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Elena squeezed my hand. “He seems extremely certain about you. And I’m not saying that because he was the opposite of steady before. I’ve seen how he is around you. We all have.”

Mila and Carina nodded.

“But…” I licked my lips. “I can only begin to contemplate what this means for our future.”

“It means you have a baby coming,” Carina said wryly.

“Stop,” Elena scolded of her teasing. “Louisa, it means that your future will be full of love. Love for this baby. Love from all of us for this baby. Every one of us in this big family.”

I winced. “But how can that really be true? With all the danger? The threats…?”

Carina still rubbed my arm opposite from where she side-hugged me.

Elena smiled calmly, taking both of my hands now. “Love strengthens us all. And nothing, no danger or threat, not even Gregori, can stand in the way.”

I blinked, touched by her strong yet sweet affirmations. This time, I nodded slowly in full agreement.

She had to be right. Because all that I could feel for Nikolai, all that I would feel for this new baby as well as for my son, was love. Pure, unbreakable love.

I just had to hold out the hope that Nikolai would feel the same.

33

NIKOLAI

Itwisted my hands on the steering wheel, tightening my grip as I sped back home. With every mile that I covered through the early hours of the morning, I came closer to her. To the innocent woman I would never fail to protect and provide for.

Owen Bilsen didn’t actually represent much of a direct threat to her life anymore. He couldn’t harass her at Pickering Inc. Security. He couldn’t work as a partner with Rico Johnson or anyone else who wanted to double-cross and work for Gregori.

Owen Bilsen wasn’t going to do anything—to anyone—ever again.

He was dead. Missing his tongue, missing his dick, missing his hands, and missing so much blood that the dirt would forever be stained with it. It could seep into the earth’s crust to disappear.

I blinked, willing myself to ignore the dryness in my eyes.

It had taken me five and a half hours to drive north to intercept him. Another hour of chasing him through the city. Probably another couple of hours to drive him back out into the desolate desert.

And then I showed him what he deserved for ever targeting Louisa.

I recorded it all, making sure that the video would feed into the database secured at the mansion. We kept all of our receipts, even the grisly ones like that video.

He buckled under the pressure of bleeding out almost instantly, but then he got belligerent. Telling me that he had “important friends”, ones who’d come to retaliate after word got out that I was bothering him.

“You think I’m bothering you?” I asked, tapping the knife against my thigh. “My bad.” I sliced his hand off, relishing the sounds of his screams of agony. “I’m questioning you. There’s a difference. I guess I should’ve been clearer.”

I had his attention after that, and once I made him bleed and squeal some more, he really got desperate. He sang, telling me everything I needed to know. Everything I could’ve wanted to know.

Who he dealt with. Where he thought Rico Johnson could be. If he’d seen Gregori himself—he hadn’t.

I pulled every detail out of him that could pertain to Gregori and how Rico Johnson had dared to double-cross us.

But it wasn’t until the end that I lost any shred of humanity.

He admitted to doctoring pictures of Louisa. He cried as he confessed to using them to get off.

That was when I surrendered to the dark need to destroy him and ensure that the last seconds of his existence on this planet were full of the utmost misery a human being could manage to endure.

Then I drove home.