Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
The man who had faced down enemies without flinching, who had killed without hesitation, was utterly terrified.
I tried to nod, but another wave of pain crashed over me. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, tasting copper as my teeth break the skin.
Adrian’s face was ashen, his eyes never leaving mine.
I felt something warm and wet between my legs. I shifted, and the movement sent another spike of pain through my abdomen.
I shook my head, refusing to believe what was happening. I didn’t want to look down, I didn’t want to know.
But the warm wetness pooled between my thighs, more and more, spreading.
My body grew cold with dread.
I hiccupped back a sob.
Slowly, trembling, I looked down.
A crimson stain had spread across the white fabric of my nightgown, growing larger with each passing second. The sight of it—so vivid, so wrong—my chest shuddered with a broken sob.
“No,” I cried out, voice breaking. “No, no, no.”
Adrian followed my gaze, and the sound that tore from his throat was inhuman—a raw, guttural cry of anguish that I felt in my very bones.
I stared at the blood, at the evidence of what I was losing.
Our child.
The life we had created together, however unwillingly. The future that had begun to take shape in my mind, in my heart.
“Please,” Adrian begged, though I didn’t know who he was pleading with—me, God or himself. “Please, not this. Not again.”
The pain intensified, and I curled tighter into myself, my arms wrapped around my stomach as if I could keep our baby safe inside me through sheer force of will.
But the blood continued to spread, staining the sheets beneath me.
I felt the life inside me slipping away with each painful contraction, each warm rush of crimson. Our child—the boy I felt growing inside me; the daughter Adrian had already named.
Adrian’s hands gripped mine with desperate strength. His eyes were wild, hopeless, filled with a terror I had never seen in them before, not even when I poisoned him, not even when I held his life in my hands.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, bringing my hands to his lips, holding them there. “It’s going to be okay, Serafina.”
It wasn’t going to be okay.
He was lying again.
The agony was everywhere now, in my body, in my heart, in the space between us that had begun to fill with something that might had been hope.
I closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me, unable to bear the sight of Adrian’s face as he watched our future bleed away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Adrian
Two weeks later
I ran my hand through Serafina’s hair as she slept, the silky strands sliding between my fingers.
Her cheeks were soft beneath my touch, but even in sleep, her face was etched with pain, her brow furrowed, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Her pale skin was streaked with dried tears, making her look even more fragile than she already was.
Two weeks had passed since we lost our child.
Two weeks of watching my wife crumble, piece by piece, until there was almost nothing left of the fierce woman who had once looked at me with such defiance.
The miscarriage had carved a hole in both of us, but I couldn’t focus on my own pain. I didn’t have the time to. Not when Serafina’s grief was so vast, so consuming.
She blamed herself. That was the worst part.
Night after night, she sobbed against my chest, repeating the same words like a broken prayer, “I should have known. I had felt something was wrong, but I ignored it. The baby was inside me. I should have known something was wrong.”
Her words tore at me every time she repeated them. There was nothing I could say to ease her guilt, nothing that would bring back what we had lost.
I held her, rocked her, whispered meaningless platitudes that did nothing to ease her pain. And mine. “It wasn’t your fault,” I told her, over and over, but I didn’t think she even heard the words.
Tonight, sleep eluded me once again.
The weight of our loss pressed down on my chest, making it difficult to breathe, the darkness threatening to swallow me whole, suffocating and heavy with memories I couldn’t escape.
I needed something—anything—to numb the pain, even if just for a moment.
I needed a fucking drink. Something strong enough to burn away the images that haunted me, Serafina’s face as she realized what was happening, the blood staining our sheets, the doctor’s sympathetic eyes as she confirmed what we already knew.
I slipped from the bed, careful not to wake Serafina. She needed her rest, even if it was a restless slumber. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and my black shirt before silently padding down the stairs.
The house was eerily silent, quieter than most days.
The kitchen was dark as I moved toward the cabinet where I kept the whiskey, but something else caught my eye, making me pause in my tracks.