“Are you okay?” Mia asks, her big blue eyes swimming with concern.
All eyes shift to me and I wince. Roman moves his foot, but now he kicks me to let me know he doesn’t like being told what to do. I’m reluctant and I despise the nerves fluttering around in my gut, but given I’ve been in the dungeon, it’s been a long time since Mateo has interacted with the baby. I know he’s in my stomach, so it isn’t really interacting, but the last time his hand rested upon my belly to feel Roman moving was the night I tried to feed him ice cream and convince him not to make Mia get an abortion she didn’t want.
He’s already looking at me so when my gaze shifts his way, I meet his eyes. A thin layer of ice barely covers the hatred he feels for me. It’s almost enough to knock the wind out of me. It should definitely be enough to stop the words from spilling out of my mouth, but somehow it doesn’t.
“He’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”
As emotionally removed as a complete stranger, he replies simply, “No.”
Torn between anger and embarrassment, I nod my head and ease back from the table.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mateo asks.
“I’m eight million months pregnant; I have to pee.”
He nods curtly. “Take someone with you.” I glance across the table at Mia but before she can even open her mouth, Mateo says, “Nope.”
Rafe keeps an eye on the interaction. Now he tosses his own napkin on the table. “I’ll take her.”
I head for the wide arch leading out into the hall and Rafe follows a couple steps behind me. Once we have the imaginary privacy of the camera-monitored hallway, Rafe falls into step beside me.
I glance over at him, shaking my head. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this.”
“I know,” he says, easily enough. “People are gonna start talking.”
I crack a faint smile, keeping my eyes ahead of me. “How have you been?”
“Not too bad. Better than you, from the sound of things. Seems like you’ve fallen down a few rungs on the social ladder since we danced at the wedding. What did you do to earn a dungeon sentencing?”
“Shot a man in Reno,” I offer back.
“Just to watch him die?”
“Is there any other reason to shoot a man in Reno, Rafe? Come on; get your head out of your ass.”
He chuckles lightly, the sound washing over me. God, I miss human interaction. Goddamn Mateo, locking me up and making me all…
I almost think ‘vulnerable,’ then I remember who I’m walking down the hall with. I know Rafe’s game. He hands out those sexy smiles like candy and lulls you in with his easygoing sense of humor. He turns on the illusion of harmlessness like he has a light switch—then while you’re distracted, unwrapping your candy in the safe haven of his non-threatening presence, the sneaky bastard tries to crack your soul open.
Not today, buddy.
Though, I have to admit, I don’t have much to lose at this point. Mateo is almost definitely going to kill me. He hasn’t said a kind word to me in two weeks. He bordered on hostile every time he so much as glanced in my direction at dinner.
Roman kicks me again and my hand automatically goes to my stomach. Nerves boil in my gut, but Mateo’s coldness when I asked if he wanted to feel Roman move has only added to my fear about him not letting me have even a baby monitor in the dungeon to call for help. I told him—and myself—that as long as he’s wanted an heir, he isn’t going to risk this one just because he hates me.
But what if I’m wrong? Mateo has Mia. Granted, I don’t think he wants Mia’s baby to know Vince is his father, and in the event she has a boy, I’m certain he doesn’t want Vince’s son running his family, but I’m worried at the level of his coldness toward me. Mateo is generally pretty even-tempered. He’s an asshole, but a logical, even-tempered asshole. Losing Roman would make his life harder.
But he knows it would kill me. What if he hates me that much? He’s already taken my other kids from me all but an hour a week. Lily is old enough to understand what’s going on, but Rosalie just thinks I’m busy and that’s why Mateo is on primary bedtime story duty. She loves Mia like a mother, so it doesn’t bother her that Mia comes to play with her in my place.
He’s set this all up right from the beginning to ensure he could get rid of me more easily than he got rid of Beth. I never saw it before, but I see it now. He didn’t want another Isabella situation, so he gave my kids two moms and made sure one of them was the one he loved more than life itself—the one he would never kill, even if she stood over him with a gun aimed at his chest.