Page 111 of Marked By the Devil

Elena didn’t have her mother, and her father had given her to Adrik to avoid paying for his mistakes.

Carina’s parents had been killed near the border so when her brother had arranged for her to marry Maksim, she had no one there at the wedding.

Lev bought Mila as a slave, and she had lost ties with her parents when they sold her to the Cartel for the money they wanted for a quick hit.

And then there’s me.

I never met my father, who was a detective, and my mother, a cop, had been killed in the line of duty.

In the backseat with Viktor as we were driven to the mansion, I frowned at him and considered how they all could afford to be so optimistic about a new generation to usher in.

“Hopefully, all of our children will never have to suffer from not having a solid family and home,” I said.

“All of our children?” he teased lightly. “Are you saying you do have more than one in there?” He put his hand on my belly as he used his other arm to drape it over my shoulders and urge me to lean on him.

“Funny,” I quipped wryly.

He sighed. “It was worth a try,” he said sadly. He kissed the top of my head, keeping his hand over my stomach as he stroked his fingertips back and forth lightly. “And I don’t need to hope that all the children that we’re welcoming into the family will suffer from losses like all you women have.”

I frowned, realizing how one-sided that sounded. “Like all you men have, too. Your grandparents, your mother and aunt, your father soon.”

“Too bad my uncle couldn’t have stayed lost too,” he groused. “But I know they won’t suffer that same fate of having no one. Like you did after your mother died.”

I frowned, praying that my child would never be homeless with no parents or adults in the world.

“We will always be there for them. All of us. No one—not even Gregori—will break our family apart.”

He tipped my chin up so he could plant a kiss on my lips.

Sealing the promise with love.

But as he sat back and watched me with all that love shining in his warm, brown eyes, I wondered what was holding him back from extending that deep bond to me.

I wasn’t going to be family by blood…

Will he ever choose to make me family any other way?

I turned, watching him as he stared at the scenery blurring by on the ride from the hospital to the mansion out in the desert.

Will you ever want to take it further with me?

And see me as your wife?

Because as I studied his lean profile, his long hair down and loose over his shoulders, I knew that I would be completely content to be able to call him my husband. My man.

Once my kidnapper but now the one I couldn’t imagine living without.

He had kidnapped my heart, too, and I wanted to believe that I’d captured his in some sense of the word as well.

Glancing down at me, he smiled and rubbed his hand over my stomach.

“You okay?” he asked, always concerned about me.

I nodded. “Yes, I am.”

It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t a whole truth.

I would be more than okay if I could know without a doubt that he’d choose me to be his family, a family of just the two of us until our baby was born.