He was finally fucking taking over.
Lorenzo Maroni was dead.
Amara smiled, pride filling her at the man she loved, knowing his years of work and strategy had brought him to the top. He finally had the reigns to the kingdom.
“Shouldn’t you tell him, Mumu?” her mother asked her, as she always did, hoping Amara would simply tell Dante she was expecting their baby, and they would live happily ever after.
‘I can’t be with you, for your safety, until my father is dead’.
Things were more complicated than that. She loved Dante but his lack of a warning to her had cut her deep. Through the years, she’d always felt they were a team. He’d confided secrets in her – about his mother and his father’s possible kidnapping and marital rape of her, about his brother and where he’d hidden him and how it hurt not being able to see him, about Tristan and his hatred for Morana coming from his murder of his father, about what he was doing. Though Amara had never been directly involved in the things he did over the years, she had been in the loop – he had come to her when troubled, shared things about the people in their world, asked for her advice in situations that had him conflicted. She had always been a part of his quest.
It had led her to believe they could play everyone else but they couldn’t play each other. Almost seven years she spent keeping them in the shadows, waiting months for minutes with him, living her life in the meantime, not for him to go die without giving her any warning. No, she deserved better than that. Love be damned, she deserved better than that. She had trusted him with her life and her heart, and though she still trusted him with her life, her heart was hurting.
He was an asshole, and she probably would have forgiven him once he apologized, had she not been pregnant. The prospect of becoming a mother had every protective instinct inside her raring to the surface. Her child, their child, deserved a father who wasn’t a guest. More importantly, he or she deserved not to be born in that world without protection. Just being Dante Maroni’s child would put the baby in danger. No. She’d raise her baby with all the love her mother had raised her with, and all the protection she could provide in their anonymity.
“There’s no point, Ma,” she told her mother. “I have been his secret for so long, he maybe forgot what bringing me to light would do. Especially now, with him taking over, he’ll need to marry someone with power, who can stabilize the Outfit. Bringing me into the picture will only make him look weak. And I can’t be his secret anymore, Ma. And I won’t let my child be. So, it’s better if he never knows about it.”
“I understand, baby. I did the same for you. But Dante is different. I still think you should tell him, Amara,” her mother tried to convince her, using her given name to sound firm. Amara knew the tactic well. “He loves you. And with Mr. Maroni gone, he could give you and my grandchild what you need.”
Amara was tempted, so, so tempted.
“Just promise me you’ll think about it,” her mother beseeched her. “He… he’s changed since he’s come back, Mumu. He’s darker. I can’t explain it. I’m worried about him.”
Her
heart started to pound, her hand gripping the phone tight as the need to find him, comfort him, let him share his demons with her, washed over her. She tamped it down.
“I promise I’ll consider it,” Amara told her mother. They chat for a few minutes about other things, before Amara cut the call and stared at Lulu eating.
“You think I should tell him too, don’t you?”
Lulu looked at her, then kept eating.
“Of course you do. You love him, you little traitor.”
Nom nom nom.
“But he really behaved like a dick, you know.”
Cronch.
“You and I and the baby are going to be happy here, Lulu.”
A doubtful look.
“Don’t give me that face. I’m not entirely mad at him. This is for the best.”
Lulu ignored her.
Amara sighed and started preparing her dinner.
He settled between her legs. God, she loved when he did that. She writhed against him, feeling his shoulders spread her thighs open, his mouth descending on her mound.
He spread soft kisses on her waxed skin, his scruff rasping against her sensitive flesh.
Wait, why did he have a scruff?
“I’m so fucking pissed at you, dirty girl,” he growled, still kissing her mound, not going where she needed his lips.