Page 107 of Venomous Vows

If she’s in my damn house, I’m going to wrap my fingers around her throat and squeeze.

My cell buzzes in my palm, bringing me to the present and the conversation that Elena and I were having. And I almost throw the fucking thing across the room.

ELENA: Welcome home, lover.

I drop my phone where I stand just to give me some sort of release from her taunting. I don’t know how she knows that I’m aware of where she is, but it doesn’t matter.

Once I get my hands on her, it’s over.

I will chain her to me if I have to. Now that Spencer is gone and his little gang will fall apart, I have nothing but time. Everything else that I do on a weekly basis, she can come to. She’ll practically know the whole damn operation by the time I’m done and, even then, she’ll have to earn my damn trust back that she’s never going to do something like this to me again.

Throwing open the first bedroom door, I find nothing.

And I do it for what feels like fucking forever.

Elena sits along the edge of one of my guest room’s beds, expectantly waiting for me to show, and here I am.

My feet move while my eyes soak her in. She’s in a pretty light pink dress that runs up her thighs with her legs crossed. All perfectly set up for me.

“Now hold on,” she says sweetly. “Don’t go all ragey on me.”

“You fuckin’hidfrom me,” I snarl back, inching closer and closer. She doesn’t even flinch.

“I told you not to leave.”

“I had to kill Spencer first, then you have me for however long?—”

“It’s not yourtimethat I need, Adrian,” she stresses. “It’s the fact that you coulddie. Do you understand? As much as you just freaked out over my personal safety, that’s me with you, too. You’re not a god as much as you probably describe yourself to be.”

“It was personal. There’s no fucking way I was going to let one of my men take out the man who had my woman beat down.”

Elena’s shoulders sag. “It’s enough that you keep me secure. However, it’s not enough that you walk into a place where you can be ambushed or killed.”

“I had a plan.” I point at her with an accusing finger. “AndIrun this shit, Elena. I’m the boss.”

She scoffs then, which has my fingers balling into tight fists. “Bet.” I’m about to reach out and snatch her up off the bed when she softly places a palm on her belly. “Be careful, Adrian.”

Pure rage sprints through my body because if she’s pregnant, it leaves the ass whooping that I was about to give her completely out. “Prove it.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“You already broke my trust.”

Elena stares at me for a second before rising and disappearing somewhere behind me, then returns to stand in front of me. “Here.”

Glancing down, she’s holding a pregnancy test and I go cold.

I wanted children. I craved for Elena to be the one who carried them, but not like this. Not when I’m irate and irritable, and she’s completely calm.

Learning that I’m having a child was supposed to be a happy moment. Not one thrown in the middle of complete chaos of not knowing where the woman I’m obsessed with was.

Averting my gaze, I don’t bother to study it. Elena is pregnant and, if she’s upset about it, she doesn’t show it. And I don’t know if I should be impressed that she isn’t or aggravated that I am.

We shouldn’t be here like this.

“Are you not happy about it?” Elena asks, her voice tender and low as she continues to stand there. “I thought you wanted kids.”

“But you didn’t.”

---