She closed her eyes and shook her head several times before opening them again. “I can’t tell you who to love. I truly wish I could right now, but I can’t. If you love him, okay, that’s on you. But don’t ever ask me to give this man a chance again. I can’t accept him as part of our family. I won’t ever be able to trust him, and you shouldn’t either.”
“I love him. I want to live the rest of my life with him,” I told her, my voice not quivering once because out of all the uncertainties in my life right then, that was the one thing that was the complete truth.
“Then you can’t be a part of my life, Monroe,” she told me in a hard voice. “Make your choice. Because if you pick him, know that you’re giving up our relationship.”
Chapter 12
Monroe
Lexa’s words were still echoing in my head days later when I walked into the campus café to wait for Mila. I’d been avoiding my sister for over a week because I didn’t know how to tell her about Gian. But then after the talk with Lexa, I didn’t want Mila to condemn him like our cousin had.
Yet, with each day that passed with no word from him, no sign that he was coming back for me, I had to wonder if maybe I’d gotten it all wrong.
No, I scolded myself as I fought back tears and sat down at a table away from the counter and the overly curious assistant manager who seemed to be all alone in the café at the moment. Traffic was almost nonexistent this time of day, and I was the only patron. That was why Mila had asked to meet me now, so she could grill me.
I knew it was time to stop hiding. I couldn’t continue to keep my twin in the dark. She always said we were two halves of a whole, and I had to agree with her. But if I was honest, her strength had always been something I was a little jealous of.
“Mon.”
I startled at the sound of Mila’s voice and only then realized I was still crying. I blinked at her, trying to stop the flow of tears, and told her to get herself something to drink.
My stomach growled hungrily, and I called out, “And something sweet to eat. Then we can talk.”
While she was at the counter ordering, I tried to stop crying, but by the time she reached me, I knew I probably looked hideous.
“Tell me why you’re crying, Mon,” she commanded as she took her seat across from me and picked up her drink.
I lifted my shoulders in a slight shrug, evading the topic of Gian a little longer. “I’m just as pregnant as you are, Mila. Haven’t you been emotional lately, too?”
A piece of scone flew at my face, and I quickly deflected it, glaring at my sister for daring to waste the sweet goodness of our snack.
“Don’t be a brat,” she chided. “You’ve been avoiding me all week. Yes, I’m emotional more often than not, but I don’t sit around sobbing like you so obviously were doing when I got here.” I grimaced, knowing she was right, but I kept my lips sealed and she huffed unhappily. “You can pull the blinders down over Mom and Dad, but I’m your twin, Monroe. Your other half.” She caught and held my hands tightly in her own. “I love you. Please just tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help.”
Fresh tears blinded me, and I let go. “No one can help,” I got out brokenly. “I messed up. I love him, Mil. I love him so damn much, and everyone thinks he’s a monster. But he isn’t anything like his father. I swear he isn’t. I tried to tell Lexa that, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I-I know she has more reason than anyone not to believe me, but he’s a good man.”
“Who?” Her voice was soft but full of strength I wished I possessed.
“G…” I whispered, my heart breaking all over again as I swallowed the lump in my throat. I had to tell her who he was. There was no getting out of it now. “G is Gian Fontana.”
She fell back against her chair, her eyes widening in shock. “Ah fuck, Monroe.” Her eyes went to my stomach, and she touched her own. “Is he the father of your baby? It is just one, right? Not twins like me?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I haven’t had a scan yet. I-I only did a home pregnancy test a week ago and told Mom and Daddy once I knew I was pregnant. I was waiting.”
“For what?” she demanded. “You could be carrying twins right now. I’m having issues with my blood pressure like crazy. Lyric is a mess. Worrying about me every other minute of the day. What if you have issues like that, too? What if something else is going on? We’re identical, Monroe. Identical twins, especially females, are more likely to have twins of their own.”
“I’ll see a doctor as soon as I can,” I assured her. “I just have to tell G first.”
“So, tell him already!” she exploded.
“I don’t know how!” I shouted back at her.
Her eyes narrowed on me. “What do you mean, you don’t know how? You don’t have his number?”
Another tear spilled over my lashes. “I don’t have anything,” I whispered and told her about waking up in Italy all alone.
“The sonofabitch just abandoned you?” she gritted out between clenched teeth.
My heart flipped painfully because I was starting to wonder that myself, but I quickly shook my head in denial. “No. He wouldn’t do that to me. I know him. He… He…” My heart cracked a little more, and I fought back a sob. “I thought he loved me like I love him.”
Mila’s arms wrapped around me as she took the seat right beside me. She pulled my head to her chest and hugged me tightly, and I lost what little control I still held over my emotions and just cried and cried while she rubbed my back and told me it was all going to be okay.
She sounded so convincing, but I knew she didn’t have a clue what was going to happen to me and this baby. She had Lyric, who, from what I had seen so far, worshiped the ground she walked on. He’d told her how much he loved her repeatedly the few times I’d seen them together.
What did I have? A man who was MIA and hadn’t said those three little words a single time. Were they such scary words to him that he couldn’t repeat them? Or did he just not feel them?
I was beginning to suspect that it was, in fact, the latter, and I’d just been full of wishful thinking, believing he could ever love me.
I pushed those thoughts aside for the moment, however, and focused on my sister. I’d missed her during the week I’d been avoiding her. A lot had been going on, and she was planning her wedding, which still boggled my mind. I’d honestly thought Mila would be single forever. That she would rather have her options open than tie herself to one person for the rest of her life.
That just showed me how much she really did love Lyric, though, and I was happy for her.
She wasn’t really interested in the planning part of the special day, though, and between our mom, along with his parents and his aunt Emmie, they seemed all too happy to plan the event for them.
As we walked out to our vehicles, Mila turned to me suddenly. “Do you think I’m crazy for marrying a guy I don’t even really know? River said I was insane for agreeing to marry Lyric so soon.”
I wanted to ask her if she thought I was crazy for falling for a guy she’d constantly told me was nothing more than a stalker for years, but I kept my mouth shut about that, not sure I wanted to know her honest answer. Instead, I asked, “Do you love him?”
Her eyes brightened, her face lighting up in a way I’d only seen happen when she talked about Lyric. “More than I ever thought it was possible to love someone. It’s kind of scary loving someone this much. Letting him have all this power over my happiness and heart…”
She didn’t have to tell me how scary it was. “Believe me,” I told her with a shake of my head. “I know what you mean. No, Mil. I don’t think you’re crazy at all. As long as you’re happy, who cares what other people think?”
She threw her arms around me in a tight hug. “I love you so much, Mon. You know that, right?”
I hugged her back. “I love you too,” I whispered, holding on to her as tight as I could.
I heard a car’s engine seconds before its tires screamed angrily to a
stop right behind us. Two men jumped out of a black sedan, both of them in jeans and hoodies. The driver was speaking in rapid Italian, and it took me a moment to decipher what he said.
When I realized why they were there and that Gian wasn’t coming to save me this time, my heart stopped.
Chapter 13
Monroe
My entire body was one big ache. The kind of ache people have after being in a car accident, their muscles so tense that when they finally start to relax, every inch of their body throbs.
It started after the doctors came to tell us Daddy was going to be okay. They had gotten the bullet out of his thigh and repaired the damage another bullet had done to his shoulder. My body hurt so badly that Mom convinced me to take what the nurse offered so I could get some rest, she and Aunt Raven assuring me over and over again that it wouldn’t harm the baby.
With Mila cuddled up with me on the bed, Lyric sitting beside her, Maverick in a chair by the door, and one of the MC brothers right outside my hospital room, I’d given in when the medication started to make me drowsy, and I fell asleep curled up with my sister.
I didn’t know if it was from the medication or the events of the day, but my dreams felt oddly real.
When I first started to open my eyes, I felt like I was floating. There was a thunderous pounding under my ear that sounded like a racing heart. But the one thing that caught my attention and made me smile was the slight trace of Gian’s scent filling my nose.
Sighing contentedly, I buried my face deeper into the hard pillow, desperately trying to hold on to sleep while inhaling deeply to take in as much of my favorite smell as I possibly could. I liked this dream. Gian was with me. He was holding me, and even that annoying, floating sensation that made me feel nauseated and dizzy didn’t matter as long as his strong arms continued to protect me.
Slowly, other things tried to poke into my dream world. I heard Gian snarling something in Italian, felt a slight, chilly breeze brush over my bare skin, heard a car engine rev.
None of that bothered me.
It was when I felt Gian release me that I protested. He was no longer holding me, and I began to cry in my dream. “You left me,” I sobbed. “You left me, and you didn’t come back. I-I needed you.” I touched my abdomen, where the tech had shown me our baby thriving earlier. “We needed you. But you don’t want us.”
“Hush, precious,” he commanded in a pained voice. “I will never leave your side ever again.”
“Liar!” I screamed at him and shoved his hand away when he started to touch my face.
It was his heat that made me realize I wasn’t in a dream. I blinked, but it was dark in the back of the car we were in. Confused, I glanced around. There was a man in the driver’s seat, maneuvering the car like he was trying out for the Indianapolis 500, but it was so dark I couldn’t see more than his profile.
Gian sat beside me, his hands raised like he was trying to calm a wild animal. I could only make out the shape of his face; his eyes were completely lost in the darkness of the night. But I could hear his heavy breathing, and I knew by how stiff he felt that he was just as tense as I’d been the day before.
“Where are we?” I demanded, glaring at Gian, but he couldn’t see me any more than I could him, so it was a wasted effort.
“Close to the airstrip,” he said, trying to make his voice sound soothing.
“What? Why?” I shouted and glanced around again. There were no lights anywhere except those from the front of the car. No streetlights, no businesses or homes, not even a single other vehicle was in sight.
Then out of nowhere, I saw the distinct lights of an airstrip in the distance, and my heart started racing. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but take me back to the hospital,” I gritted out.
“No.”
“The doctor admitted me for observation. I’m still cramping. I know you don’t really care what happens to this baby—”
His hand shot out of the darkness, grasping my upper arms and pulling me forcefully back onto his lap. Locking one arm around my back to hold me against his chest, he used his other to touch where the baby was. “I care,” he breathed at my ear. “I care so fucking much, precious. You and this baby are my only reason for living. Don’t ever say something like that to me again.”
“Your actions prove otherwise,” I snipped at him, fighting the warmth of his touch as the hand over our baby caressed my flesh. Grabbing his wrist, I pushed it away from me, but when I started to move off him, his arms became bands around my body, trapping me against him.
“I will tell you everything as soon as we get home, Monroe.” He pressed his forehead to mine, breathing deeply. “Until then, please be patient with me.”
“I thought my home was with you once,” I whispered, my throat clogging with tears. “You showed me I was wrong.”
He made a pained noise in the back of his throat, but he didn’t argue with me as the driver continued to speed toward the growing lights. I struggled to get off Gian’s lap, wanting space between us, but he only held on to me tighter until the car screeched to a jarring stop right beside a private jet, much like the one I’d ridden on with my family to New York for Tavia’s wedding.
The driver said something to Gian, and the meds must have been making my head fuzzy because I could only understand one word. Doctor.
While I was still trying to figure out what the guy said, Gian was quick to get out of the car, and he reached back inside to lift me out. As the cool night air hit my exposed skin, reality filtered back in, and I began to struggle against him.
“Put me down!” I yelled, squirming in his arms. Clenching his jaw, he started up the stairs of the plane, and I began to thrash in his arms. “Gian! Let me go. I’m not going with you. It’s over between us.”
“Stop before you cause me to drop you,” he snapped. “Do you want to harm the baby?”
I instantly went still in his arms, but my glare was so intense, he swallowed roughly before continuing up the last of the steps.
The interior of the jet was luxurious, with plush seats and a huge flat screen on one wall. There was a couch with seat belts surrounded by several tables. One held a laptop with a closed lid.
The pilot and a flight attendant stood at the cockpit as we entered, both of them greeting me with professional smiles, but their eyes quickly lowered when they got one look at Gian’s face. A middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, dark brown skin, and tired eyes sat on one of the couches. His suit was wrinkled, and he looked out of sorts. There was what I’d always imagined a doctor’s bag might look like beside him and a cup of steaming coffee in his hand.
Gian barked out orders in Italian, causing the pilot and flight attendant to snap into action as he placed me on the couch opposite the man I assumed was the doctor.
Leaning over me, Gian fastened my seat belt and then sat beside me.
“Where are we going?” I asked as Gian took the drink the flight attendant offered him.
He tossed back the entire contents of the glass in one swallow before handing it back to the woman and telling her to bring me some still water with no ice.
“Home.”
I huffed in frustration. “We might be in Oregon, but we’re not all that far from Creswell Springs, G. A few hours’ drive wasn’t going to hurt anything.”
“We aren’t going to Creswell Springs, precious. That is not our home.” He took the glass the woman offered and placed it in the cupholder on the table in front of us.
“My head is cloudy from the medication I took earlier, so could you just tell me where the hell you think that is?” I touched a hand to the back of my head. My scalp was tender from where that asshole had grabbed me by the hair earlier and dragged me out of that nasty house. But that wasn’t why a headache was throbbing in my skull.
No, that was one hundred percent Gian’s doing.
Jaw locking, he stared straight ahead, not even looking in my direction or answering my question.
“What
medication were you given?” the doctor asked, his brow puckered as his eyes went from me to Gian and back again.
“Just something to help with the muscle pain and help me rest,” I explained and told him the name of what the nurse had given me earlier.
He nodded approvingly. “Good, good. That is in a class that won’t harm the baby.”
I covered the baby protectively with my hand. “How did you know I’m pregnant?”
The man’s brows lifted higher in surprise. “That is why I am here, Mrs. Fontana.”
“Dr. Khan is the leading obstetrician on the West Coast,” Gian explained before I could correct him that Gian and I weren’t married—and were never likely to be either. “He will be flying with us to our home to make sure you are comfortable. Once you are settled, he will assist us in finding the right doctor to oversee your pregnancy.”
“How kind of him,” I muttered sarcastically. I doubted the doctor was here out of the goodness of his heart. Given the state of his clothes and the tired look in his eyes, I was fairly sure the man was only present under duress.
“Rest easy, precious,” Gian said, his face expressionless. “I’ve assured Dr. Khan that he will remain unharmed for as long as we need his services. And the million dollars I promised him in advance has already been transferred into his account.”
“Million dollars?” I repeated with a strangled whisper. “You paid him a million dollars to fly with us to wherever the hell it is we’re going and stay with us for a few days?”
“No,” he said, his face dead serious. “We are paying him two million. The other half will be transferred when his services are complete.”
Surviving His Scars (Angels Halo MC Next Gen Book 4) Page 8
