Chapter 27
Leda
That night, I jolted awake, my heart pounding in my chest and threatening to burst through.
In my nightmare, my father stood over me, knife in hand. His cruel smile held a promise that he was going to make Lucas watch as he did the unspeakable. I tried to scream, but I had no mouth, and when the knife plunged into my stomach, I couldn’t do anything but watch as he ripped my child out of my belly.
Drawing in a breath, I allowed myself to calm down. No one had found us yet. We were still safe, but for how long?
The sudden flutter in my stomach caught me off guard and I placed my hand on it, waiting with bated breath until I felt it again.
It wasn’t painful at all, nor was it just gas, which meant it was…
Oh.
My gasp must have stirred Lucas because I found myself face to face with him in the dark, his eyes wide. “What is it?” he asked. “Is it the baby?”
Tears sprang to my eyes. “You could say that. I think I felt a kick.”
Lucas’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
I reached for his hand and pressed it where I felt the movement. “There,” I said softly, covering his hand with mine. “I felt it there.”
We waited for a few moments, and suddenly it happened again. “Oh fuck,” Lucas whispered. “I felt it.”
A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye at the wonder on his face. I knew that I had a small person inside me, but this made it real. We had done this together, against all odds.
“Leda, don’t cry,” he whispered, gathering me into his arms.
I pressed my face into his chest and breathed in his scent, willing my emotions to get under control. “I’m sorry.”
He let out a breath. “Don’t be sorry. There’s nothing wrong with crying. I expect we are going to have a lot of tears in the coming months.”
His words caused me to laugh, and I concentrated on his hand rubbing my bare arm instead, marveling at how this wonderful, strong man could be so gentle when he wanted to be. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“Don’t say that,” he said, his chest rumbling with every word. “I have never felt anything like that before.”
“Imagine how I feel,” I joked, raising my head. What I saw shocked me. There were literal tears in Lucas’s eyes, something I had never seen before.
He was gorgeous. “Don’t cry,” I whispered, rubbing my thumb under his eye. Lucas was a man of few tears, and knowing that he was letting down his walls to show them to me was like a gift that I would cherish for the rest of my life.
I also knew that this was uncharted territory for us both.
His hand reached up and cupped my cheek, rubbing the tears from my cheek. “This is everything,” he whispered. “Everything.”
The next day, I didn’t feel like it at all. “You can’t do this!” I told him as Lucas tried to walk away. “This isn’t just your decision to be made!”
Lucas turned toward me, and I wanted to hit him right in his smug mouth. Somewhere between our tender moments last night and this morning, he had decided that everything, and I mean everything, was dangerous for me.
First it had started out that I couldn’t be downstairs without him or Emil plastered to my side.
Then he had refused to give me the cell phone to contact the capos for the meeting scheduled for today, the very phone I had used just the day prior for my conversations.
Now he was telling me that the capos were no longer welcome here at all because he was worried about our safety. I mean, I was worried as well, but how else were we going to plan the war if we couldn’t meet with the ones that were leading the charge?
“I can do whatever I fucking want, Leda,” Lucas was saying, his jaw clenched tightly. “And no one is going to come within a hundred yards of this place any longer.”
“This won’t help!” I argued. “They need to see me!”