daddy? Fuck him.

I stared at the different flower options for nearly an hour, not knowing her favorite kind. All this time with her, and I didn’t fucking know what kind of flower she liked. It was then that I got the phone call that nearly made my blood go cold.

“Yeah?” I snapped. It was nearly midnight—why was my cousin calling me?

He let out a sigh, and fuck that made me panic. “Why did you text us to leave? I’ve been trying to call you.”

I turned on my heel, grabbing a bouquet before I left. I dropped cash on the counter right as the clerk’s eyes went round and I pushed into the glass door to exit.

“What the fuck do you mean?” I was almost to my car.

“I got a text from you telling me to pull the men back…that you got word Ivan was hitting the restaurant.”

Fuck.

I started the car, tossing the flowers in the passenger seat. “Where is Taylor?”

The silence on the other end was deafening.

“Where the FUCK is she?” I gassed it, the tires squealing as I peeled away from the asphalt.

“Primo…you said she was with you.”

I slammed my hand into the steering wheel as rage and panic began to seep into me. “Get back to the house NOW!” I tossed the phone and pressed on the gas, praying I wasn’t too late.

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