The large man considered her for a long moment. “You have strength, Amara. I can see that. And the strong don’t have bleeding wounds; they have scars that heal.”
Yeah, she shared that with him apparently.
Giving her a sharp nod, his dark hair falling on his face, his black eye patch stark against his scar, Alpha walked out, leaving her standing there with her thoughts.
Amara pat down her stomach, shaking her head.
“Your Daddy is a bastard,” she told the baby, chuckling at herself. “But we still love him, don’t we?”
Yeah, she was doomed, alright.
Los Fortis was an incredible city. Built in the 50s with a rubber and mineral industry boom, it was located close enough to the Amazon to have an incredible view of endless green vistas right outside the city limits. With a population of over five million people, the city was a hub for everything. Most importantly, though crime existed, she couldn’t find any visible links to the underworld and that was a relief.
Her child was her priority now.
Amara had rented the office five minutes away from where she’d bought a tiny house but big enough for two people, with a beautiful garden that she was excited to get into. While gardening had never been something she’d allowed herself to explore, it had always fascinated her – the art of growing and nurturing life.
Her neighborhood was one of the reasons the property had been on the pricey end – it was the safest area in the entire city. There were rows of houses like hers, with families and the elderly, and it was a gated community with guards and cameras. She liked that. She wanted that extra blanket of security.
She walked to her house, a cute little thing painted a bright yellow on the outside and white on the inside, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder, the silk scarf around her neck fluttering in the wind. A thin sheen of sweat covered her body from the mild humidity, and she looked around at the other houses, nodding at one of her neighbors who had been super friendly to her when she moved it a few weeks ago.
The balls of her feet aching from the short walk in her two-inch heels, the skin around the scars on her feet tingling, Amara unlocked her door and opened it.
“Lulu,” she called out, dropping her keys on the side table and kicking her heels to the side, locking the door behind her. “I’m home.”
A flash of cream fur dashed at her, twining around her legs, and Amara bent to pick her up in her arms.
Lulu’s big green eyes watched her as she let out an enthusiastic ‘meow’.
Amara smiled. “I’m happy to see you too. Did you miss me, huh?” she asked, walking towards the kitchen.
‘Meow’ she got in response. Her heart softened.
Lulu had been Amara’s one true companion through all her years in exile, and Amara was grateful for her, especially because she was an incredibly affectionate cat. Of course, she had her moments where she swished her tail and walked off to do whatever cats did, but she loved being around Amara. Her therapist in Shadow Port had told her how much pets could help with anxiety and she believed that. She’d lost the count of how many times she’d been on the verge of an attack when Lulu had just jumped on her and started her purring, the vibration from her warm, furry body enough to bring her back to the moment.
It had been Lulu who had sensed Amara’s pregnancy before she had looked for signs, Lulu who had butted her head against her stomach and started licking at it when she’d never done it before.
Squeezing her fur baby, she let her go and got herself a glass of water, pulling out her old-school burner phone from her loose pant pocket. While she usually disliked wearing pants, loose pants had become her work uniform over the years. They helped her dissociate enough from herself that she could focus on her clients.
Dialing her mother’s number, she put the phone to her ear, heard it ring five times before her mother picked it up.
“Hi, Ma,” she spoke softly on the phone, her heart aching to meet her again. She didn’t know how, but someday, she’d get her mother to Los Fortis and take care of her.
“Mumu,” her mother’s voice came through the line, the smile in her voice filling Amara with warmth. “How are you? Have you settled in?”
“Yes, Ma,” Amara said, opening a can of tuna and putting it in Lulu’s bowl. “The house is set, and it’s so nice here. I can’t wait for you to come.”
“Me too,” her mother sighed. “It’s too soon right now. In a few months, it’ll be more natural.”
Amara agreed.
“Have you seen a doctor yet?”
“No, I will this week,” Amara sat down on the dining table chair. The kitchen didn’t have an island but it was spacious and opened into the back garden, which she loved. Continuing the conversation, she told her mother, “I have an appointment with a therapist Dr. Neiman referred for me on Wednesday. And I meet the gynecologist on Friday.”
“Good, good,” her mother said, the sound of pots coming from behind her. “Dante is alive.”
Big surprise there.
“I told you your precious boy was too smart to die,” Amara had told her mother that countless times. “He played everyone.”
“Yes,” her mother’s voice lowered. “Mr. Maroni is dead though.”
That stopped Amara.
“Really dead?” she asked, her heart pounding.
“Really dead,” her mother confirmed. “Dante is getting things organized for his takeover.”
He was taking over.
He was finally fucking taking over.
Lorenzo Maroni was dead.
Amara smiled, pride filling her at the man she loved, knowing his years of work and strategy had brought him to the top. He finally had the reigns to the kingdom.
“Shouldn’t you tell him, Mumu?” her mother asked her, as she always did, hoping Amara would simply tell Dante she was expecting their baby, and they would live happily ever after.
‘I can’t be with you, for your safety, until my father is dead’.
Things were more complicated than that. She loved Dante but his lack of a warning to her had cut her deep. Through the years, she’d always felt they were a team. He’d confided secrets in her – about his mother and his father’s possible kidnapping and marital rape of her, about his brother and where he’d hidden him and how it hurt not being able to see him, about Tristan and his hatred for Morana coming from his murder of his father, about what he was doing. Though Amara had never been directly involved in the things he did over the years, she had been in the loop – he had come to her when troubled, shared things about the people in their world, asked for her advice in situations that had him conflicted. She had always been a part of his quest.
It had led her to believe they could play everyone else but they couldn’t play each other. Almost seven years she spent keeping them in the shadows, waiting months for minutes with him, living her life in the meantime, not for him to go die without giving her any warning. No, she deserved better than that. Love be damned, she deserved better than that. She had trusted him with her life and her heart, and though she still trusted him with her life, her heart was hurting.
He was an asshole, and she probably would have forgiven him once he apologized, had she not been pregnant. The prospect of becoming a mother had every protective instinct inside her raring to the surface. Her child, their child, deserved a father who wasn’t a guest. More importantly, he or she deserved not to be born in that world without protection. Just being Dante Maroni’s child would put the baby in danger. No. She’d raise her baby with all the love her mother had raised her with, and all the protection she could provide in their anonymity.