“Ah fuck, Monroe,” I breathed, sitting back as the realization of who her stalker was hit me with the force of a wrecking ball. “Is he the father of your baby?” I touched my own belly. “It is just one, right? Not twins like me?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I haven’t had a scan yet. I-I only did a home pregnancy test a week ago and told Mom and Dad once I knew I was pregnant. I was waiting…”
“For what?” I whisper-shouted. “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 the doctor as soon as I can,” she promised. “I just have to tell G first.”
“So, tell him already!” I yelled at her.
“I don’t know how!” she yelled back.
“What do you mean, you don’t know how?” I demanded, lowering my voice. “You don’t have his number?”
“I don’t have anything,” she admitted, tears spilling over her lashes. “I woke up in Italy one morning, and he was gone. No note, nothing. I waited for him to come back for days, and he… He never did. We’d had a huge argument the night before, and…” Her cheeks filled with pink, and she looked away. “And when I woke up the next morning, he was gone.”
“The sonofabitch just abandoned you?” I gritted out.
“No,” she denied, her head shaking adamantly. “He wouldn’t do that to me. I know him. He… He…” But her face began to crumble. “I thought he loved me like I love him,” she whispered.
I stood carefully so my blood pressure wouldn’t give me a problem, then sat down beside her. Pulling her head to my chest, I hugged her tightly, rubbing her back as she sobbed into my neck. “Fuck him,” I growled close to her ear. “You don’t need him anyway. We’ll help you through this, Mon. Don’t worry about anything.”
It took me a few minutes to get the tears to stop flowing, and then I fed us both the scones. Using a fork, I would feed her a bite and then take one for myself. She sat with her head on my chest, letting me baby her until the last crumb disappeared.
Our drinks were cold by the time we were done, so I went and got us new drinks. Coffee was out, so I ordered us smoothies. Once I’d returned to our table, Monroe had gone quiet again, so I distracted her with all the details of the wedding I knew so far.
I’d never been the type of girl who dreamed about a wedding before. I honestly didn’t care what everything looked like and who attended. All I really worried about was not looking fat in my wedding dress, Dad walking me down the aisle, and Lyric waiting for me with the minister. Everything else was immaterial to me.
“Do you think I’m crazy for marrying a guy I don’t even really know?” I asked as we walked out to our vehicles a while later. “River said I was insane for agreeing to marry Lyric so soon.”
She gave me a strange look as she paused between the SUV and her Jetta. “Do you love him?”
“More than I ever thought it was possible to love someone,” I confessed. “It’s kind of scary loving someone this much. Letting him have all this power over my happiness and my heart.”
“Believe me, I know what you mean.” She bit her lip, then shook her head. “No, Mil. I don’t think you’re crazy at all. As long as you’re happy, who cares what other people think?”
I threw my arms around her and hugged her tightly. “I love you so much, Mon. You know that, right?”
She wrapped her arms around me. “I love you too.”
We stood there just holding each other for the longest time, neither of us even trying to move away from the other. I knew she was hurting, and it made my heart ache for her. All I wanted was to fix this for her, mend her broken heart—and maybe take Dad’s knife to G’s balls. That asshole was why my sister was feeling like this, and I wanted him to hurt just as badly as she was.
The sound of squealing tires had us both snapping our heads around. A nondescript black sedan screamed to a stop at the back of the SUV. Two men in jeans and black hoodies jumped out, and instinctively, I moved in front of Monroe protectively.
The one who’d been in the driver’s seat said something, but I didn’t understand a single word of it. It wasn’t until the other guy spoke that I realized they were both speaking Italian. This time of day, everyone was either at work or in class. It was why Monroe and I had decided to meet so late in the afternoon, to avoid people listening in on our conversation. But it meant there was no one in the parking lot or even driving by to help us if we needed it.
“Where are you, Gian?” I heard Monroe whisper, her fingers clenching in the back of my shirt. “I need you.”
“Mon, are these friends of yours?” I hissed over my shoulder, keeping my gaze on the two men approaching us with purpose.
“No,” she whispered back. “I’ve never seen these two before. But…”
“But?” I muttered, noticing the guns the two men were packing. The driver pulled his and aimed it right at my stomach. I felt the blood drain from my face.
Did this guy know I was pregnant?
Did he know Monroe was?
Ah fuck. Had they been watching us?
The other guy said something to the driver, and Monroe sucked in a deep breath.
“What?” I demanded. “What did he say?”
“I think he said our babies would get a good price on the market, so they need to try not to hurt us too badly.”
How she knew Italian, I had no idea, but I was glad she could understand them. Carefully, I pulled my phone from my back pocket and started to open my contacts. But seeing I was calling for help, the driver moved faster than he had before and snatched my phone out of my hands before I could hit connect on Lyric’s name.
As he pressed the end of his gun harder against my abdomen, his friend came around behind us. Monroe’s gasp told me she now had a gun pressed against her somewhere too. My instinct was to punch this asshole in the face. He couldn’t possibly have the balls to actually pull that trigger.
But I had more than myself to worry about. Not only was my sister in danger, but both of us were pregnant, and our babies were the most at risk in this situation. Clenching my eyes closed, I prayed for this to be just a bad dream, or for patience if it wasn’t so I didn’t do something stupid and get us both killed.
When I lifted my lashes, the guy in front of me was still there, his gun pressed even harder into my flesh. But his eyes, they were on Monroe, as if he found her the most curious thing he’d ever set eyes on.
He said something that had my sister’s fingers biting into my flesh through my shirt.
“What did he say?” I whispered to her over my shoulder, keeping my eyes locked on him.
“He wants to know if my pussy is made of gold if Gian is willing to die for me,” she gritted out, fear lacing every word. “He…He’s going to rape me, Mila. Oh God, Gian, where are you?”
“Come,” the other guy said in thickly accented English. “No trouble. We not hurt you.”
“Bullshit,” I snarled at him.
“Get in,” he repeated. “Or I shoot you and take Fontana’s woman anyway.”
“Mil, don’t struggle,” Monroe pleaded. “The babies…”
“I know, damn it,” I snapped. “Fine. But tell your boy to back up so I can move.”
He spoke rapidly to the driver, and he took a half step back, but he barely moved his gun from my gut. I’d seen the damage a bullet to the gut had done to Tavia, and I knew this close, neither the babies nor I would survive being shot.
Reaching behind me, I locked my fingers in the belt loops of Monroe’s jeans and held on tight as I started walking toward the sedan. The driver opened the back door and pushed me inside. Monroe followed, along with the other guy. I tried the handle of the other door, but of course, the child-safety locks were already engaged.
Fuck.
“You listen,” the guy beside Monroe repeated. “We no hurt you.”
Monroe grasped my hand, clinging to it as she huddled away from him as much as she could in the cramped space of the back seat. The driver got in and tore out of the parking lot. But as he got on the road, he settled into a natural speed, not drawing anyone’s attention.
As he drove out of town, heading north once he got on the interstate, I felt like every mile he put between us and Creswell Springs only decreased our chances of ever seeing those we loved ever again.
“I’m cramping,” Monroe whispered an hour into the drive north.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Cramping,” she repeated, her chin trembling. “I think…I think it’s the baby.”
“Mon,” I gasped, clutching at her hand. “How bad is it?”
“It’s getting worse. And I think…” She glanced down at her lap as tears spilled over her lashes. “I think I’m bleeding.”
“Bleeding?” the guy beside her repeated in his heavily accented English, his brow furrowed as if he didn’t know the meaning of the word. “You are hurt?”