Chapter 5

"Yara, you are so incredibly stupid." Delphine steps forward and plants her foot on my face, looking down at me the way you'd look at something you scraped off the ground.

"You think Roman would ever let someone like you carry his child?"

Silas pulls her into him and kisses her like I'm not lying two feet away. When he pulls back, he looks at me and grins.

"You heard everything outside that study, didn't you? Here's what you didn't catch."

"I found some homeless guy off the street and had him sleep with you. So that baby you're carrying? It's his, not Roman's."

Everything stops.

Delphine tips her head back and laughs.

"God, you're filthy inside and out now. A bastard's baby with a whore for a mother. What's the difference between you and the girls working the corner?"

"At least they get paid. You actually paid to carry some stranger's bastard."

"One not enough? Maybe next time I'll give you a whole litter. You'd make a damn good sow."

The blood rushes to my head so fast I can't see straight.

I grab a chunk of broken concrete off the ground and lunge.

Silas's boot connects with my stomach before I get there. I fly back and hit the pavement, the pain so intense I can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything but lie there with the ground pressing into my face.

Then Delphine screams.

Perfectly timed. She staggers backward, hands flying up, eyes stretched wide with terror that didn't exist two seconds ago.

Roman comes sprinting around the corner and his foot lands square on my outstretched hand as he passes, his full weight grinding into my fingers for one long second.

He doesn't look down.

He doesn't stop.

He wraps both arms around Delphine and pulls her in, one hand cradling the back of her head.

"Delphine. Talk to me. Are you hurt? Where does it hurt?"

She burrows into his chest and lets the tears fall.

"Yara, I know you're not over Julian. I know it's hard. But Roman treats you so well. I only wanted to talk, to ask you not to hurt him. I didn't think you'd react like this."

She pulls back just enough to look up at Roman, voice dropping to something small and wounded.

"I'm pregnant, Roman. I was scared to say anything. And she knew, and she still..."

She doesn't finish. She doesn't need to.

Silas steps forward right on cue.

"Boss, I have to speak up for Miss Cross. Your wife came at her out of nowhere. Called the baby a nobody's. Threatened to have you put me down. I tried to stop her. She grabbed a rock. Miss Cross has been nothing but patient."

Roman says nothing.

I know that silence. I've lived inside it for three years. It's the silence that comes right before he decides something, and once he decides, it's already done.

He looks at me once. Just once.

"Yara. Anyone who touches Delphine answers to me. I don't care who they are."

I laugh. It comes out broken.

"Roman. Tell me honestly. Is this baby yours?"

His jaw tightens. Something moves across his face, there and gone in under a second. Then his expression hardens into something colder than anger.

"Is that your way of saying you want it to be Julian's?"

He turns to Silas.

"Take her to the basement. Nothing until I say otherwise."

He doesn't look at me again. He walks away with Delphine tucked against his side, her face buried in his chest, one hand curled into his shirt.

I watch them until they disappear.

Silas crouches down in front of me, turning something slowly between two fingers. Two steel pins, narrow and sharp.

"House rules," he says pleasantly. "One of these in the right spot and you'll never walk straight again. Two, and you spend the rest of your life on the floor."

I open my mouth.

His knee comes down on my foot and he drives the first pin in.

The pain doesn't build. It detonates.

I don't hear myself scream. I don't hear anything at all.

The world goes dark before the second one lands.