Page 63 of Forbidden Surrogate

Iknow he hears me pounding at the floor because everything gets quiet downstairs. I don’t even worry about the consequences of my actions beyond getting Luigi’s attention. I hear him say my name and then all hell seems to break loose downstairs. Furniture slides across the room with loud scraping. The men’s voices all jumble and blend together as several of them talk over each other.

Everything comes crashing down with the sound of a gunshot. I flinch, causing my panic to explode in a sudden wave.What if that gunshot hit Luigi.

I hear footsteps bounding up the stairs to my prison, and scramble away from the door in case the gun shot downstairs hits the man I’m relying on to save me. I don’t have any options for self-defense except my hands, and it feels stupid to curl them up into fists knowing the sound I just heard coming from downstairs.

Just stay calm, Delphine.The door flies open with such a mad fury that I’m sure the person bursting through must have come in to kill me. There’s a flash of black fabric and my eyeslock onto the intruder’s immediately, as if in some desperate primal plea for him not to end my life.

But it’s just Luigi. Followed by Peter, Mikey, and his twin brothers.The buyer is the one they shot.

Luigi walks straight up to me and cups my face in his hands. Calm immediately crashes against the wave of panicked emotions, suppressing the terror with the realization that I’m in Luigi’s hands again and therefore safe. This is almost over. The flood of adrenaline from the entire experience doesn’t disappear at once and my body feels tingly and sensitive all over, even with Luigi cupping my face in his hands and staring directly into my eyes.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m here and you’re safe. Are you bleeding? Is the baby hurt?”

I stare at him like a stunned baby deer for a few seconds until Luigi’s face morphs into one with such extreme anger towards the world in general, that the answer jumps out.

“I’m fine.”

“Promise,” he says sternly, his thumb roaming over my lower lip as he stares at me with so much intensity that I almost feel embarrassed at him acting like this in front of the rest of the mobsters.

“I promise.”

“Good,” he whispers, tightening his grip on my face as he leans forward and kisses me straight on the mouth. My jaw releases tension to accept Luigi’s initial gentle kiss. He doesn’t pull away from me after our lips first touch and within a few seconds, his tongue spreads my lips open as he tastes every inch of me and thoroughly kisses me in front of his twin brothers and cousins.

When Luigi finally pulls away, he doesn’t seem to have calmed at all.

“Is it true that my brothers helped you out?” he says. “That this was all some manipulation by Benny Gravina?”

“Is that what they said?” I ask, eyeing Renzo and Gino briefly over my shoulder as they stare at me with eyes so eerily similar to Luigi’s that it’s hard to hold their gaze, even as I make my first efforts at silent communication with them.

This is what they want, huh? To blame it all on the dead guy downstairs so they can get away from defying their brother and kidnapping me.

“It’s the truth,” Gino says, his eyes penetrating me to make his message clear. I raise my eyebrows, attracting Gino and Renzo’s nervous expressions. Identical twins can be so creepy. Period.

“Are they lying?” Luigi asks calmly. “Because if I need to kill my brothers or give them second circumcisions, I’m more than willing.”

Renzo and Gino’s faces become extremely pale behind me and while it might be tempting to fuck with them a little more, I don’t feel as ifmurderfits the crime.

“Is the other man downstairs–”

“Dead,” Renzo says as the twins continue to stare down at me. They don’t seem so brave now that Luigi and his older cousins are in the room with me. I don’t trust the twins, but I don’t want to be the reason Luigi’s brothers end up dead.

I have a choice to make here.

“They’re telling the truth.”

“Are you sure?” Peter asks. “I’d love to throw a punch at these dumb motherfuckers for dragging me out of bed over bullshit.”

“We were manipulated,” Gino says.

“Yeah,” I reply. “I don’t think they meant to cause me any harm.”

It’s total bullshit, but I have to follow my gut instincts when dealing with this mob family. Without Angela to guide me, I’mleft to think about what she would do and say about her family members. The twins are young and reckless, but I don’t believe they’re any more cruel or wicked than Luigi. Those young menwillbe paying for this later.

But they don’t have to pay right now and certainly not with their lives. I’m about to become a mother and regardless of my situation, I can’t be the one to take away another mother’s children. It’s just not who I am.

I’ve seen the way things work in this family. If I ever need a favor, especially something done in secret, I can trouble Renzo or Gino for it instead of Luigi. That might come in handy.

“Okay,” Luigi says, seeming to reluctantly accept my agreement with their version of events. “If this is the story we’re going with, I’ll let it slide.”

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