Page 84 of Unleashed
Alexius looks at me. His eyes are the same steel they always are, but there’s the ghost of a question.Do we gamble it?
I think of Everly’s voice on the phone, her midnight voicemails. I think of the bump under my palm. I think of Maximo sweating, working, holding Molly’s weight like a sacrament. I think of the man on the rug who grinned when he sewed a mouth shut.
“It’s all I got.” My gaze flicks between my brothers. “It’s all I fucking got.”
There’s a moment, a few seconds where you could hear a pin drop in the apartment. Everyone is weighing the chances, the odds that I might have this right. Or that I might not.
Alexius takes a deep breath then nods. “It's a damn better lead than none. Let's do it.”
Sweat beads at my hairline, and Maximo’s desperate stare burns into me as I approach. Dragged out, this could be the most shitty experience of our entire fucking lives. So I key in the code as fast as I can, fingers trembling slightly. If I’m wrong, hopefully we’ll be dust before any of us realizes it.
When the last number is pressed, the world shrinks to the size of a pinhead. My pulse thunders in my ears like a goddamn freight train, drowning everything else out. Sweat slides cold down my spine as I forget how to breathe. One second stretches into eternity—the space between heartbeats where life and death hang suspended. And then, the tiny red light that's been blinking on top of the box stutters once, twice—and goes black as death.
“Holy fucking shit,” Caelian exclaims. “We didn’t blow up.”
Maximo is already moving. “Get her off!” he roars, a command that turns the room into motion.
Alexius and Caelian are on the chains before my heartbeat finishes. “Careful!” Alexius snaps. “Slow—steady!”
They unhook the chains, the clink of metal an ugly music that suddenly feels like salvation. Molly’s body slumps forward, and Maximo catches her, her body sliding into his arms limp and heavy and awful and alive.
“Get her to a hospital, now!”
Alexius orders, but Maximo is already gone, a blur through the doorway with her broken body clutched against his chest. The second they vanish, oxygen floods back into the room like a tidal wave. My lungs crack open, starved things finally fed, and I gulp down air so hard my vision spots. The relief hits like a fucking sledgehammer. Brutal. Immediate. Devastating.
Sean's eyelids flutter. A wet, gurgling groan crawls from his throat. My fingers clench around my gun until my knuckles bleach white, and I stalk toward him, each step vibrating with rage. I tower over him, jaw locked so tight my teeth might shatter, replaying his words in my head like a death sentence.
Everly won’t be pregnant forever. I’ll live rent-free in your fucking head, constantly wondering when I’ll come for her. When I’ll make her suffer the same way you allowed Melanie to suffer.
My finger trembles on the trigger. The hierarchy that's been branded into my DNA since birth—the chain of command, the "yes sir," the fucking permission slip for every breath—it all burns away like paper in a fire. Blood roars in my ears. In this moment, rank is dead. The lastborn Del Rossa is dead. Alexius' obedient little brother is fucking dead. What stands here now is primal, husband with teeth bared, father with claws out, a man who will tear the world apart with his bare hands to keep what's his safe. Nothing else exists. Nothing else matters.
Sean coughs, a spray of blood erupting from his mouth and painting his chin crimson. His eyes roll like a dying animal's, struggling to find purchase in reality. The pathetic whimper that escapes him ignites something feral in my chest—each broken sound he makes feeds the beast inside me, a ravenous thing that's been starving for this moment since he first threatened what's mine.
My mouth goes copper-dry as I line up the shot, arm locked and steady while everything inside me quakes with savage need. The gun barrel becomes an extension of my rage. My finger squeezes the trigger not in one clean motion but in a deliberate, almost sensual crush, savoring each millimeter of pressure until the mechanism breaks and the bullet tears free with a crack that splits the universe in two.
Blood soars out of him in a languid arc, a scarlet spray that paints the white of the living room in a grotesque masterpiece, and I kneel, a chunk of brain matter on my shoe. “I told you I’d kill you.”
Chapter 28
EVERLY
3 months later
It’s strange how quiet the Del Rossa mansion can feel. For a house full of men who thrive on blood and violence, there are pockets of peace. Isaia’s bedroom is one of them. The moment I step inside, the world narrows, softens. The air smells like his cologne and leather, the walls feel warmer, safer.
After Molly’s rescue, he wanted to pack and leave all this behind. Italy…that’s where he wants to take me, where he wants to raise our family. And I want that, too. What I don’t want is him regretting it. I don’t want him to wake up one morning, stare into the eyes of his son or daughter, and realize that he not only gave up his own legacy, but theirs, too.
So, we decided to wait until the baby’s born. If, after we hold our baby for the first time, we still feel it’s something we need to do, we’ll make that decision together. Alexius already gave us his blessing if that’s what we need to do.
But for now, we’re living here in his family home, taking each day as it comes. Molly’s been living here, too. The DelRossa family has graciously offered to pay all her medical bills, including the surgery needed to restore her lips. I’ve also managed to persuade her to stay until the baby’s born.
I love having her here. She’s the fresh air I need when this house becomes too thick, too laced with Del Rossa authority. It’s easy for five Dark Sovereign men to suck all the air out of a room.
Of course, she loves it here. Her and Mira? They get along like a house on fire.
I sink back onto the bed with a sigh, one hand instinctively going to the swell of my stomach. Thirty-four weeks. My belly feels massive, heavy, stretched tight. My breasts ache. Pregnancy has changed my body in every way possible, but it’s also rewired me. I’m always hungry, always aching, always wet. For him. Only him. My man has hardly managed one night of decent sleep with a wife constantly craving his body, his cock…his cum.
I bite my thumbnail, thinking of all the times he came, how the sight of his cum on my body, the taste of it on my tongue, the feel of it inside me stirs an intoxicating sense of desire within me. A primal link connecting our bodies, our souls. He was right. I am his little cum slut.
