Page 66 of His Wife

The faint sound of Leandra sniffing filters through the rush between my ears, and I glance at her staring worriedly out the window before taking her hand, squeezing it tight. “I’ll keep you and the baby safe. I promise.”

“Babies,” she whispers so softly, it’s almost inaudible.

“What did you say?”

Her gaze meets mine, swirls of amber glistening. “Babies. Twins.”

My breath hitches as I snap my gaze to her. “Twins?”

“The doctor seems to…” She stills, distracted, narrowing her eyes as she looks straight ahead. “Should the back gates be open?”

“Definitely not.” I park the car by the open gates, warning prickling the back of my skull. “Stay in the car.”

“Alexius.”

“Stay,” I order. “Call Maximo. Tell him to get his ass here now.”

I get out of the car, every bone in my body crawling with caution with each slow step I take. Blood rushes through my chest when I see the open door past the four gray columns of the mausoleum. Everything about this is wrong. The open gates. The open door. He’s here. I can feel it in the heavy air that thickens the closer I get.

Thunder claps, and there’s an angered echo of rumbling as rain pelts against my face like needles. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I look up, rain coming down in sheets, the wind whisking it into a frenzied storm. I’m drenched when I reach the mausoleum, my clothes sticking to my skin and hair clinging to my face.

I reach for my gun at my side, alert, and my every step is slow and calculated as I enter through the door. My heart stops when I see her, life draining from my chest.

“Mirabella.”

ChapterTwenty-Four

ALEXIUS

The day we learned about my father’s diagnosis was the first time in my life that I experienced genuine fear—the kind that not only grips your stomach and floods your system, it takes control of your entire existence. The kind that possesses your body and consumes your mind, wrapping around your past, your present, your future, and squeezes until it’s all distorted. Unrecognizable.

Today, right this very moment, is the second time that unbidden fear torrents through my veins like poison aimed at my lungs to steal my breath.

On one of the royal blue benches placed in the middle is Mira, sitting with her legs on either side of the rectangular velvet seat, her ankles tied to the oak eagle-clawed feet. Her green irises are amplified with fear, her rapid blinking a desperate attempt at blocking out the world around her. I can practically smell the panic, the terror. It’s thick and viscous, lining my throat as I swallow.

Her red lipstick is smeared far beyond the lines of her heart-shaped lips. Mascara streaks cling to her face below her eyes, every tear spreading the black lines farther down her cheeks. Her fear manifests in desperate whimpers muffled by the cloth stuffed in her mouth, and my first instinct is to run to her. To help her. But the man sitting behind her presses his knife harder against her throat, burying the blade deep enough to bite into her skin, a drop of crimson tainting the steel.

“That’s close enough.”

My attention snaps to the man, and I jerk my aim straight in front of me. “Let her go.”

The man snickers, his dark, uneven brows arching as he watches me with malevolent brown eyes, and I immediately recognize his face. “You’re the groundsman. You were at my father’s funeral.”

“Our father’s funeral.” There’s hostility in his voice, a hate that resonates in the way he glares at me, his unkempt beard moving as his jaw tics. “I’ve been waiting a really long time to be able to introduce myself,” he says, still keeping the blade against Mira’s throat. “My name is Micah Gallo, but—”

“I don’t care if you’re the real baby Jesus. Right now, all I want is for you to let her go and then we can talk about who’s who.”

“My name,” he enunciates his words, “is Micah Vincent Del Rossa.”

“I don’t give a fuck. Let her go, then we talk.”

There’s a surprise in his eyes as he frowns. My guess is it’s because I don’t react to the mention of my last name, and that’s because I don’t fucking care. All I care about is getting Mira safely away from him and cutting his eyes out before I shove a cross up his ass, followed by a bullet to the skull.Fucker.

“Let her go.”

“That’s not going to happen, brother.”

“I’m not your brother,” I spit out. “Now let her fucking go.”

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