I just didn’t remember giving her my name. “Leda?” I called out. “Are you here?”
The surroundings were familiar, but then again, they weren’t, the chill in the air giving me pause.
And then the smell hit me. The faint, metallic smell of blood.
I knew that smell far too well. “Leda?” I called out again, terror rising in my throat. “Are you here?”
No answer.
My feet were moving before I could register the action, and I ran down the darkened hall, toward the only pinpoint of light that I could see. I recognized the room immediately, my bedroom in the penthouse, but it wasn’t the room that had me stumbling into the doorway.
It was the sight on the bed. Leda was there, her black hair spread out over the white silk sheets. She was dressed in a black nightgown that was pushed up past her stomach, her exposed skin covered in blood. A scream built in my throat as I approached the bed, unable to tear my eyes away from the scene that had just ripped my fucking heart out.
Leda was dead, her sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling, her face contorted in anguish.
My eyes flickered down her body, and I fell to my knees, my hand shaking as I reached out to the bundle that was nestled next to her.
“No!” I cried out, realizing that it was our child. It wasn’t hard to see that this wasn’t a normal delivery, and someone had attempted to cut the baby out of her stomach.
It was still attached.
Tears fell unchecked as I scooped up the small bundle, seeing that it was a boy.
My son.
I placed the baby back against her and moved up to her face, cupping her cheek with my hand. Her skin was cold against my palm, and I felt myself start to spiral downward.
“You were everything,” I whispered, feeling broken inside. “Everything.”
I jerked awake, my heart hammering in my chest, and it took a few minutes for me to get my bearings. We weren’t in the penthouse, and Leda was sleeping soundly next to me.
I couldn’t help but glance over at her, counting each of her breaths with my own before sliding out of bed and stalking into the bathroom.
It had been a dream, a nightmare at that. Leda was fine. Our child was fine.
A dream.
My hands shook as I turned on the faucet, letting the water run in the sink. My worries were getting the best of me, but that wasn’t the only thing that had brought about the nightmare. In reality, that nightmare wasn’t mine, but that of the man who had given me the title. Cosimo had been married early on in his don career to his childhood sweetheart. The only reason I had even known about it was because he’d gotten fucking drunk one night and told me the entire story, tears running down his face. She had been a victim of a brutal turf war in his early days, and his enemy had cut out their unborn child, a boy at that, leaving Cosimo to find the body.
It had broken him, much like that nightmare had me.
I had to protect my future. I had to ensure that no harm came to Leda as we sought to end this war with her father.
Drawing in a shaky breath, I washed the sweat off my face, glaring at myself in the mirror. It was time for me to step up my game, but it was hard to do so when everyone around us was either dying or missing.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t have a choice but to use what I had to protect my future.