Page 75 of Captive Vows
You’re here to serve my household, not wonder about fucking anything.
My expectation to count on my organization included those in my home.
“Then one day, I caught her snooping in some of the restroom closets to the other guest rooms.”
I narrowed my eyes, suspicious that this was a lie. Gabriella never asked questions, never snooped or pried. She had a healthy respect for ignorance being bliss.
“When I checked back through the closets, I noticed that a case of pregnancy tests was messed with. I knew she’d taken one. I waited until after she seemed to have used it and found the test stick hidden in the trash.”
Hidden.
That was the one word that stood out to me. Gabriella had tried to hide this from me. This maid did as well.
I had no patience for liars.
None.
“Go on,” I ordered.
This confirmed that Gabriella was pregnant and that she’d hidden it from me. It proved this maid thought she could be deceptive about it as well, not reporting to her superior or even Allen about this if she couldn’t face me directly.
But it didn’t answer why Miguel or the Riveras would’ve been informed about this pregnancy.
“Then I…” She lowered her head again, crying. “I’m so sorry.”
“Tell me!” I roared.
“Then I…” She sniffled, taking a few seconds to gather herself to keep talking. “Then I talked to one of my friends. Someone I know who works for the Rivera Family. I… I mentioned it to her, and they were interested. Mr. Lopez approached me when I walked home one night after my shift here. And he paid me for the pregnancy stick. He gave me extra for telling him that I wouldn’t tell anyone else. I need…” More sobs broke her speech.“I just need the money to get out of debt and all. I just needed some money.”
I didn’t give a shit. What she wanted or felt like she needed wasn’t my concern. The second she decided to turn against my interests, she was gone to me. She was nothing but a waste of space to get rid of.
Meeting Ivan’s gaze over her head, I nodded once. He acknowledged me in kind, dipping his chin in reply.
She was dead. This maid would be replaced, killed for her sins. Not for keeping things from me, but for fucking selling a secret to the enemy that I had another heir on the way.
Allen and Ivan gestured for another guard to drag the woman out of my office. Defeated and knowing it was game over for her, she didn’t scream and fight to get free. Crying silently, her face etched with lines as she sobbed, she let them remove her from my office.
“Leave me,” I ordered. Ivan was a confidante. I could always rely on him. He was, almost like Emil, a good man to speak with about difficult or challenging issues. Right now, though, I didn’t welcome his presence. Nor Allen’s.
Furious with Gabriella’s deception, I wanted to be alone to think this through. To walk myself through the steps of how I could accept this news and move on with it, adjusting to the fact that I’d be a father again.
It wasn’t that surprising. We never used protection. It just hadn’t come to mind.
Now, it was the big boulder weighing down on my conscience. Consumed with the reality that Emil would have a half-sibling, I tried to envision this future.
Gabriella, vulnerable and her stomach swollen with my child.
This baby, another asset and part of the family.
My child.
Rage wouldn’t leave me, because each time I thought back to these recent moments of her pulling away from me, I damned her for trying to hide this from me.
She wasmine, goddammit, and that meant all of her. All her secrets. All her troubles.
Her blessings too.
After a long while of thinking about how the woman I was coming to love could’ve done such a shitty thing as hiding her pregnancy from me, someone knocked on my door.
