As every time I made my way home, I was thankful it was only a short walk. My ankles were always terribly swollen after a day on my feet, and my lower back ached something fierce. The shouts and hollers from the people filling the streets marking the beginning of the evening's social events only made me yearn for my bed all the more.
Sighing with relief, I let myself into the stairway that led to my tiny apartment and climbed the steps with a hand pressed against my swollen belly. Every time I stepped foot on stairs the baby within would begin to kick up a storm, and the only thing that could stop it from demolishing my bladder was apparently the light press of a hand.
"Just as difficult as your father," I muttered while attempting to unlock my front door with the same hand that held the bit of shopping I'd done on my way home.
Blaine. I bit my lip to stem the onslaught of mixed emotions the thought of him always brought on.
He had been looking for me since the day I ran away. I'd thought he would either stop caring once it was obvious I'd left the country, or he would have respected my plea in the letter to let me go. I'd been very wrong.
My advanced pregnancy didn't make the stress of having to pack up and leave every four weeks or so any easier to deal with, but of course, he didn't know I was pregnant. I'd made sure to take all traces of the pregnancy test with me when I left so he would never know his runaway wife was with child.
I gave into the urge to flop down on my bed for a few moments before I had to start dinner. I was exhausted every minute of every day, and all I wanted to do after a long day's work was to go to sleep-but the baby had other ideas. Getting by on whatever service job I could find wasn't made any easier by my constant hunger. "Eating for two"-yeah, right. I scoffed and rubbed my belly as the baby moved restlessly within. If my pregnancy appetite was anything to go by, I was expecting at least quintuplets.
I ate my dinner in front of the open French door overlooking the bustling street below. Then I went to sleep on my narrow single bed before the nightclub a few roads over got too loud.
"Hello, little cunt."
The menacing snarl ripped me out of my uneasy slumber with a start. My heart kicked into overdrive the second my eyes flew open, but it was much too late to react.
Someone pressed a cold, sharp edge to my throat and grabbed hold of my hair before I could even orientate myself.
I cried out from the sharp pain in my scalp, but quieted down instantly when the knife against my throat pressed in in warning.
He had found me.
"Please, Blaine, you're hurting me," I croaked. Even in my panicked state, even after I'd fled from him for four months after seeing him viciously torture a bound and helpless man, some part of my brain didn't believe he would physically harm me. I reached up to put my hand against his to try to calm him-even if he didn't mean me harm, the knife was a pretty vivid indication that he was furious.
The tug on my scalp instantly eased as he let go of my hair.
"Look, I know you're mad at me-" I didn't get to continue before, out of nowhere, the backside of a hand impacted with my cheek so hard I saw stars. The blow was forceful enough to throw me back down on the mattress.
"Blaine!" I cried, cradling my cheek. I don't know what was more painful-the smack, or the shattering of what I dimly realized was the last of my crushed belief in there being any goodness in the man my stupid heart had fallen for.
"Blaine. You think crying out for your husband will save you, you dumb cow?"
I froze stiff on the bed, my tears drying from sheer horror. I knew that voice. And it didn't belong to Blaine.
The naked light bulb that was the sole source of light in my rented accommodation flickered on, and I was greeted with the very image that had haunted my nightmares since I was eighteen years old.
Above me, next to the bed, my brother Michael crouched down. He was holding a sharp blade in one hand, pointing it at me in an unspoken threat. Behind him I could see my father, his armed crossed over his stocky chest and his mouth pressed into a thin line, and over by the light switch stood my oldest brother Devlen. A gun stuck up from the waistband of his jeans.
I stared at them in abject terror, my mind threatening to slip into the blank space it had when they found me in London, just to get away.
"Oho, would you look at that!" Michael hooted. He pointed at my stomach with his knife. "Either she's gotten fatter than ever, or Steel put a bastard in her whore cunt before she gave him the slip."
My father moved closer and I cringed back against the wall, my hands automatically flying up to protect my belly.
"Well, well, well. No wonder Blaine's been searching for you so desperately for the past four months, huh, Aignéis? And here I thought we might just get the pleasure of blackmailing the Steels for a couple of million while showing all of London how easy it is to humiliate the so-called greatest crime syndicate in the city. Turns out our prize sow's got a little surprise for us." He knelt down next to the bed and gave me a cold smile. "What do you think the Steels will give up in return for the safe return of an heir to the empire? The entire city?"
I shook my head and pressed my hands harder against my stomach. As much as I wanted to flee into sweet oblivion, I couldn't-not when it would leave my unborn child at their mercy. "They don't know about the baby. They won't believe you."
"I guess we'll just see about that." Quick as a snake, he twisted around and grabbed my hands so he could pull them up above my head and away from my belly.
I screamed and bucked, doing everything I could to get free, but Michael rolled up onto my legs so he could pin them against the mattress with all his weight. My father stuffed a cloth in my mouth, cutting off my screams for help.
"There we go. Get her top off-we want to show Daddy what we've got to offer in return."
Michael gave me a lecherous smirk before he lowered the knife to my stomach. I whimpered in fear and tried to squirm, but all I managed to do was pull the muscles in my arms.
Slowly, letting me feel the tip of the blade against my skin as he cut, Michael slid the knife up along the middle of my camisole, letting my stomach and breasts spill out.
"Devlen, take the pictures," my father said.
My oldest brother moved across the room and pulled out his phone.
"Make sure you get her face and stomach."
"And the knife," Michael added, letting the blade slide down along the scars on my stomach. "Just so he gets the idea."
"I told you you'd regret the day you betrayed your family," my father growled into my ear while Devlen's phone flashed, snapping picture after picture of my exposed and pinned-down body. "And if your beloved husband doesn't come through, you're going to regret ever leaving the Steels' protection. I'll cut that baby from your belly with a steak knife if he doesn't hand over control of London's underworld. So what do you think, Aignéis? Does he love you and your baby more than he does the Family?"
*
Chapter 22
Blaine
"We're pretty sure she's in Spain now, but where exactly we don't know yet. Sorry, boss."
I gritted my teeth and pressed "end" on the call, clenching my fist so tight around the phone the casing protested.
Four months. It had been four months since I came home to an empty house and a note that damn near tore my guts out, and I was no closer to finding Mira than I had been then.
Let me be free, she'd written. Perhaps if she had left me before I bared my soul to her, before I realized that she was the one person in this damn world that could ever make me feel whole, I could have let her go. I would have at least tried to. But not now-not when I'd finally tasted what true happiness was like. I couldn't give that up again-I couldn't give her up without destroying myself.
I had hunted for her myself those first two weeks, until Louis and Liam found me in Berlin.
That's when I learned how my father viewed the "embarrassing situation"-as he called it.
The twins told me that he'd ordered me to return home immediately and not waste any more resources on chasing down my "floozy of a wife." That he was furious with me for letting her escape and humiliate the family, and wanted me to cut all ties to her.
The only thing that kept me from disowning him then and there was Liam's and Louis' hasty promise that they would continue the search, and their reminder that I'd be no good to anyone, let alone her, if I disobeyed our father's orders and ended up in America as a result. Or in prison.
Since then, each of my brothers had spent a week here and a few days there traveling around Europe under the guise of business arrangements. Even Marcus came to my aid, without ever being asked.
Currently, I had one of my men searching Southern France, the last known place she'd been. He would have to come home soon, though, to avoid rousing my father's suspicion.