Chapter 1
“Nine men put my wife here. I’m digging nine graves.”
I said it quietly.
That frightened Arthur more than shouting would have.
I returned to Clara’s bedside and placed my hand over hers. Her fingers were cold beneath mine, bruising visible around the wrist where someone had held her. The monitors gave the room a rhythm I hated because our baby no longer had one.
Behind the glass, eight Bennett brothers stood surrounded by Vale men. Arthur was on his feet again, one hand against his cheek, staring through the window at me as if the last five minutes had rewritten every year he thought he understood me.
They had.
Antonio entered the ICU without speaking. He stopped beside me and waited until I looked up.
“There’s something you need to hear.”
“Later.”
“It’s from Clara.”
That changed everything.
He placed her phone on the bed beside my hand. The screen was cracked. One unsent voice recording had been recovered from less than an hour before she arrived at the hospital.
I pressed play.
For several seconds, all I heard was Clara breathing.
Then her voice.
Weak.
Terrified.
“Dominic, if they tell you I fell, don’t believe them.”
My jaw tightened.
“They want the baby. Dad keeps calling it the Bennett future. He says if I won’t bring you to him, he’ll make sure our child never knows your name.”
The recording stopped.
I looked through the glass.
Arthur’s expression changed.
He knew what I had heard.
Antonio’s voice lowered. “There’s more. The recording cut because someone took the phone.”
I stood.
Arthur watched me approach the glass.
I did not open the door.
Not yet.
I only held Clara’s phone where he could see it.
His face lost what little color remained.
Our baby had not simply been caught inside a family argument.
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Arthur Bennett had been planning to claim my child before that child was even born.
And Clara had nearly died refusing to let him.
