EMMA
What the fuck?
I don’t know what I’m supposed to think now. My heart is fucking shattered into a million pieces. Tears are absolutely pouring down my face.
How could Owen do this to me?
Seriously?
What the hell is wrong with that man?
Why did I put any trust in him? I can’t believe I was fooled. I should have known that my judgment was shitty, but to have it thrown in my face in such a violent way is killer.
I liked Owen.
I might have even felt more than that for him.
But now all of that is gone.
I thought my plan was solid. I thought that telling my father about Rickie and Vinnie’s plan would help us. I even thought I might be able to reveal my own little secret.
I’ve been going over it in my head.
Again and again.
Wondering how to let everyone know that I’m pregnant, to see how they would all react.
But now none of that will ever happen because Owen has gone.
Vanished.
He left me at the gas station. I can’t believe it. I had headed inside to find out where he went because he was in there for ages, just to see the store empty. It crushed me.
I kinda lost my shit a bit.
Truth be told, I thought someone had taken him. I thought he’d been ambushed again.
That is until the store attendant told me he left out the back in a hurry.
He left to get away from me.
Yes, he’s left me with the car, so I have a way out of here, but it isn’t enough.
He abandoned me, and I know that for sure because even after being told that he’d gone, I spent a good half an hour looking for him.
But I’m never going to find him, am I? Because he’s gone.
I don’t know if that’s because of my father, or because of me. I am a lot younger than him, he does have a lot more life experience than me, so maybe I fell too deep for a man who couldn’t wait to get away from me and was just waiting for a way for me to be safe.
It’s humiliating.
I’m ice cold.
I can’t stomach this.
And now I have to face my father, to tell him what’s going on. Thank God he’s in the country so I can try and keep my family safe. Myself too.
If I can get out of this dumb ass arranged marriage, then maybe I can reconnect with my family properly again.
I have missed them.
Being kidnapped has given me a lot of time to think, a lot of time to reevaluate everything. With a bit of luck, I can recuperate everything that I’ve been missing.
After all, I’m going to need them now more than ever.
Because I’m alone.
We are alone.
Me and my unborn baby.
Shit, that is going to be the biggest struggle I’ve ever had to face in my life…
The drive goes faster than I’m expecting. It isn’t long before I’m at the family home in the city.
I pause for a few moments, just sitting in the car, trying to gather myself up.
At least… that’s the plan until one of my father’s guards bangs on my car window.
“Open up,” he demands. “Who is it?” My heart sinks.
I am not ready for this just yet.
“It’s me,” I cry out as I open the window. “It’s Emma.”
I guess my words are lost on the wind, though, because my door swings open and the man roughly grabs my arm, dragging me out.
I don’t have enough fight in me.
Losing Owen like that, having him run away from me, it’s killer. My heart really fucking hurts.
“Who did you say you were?”
“Emma, it’s Emma!” I cry out. “Isn’t my father in the country looking for me? God damn it, I’ve been missing for ages. I don’t think my dad will want to see me hurt…” The hands fall off me.
The guy steps back.
“Shit, Emma, it is you. You look different.” “Well, so would you if you’d been kidnapped.” I narrow my eyes at him.
What an asshole.
There’s no reason for anyone to be so fucking rough.
“I’ll get your father now. I’m sure he’ll be so happy to see you.”
“Not so happy when I tell him how you treated me.”
I won’t. I don’t need to be the cause of any more violence, but it’s good for this idiot to rethink the way that he treats people in the future.
I follow him inside, all the way to my father’s office.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, in this place, but it also feels a little like home.
It’s been forever since I’ve wanted to be around my family. But now I need them.
“Dad?” I cry out as I knock on the door. “It’s me.”
“Emma?”
He rushes over the door and swings it open, which is very unusual.
Dorian is a man who usually has everything done for him.
“Fuck sake, Emma, finally you’re home.” He embraces me.
It’s a very weird feeling.
“Where the fuck have you been? What happened? Shit, word on the street has been hard to follow. There have been so many rumors.” God I’m tired.
Exhausted actually.
I don’t know if I can do this with Dad right now.
“Yeah, I was kidnapped. I don’t know what you heard…”
“Who by? The Flynns? The Genoveses?”
I shake my head. “No, nothing to do with your world, Dad. This was just a guy from the clinic. Someone with mental issues who grew a little too obsessed with me.”
Why am I protecting Owen after he abandoned me?
Who knows, but I am.
“Wait, so not someone affiliated?” Dad seems stunned by this. “Because I have had people out there infiltrating all the families to try and find out who had you.”
“Just bad luck, I guess.” I smile thinly.
“I have heard something though. I have a recording. Anonymous source.” I hand over the phone that Owen had left in the car.
I had looked through it when I realized that he had left me. He had cleared everything on it except the recording. There’s no way to track him down. No information, calls…nothing.
“Whose phone is this? Where did you get it?”
I shrug. “The person handed it to me on the street and left quickly. They were wearing a hood or something. Just listen.” I don’t think my father believes me, but he listens to the conversation between Rickie and Hudson. His face darkens when he hears the way my so called husband to be speaks about me.
Good.
I need him to understand that I will not commit to a life with him.
Rickie doesn’t give a shit about me anyway.
He just wants to knock me up to strengthen his standing in Ireland.
“I also want you to know that someone called Vinnie Lucchese wanted to kidnap me. To sell me. For some debt.”
Now Dad looks really fucking mad.
“Lucchese? Really? That fucking piece of shit.” He bangs his fist down hard on the desk. “I will kill him.”
He mutters pretty much under his breath, but I pick up a few choice words.
He’s fuming and someone is going to pay.
I don’t care who, as long as it isn’t Owen.
“Go to your room, Emma,” he eventually snaps. “I need you cleaned up and ready. Get rested so we can put on a united front for the rest of the world. Now that you’re back, I need the other Families to see us strong as ever.”
I resist the urge to sigh.
That isn’t what I came for.
But where else am I going to go?
“Yeah, okay. Well I guess I will see you soon then.”
“I’ll call you when I need you, Emma.”
Because of his reaction, I don’t have the strength to see anyone else in the family.
Dad has disappointed me.
I don’t want my brothers to do the same thing.
So I do head up the stairs, with something in mind. Something I haven’t managed to tackle until now, but I suppose I should do this sooner rather than later.
I still haven’t had the time to take those other pregnancy tests yet.
It’ll be even harder now with Owen out of the picture.
But I suppose I need to know.
I have my own bathroom in this house, which means I can do this in private, but that doesn’t make it any less unnerving as I prepare myself for what’s next.
“It might just be stress,” I try to tell myself as I pull out the pregnancy test to take it, trying to calm myself down just a little. “You have just been kidnapped after all.”
But there’s just a small part of me that already knows which way this is going to go. I’ve always been able to rely on my cycle, it’s never let me down before.
I don’t think this is going to be good news.
With a deep breath, before I collapse and sleep for days, I pee on the stick. It feels like an out of body experience, like none of this is really happening, but in a bad way.
Two lines.
Positive.
Holy fuck.
I take another.
And another.
There’s no way they are all false positives.
I’m having a baby with a man who’s vanished, in a world where everyone is fighting over me, wanting to treat me like a fucking commodity. What the hell do I do now?
I leave the bathroom and sag onto my bed. I close my eyes, but I don’t even get respite. Instead, all I see is horrible images of Owen covered in blood somewhere. Dead. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
I don’t want him to die.
I want him back here in my arms.
Especially now.
“Emma, did you know that…”
Ice cold blood trickles down my spine as my father bursts into my room, uninvited and without even bothering to knock.
I’ve been away from him for so long that I’ve forgotten his bad habits, especially this one.
Privacy is not a thing around that man.
He stares at me, then at the bunch of pregnancy tests in my hand.
The color drains from his cheeks as he clicks onto what’s happening here.
“Emma, are you…?”
He can’t even finish his sentence.
I don’t really need him to.
“Okay, well now I need you to tell me everything that happened while you were kidnapped. Or I will kill every single man that walks the streets of New York.”
Oh God, how the fuck am I supposed to keep Owen alive now?
I’m going to have to try.
Everything is relying on me right now.