I patrol the grounds, nodding at other guards, checking perimeters I've checked a thousand times before.
My phone burns in my pocket.
Every minute stretches into hours.
When it finally buzzes, my heart nearly stops.
Positive.
Both of them.
These words change everything.
I text her back that we need to meet.
Her day is filled with wedding decisions and so it’s just before five when I need to make another perimeter round that she meets me in the old storage room in the east wing that’s never used anymore.
When she steps inside, I know I need to make a case for us.
"We need to leave," I tell her, taking her hands in mine. "Tonight. I have cash, contacts who owe me favors. We can disappear, start over somewhere they'll never find us."
Hope flickers across her face before reality extinguishes it. "Cristian, be serious. My brother controls half of New York. Maksim's people are everywhere else. There's nowhere we could go that they wouldn't eventually find us. You know that."
"So we keep moving. South America, Europe, Asia?—"
"And live like fugitives? Always looking over our shoulders?" She shakes her head. "That's no life for a child."
"Better than the alternative," I argue. "What happens when Maksim discovers you're pregnant with another man's baby?”
"I'll tell him it's his," she says quietly.
The suggestion makes me physically ill and angry. “Just like that, you’re going to hand over my child to him?”
“What choice do we have?”
I grip her shoulders, forcing her to meet my eyes. "You can't marry him. He'll destroy you. And our child."
Her eyes fill with tears. "If I run with you, they'll hunt us forever. They'll never stop until we’re all dead. But if I go through with the wedding, you both live."
I want to argue, to shake her until she sees reason.
But the terrible logic of her words sinks in.
She's right.
The only way to protect our child is to sacrifice us.
27
VALENTINA
Cristian's face crumples as I mention the only solution that makes sense.
The agony in his eyes mirrors the pain in my heart, made worse by knowing I’m adding to it by not being brave enough to risk our baby or his life. I've never seen a man so broken.
For a moment, I worry that he thinks I don’t love him enough and that’s why I’m pushing him away. "I've thought of everything. So have you. You yourself have said Maksim will find us, and so will my brothers. They'll never stop hunting us."
My phone buzzes with a text. When I check it, my stomach drops.