“He never talks about his family,” Leo comments with concern.
“No, he doesn’t. He never talks about anything that could conjure up emotions about them, but that night he couldn’t stop. He was to the point of tears when he talked about his lack of a true heir to his empire. I knew all these thoughts were coming from his drunken stupor, and when I called to check on him the next day, he didn’t even remember the conversation we had the night before.” Jack pauses a moment and looks around the room uncomfortably. “I didn’t think much of it again until this morning when Mark gave me a prescription drug request. There’s something on it that concerns me.”
My heart is about ready to beat out of my chest. Leo sees my discomfort and grasps my hand under the table. I hold on to him for dear life.
Jack’s voice is barely audible now. “He asked me to procure a certain pill that can be used as a date rape drug, completely odorless and tasteless.” Jack’s gaze turns to me, and I immediately want to run from this conversation. “I think he intends to impregnate you without your knowledge and make you think that you and Leo are having a child when indeed it is Mark’s baby growing within your belly.”
Leo and I look at each other as my face blanches. He’s next to me in an instant, wrapping his arms around me as my body starts to shake.
I was convinced we were past all of this. I thought I had earned Mark’s respect.
This was never just about ransom. This was never just about getting me to choose Leo and Mark’s crew over my own parents. Mark’s end game was to use me in this way, to exact the ultimate revenge on my dad and my family while fixing the problem of his lack of children. He had me trusting him despite everything he did to me at the prison, and in the end he planned to take this one last thing from me.
A baby. Not just any baby. Mark’s offspring.
I’m hyperventilating now. I think I’m going to be sick.
“Breathe, Morgan. Breathe through it. I’ll keep you safe,” Leo whispers in my ear while running his hands over my back soothingly. He’s holding me tightly, desperately, as if our days are numbered. It’s almost like a goodbye.
Leo releases me from his grasp and pulls his chair close so that he can still hold on to both of my hands. He redirects his attention to Jack. “How sure are you? Do I need to get her out tonight? How much time do we have?” The questions are pouring out of Leo as quickly as he can speak while he tries to calm my panic with his touch.
“This is my gut feeling, Leo. That’s all I can tell you. He’s never asked for this kind of drug before, and I can’t imagine what other use he’d have for it. This plan would also explain why he’s so content having you two together.” He pauses a moment, taking in a deep breath. “The good news is you have some time. I told him I need a couple days to get what he needs. It was the best I could do without arousing suspicion. He won’t try anything before then.”
“How do we get out?” I ask quietly, even though escape feels like a hopeless endeavor.
“Getting you out of here would be difficult. Mark has too many men and too much control here, but I think we might be able to get you out offsite.”
“What do you have in mind?” Leo asks tentatively.
“We need to stage a meet, something that will require an offsite meeting with the two of you and Mark. I know a guy with an operation large enough to pull this off, and he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. We’ll have him pretend to capture you both to make it look like a kidnapping so Mark doesn’t suspect anything. If we’re lucky, my friend will put a bullet in Mark’s skull.”
Leo looks at me, optimism replacing the worry in his eyes even though I find little comfort in this plan. “This could work.”
“It may be the only move we’ve got,” Jack continues. “I have a place up in the mountains. It’s a secluded cabin that Mark doesn’t know about. I can send you both there afterward until things settle down and we’re able to get you setup with a new place to live.”
As much as I want to cling to the hope Jack is trying to provide us, I’d love nothing more than to go upstairs with Leo, lie down in our bed together, and forget that this entire conversation ever happened. We were finally content, almost happy even under our imperfect circumstances, and it’s all being shattered before our eyes.
Leo turns to me, and I can barely look at him. I don’t want him to see the fear reappear in me that I had successfully overcome these last few months. It seems like all the progress I made was for nothing, like I’m right back where I started, only this time I know my fate. Knowing what to expect is almost worse than going in blindly.
“We can do this, Morgan. We’ll get out. We’ll get you safe.”
Leo’s comforting words are lost on me. I appreciate that he’s trying to get me to see the light in this, but he doesn’t know what I’m feeling. He’s not the one that Mark wants to fuck and plant his seed inside to grow a human being. He’s not the vessel that Mark wants to use to create and deliver an offspring to be raised as a future replacement for Mark in his business.
I stare blankly between Leo and Jack. My brain can’t formulate words. My heart can barely keep beating. I feel too much and nothing all at once.
“It’s okay,” Leo says, pulling my chair out and lifting me under my back and legs to carry me. “I’ll get you upstairs, then I’ll come back down to discuss the details. We’ll get this figured out.” He moves us toward the door before turning back around. “Thank you, Jack.”
Leo takes me up the stairs quickly and quietly. He’s whispering sweet words to me, but my body is too overwhelmed by everything I’ve just learned to have any emotional response to what he’s saying or what’s going on.
He manages to hold me and get the lock open on our apartment door at the same time. He lies me down on our bed and sits next to me before leaning down to rest his head on my chest. Just knowing that his ear is there listening to my racing heart helps to calm me down.
In the few minutes he sits with me, we say nothing and do nothing. I close my eyes and actually pretend for a moment that everything is as it was, that Leo and I just came back upstairs after a wonderful self-cooked meal together without a care in the world because today is a day off and we earned it and were meant to enjoy it.
I hear Leo’s steady breathing and match mine to his. I’m almost drifting off to sleep, and then I see him. On the precipice between reality and dream-filled slumber, Mark’s face flashes across my mind, and I burst into a scream.
In that moment that I’m startled awake and the scream subsides, my body moves to get away from there, trashing wildly against the strong hands that keep me held down to the bed. Leo’s voice is calling for me, trying to bring me back to reality, but I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to go back into my nightmares, either. I want to shut off. I want to be nowhere.
“Leo,” I cry out for him. I need him to bring me back.
“I’m here,” he says softly. I focus on his words.
“Leo, please.” I don’t know what I’m begging for. Anything. Anything but this.
“I’ve got you. Stay with me, Morgan.”
I feel the warm, wet drop of something fall on my cheek, and my eyes instantly open. My mind awakens. I’m back where I need to be.
I look up to Leo’s crying face, my hand automatically reaching to touch his cheek and absorb his pain. I’m back for Leo. I’ll always come back for him. I’ll do anything for him.
“I’m okay,” I say for my own benefit as much as his. “We’ll be okay.”
Leo nods and smiles at me, but it’s a sad smile. “Yes, we will.”
He dips his head toward me, kissing me softly and caressing the side of my face. As he holds his hand there, I take as much comfort from it as I can, because I know what he’s about to say next.
“I need to talk to Jack before Mark gets back. Will you be okay here?”
“Yes. Talk to Jack. I’ll be fine.”
Leo kisses me one more time before sitting back up on the bed
and pulling a blanket over me. “Get some rest.”
Somehow through all of this pain my facial muscles remember how to smile. “Always telling me to rest.”
With a knowing look, Leo stands up from the bed and turns off the light. He leaves the room, locking the door behind him.
30
Choice
I lie sideways in bed facing the wall, wide awake and waiting for Leo to return from his planning with Jack. My body and mind are exhausted, but I can’t stand the thought of sleep right now. I know he’ll be waiting for me there: Mark’s smug face and eager hands ready to play out in my nightmares what could soon be my reality. I didn’t want to face him without Leo by my side, so when Leo left the room to talk with Jack, I turned the light back on and forced my body to stay awake.
My mind wanders through so many things, thoughts of regrets and the choices I’ve made and the choices I have yet to make. In the silence of the room, I’m analyzing and thinking and driving myself to the brink of insanity about my situation and how helpless I feel to direct the course of it.
I don’t want to feel helpless. I can’t lose hope. I need to be strong.
With a deep breath, I push the reset button on my thoughts, refocusing on Leo and our relationship and future. I have to believe there is a future for us. We can’t have gone through all of this for nothing.
I’ve lost control in my situation, and that scares me. My time with Mark’s crew has shown me this business and these people are all about control. In my victories that started with stealing the black book from Ruiz and developed into countless deals being struck and pockets being emptied for Mark thanks to me, I felt that important control I had regained. I fed off that feeling when I finally found my purpose in this criminal world, and now it seems to have dissipated from me, gone into the nothingness.
I need that control back. I want to steer my own fate.
Mark holds all the cards except one, and it’s not a card I’m willing to use lightly. It’s not something I even fathomed using until Jack shared his suspicions of Mark’s plan that involves forcing me to hand over that card.
My womb. Utilizing the parts of me that prepare me every month to grow a living thing inside me. I’m saving that card for the man I love, to start a family with Leo someday, and Mark wants to steal it from me.
What if I give it away first? Right now I have a choice. In one hour or one day or one week that choice may be ripped away from me. Using that card is the only way to ensure that Mark can’t win, regardless of whether Jack’s plan to get me and Leo to safety works or not.
It’s a frightening enough realization to think about willingly letting a man plant his seed inside me. Being an unwilling participant in that same situation is unfathomable.
Adrenaline shoots through me when I hear keys in the lock at the door, but when the quiet footsteps approach the bed, I know it’s only Leo. It’s only the man I love.
He’s at my side in an instant and kisses my cheek. “How are you?”
“We should do it first,” I blurt out. There’s no use delaying these words. I need to say them before I change my mind.
“Morgan? What are you talking about?”
I swallow the lump lodged firmly in my throat and look up at him. “Right now the choice is mine, and I choose you. If Jack’s plan fails and I have to face what Mark has in store for me, I want to know that there’s a piece of you growing inside me, not him.”
Leo lips part, but no words come out. He tries to speak several times before finding success. “Jack has a good plan. He’ll get us out. You don’t need to go making decisions like this based on the possibility that Mark will get his hands on you.”
I’m trying to be strong, but I can’t hold back my tears any longer. “I don’t know if I can take that chance.”
“No. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t do this to me.” There’s a low tremble to Leo’s voice that scares me. “You know this is my greatest fear. If I do what you’re asking me to do and we fail, then I will have played right into the hand Mark dealt my family when he hired my father. I can’t give him another piece of my family to sacrifice into the machine of his business. It’s too much to ask of me, Morgan. It’s too much.”
Leo stands up from the bed and walks away from me, his rejection leaving me completely empty inside. There is no further life to embrace within me. I let it all go, all emotion and feeling and thoughts of happiness. They dissipate into the air around me, and I wonder if I’ll ever get them back.
I turn to the wall and cry silently into the pillow. I won’t fight Leo on this. I won’t make my request of him again. It was foolish of me to think he would even remotely consider the idea.
Leo’s footsteps fill the room, slow and even, back and forth. I try to focus on them to distract my mind, to take away my pain.
When his pacing finally ceases, I’m afraid he’s about to reach for the door and leave me, but he stands next to the bed instead. I hear his clothes hit the floor before he slips himself behind me, forming his body to mine so that we are in perfect physical alignment. My breath catches as he kisses my shoulder and sneaks his hands around my stomach.
“Is this what you really want?” he whispers.
Fresh tears escape me. I’m barely able to speak. “Yes.”
Leo slowly rolls me onto my back. He climbs on top of me, gently kissing every part of my face while he lifts my shirt and bra over my head and works my jeans and underwear down my legs. When he straddles my waist, a palpable tremor rushes through his body. In his moment of hesitation as he looks down at me beneath him, a tiny voice inside me screams at me to make him to stop, but I can’t listen to it. I will not let Mark take this choice away from me. I have to let this happen.
Sitting up on his knees, Leo presses against me and hesitates again before sliding inside me. Though we’ve had sex countless times, it’s different in this moment. It’s somber and strained. I feel Leo’s regret with each thrust into me. Every bit of pain I’m causing him by asking him to do this is apparent in his face and his movements. There’s no passion to this, and if not for the love I know we share together, this would be nothing more than the physical meeting of two bodies to serve their primal purpose. This is not lovemaking; it’s procreating.
Despite the sadness of this connection between us, the physical response of our bodies is undeniable, and it’s not long before Leo’s thrusts peak in speed and he erupts within me. For that short time I let go of all the pain and worry to let this potential product of the two of us be created out of pleasure and love. I’m set free from it all in the moment my orgasm peaks as Leo continues to move within me.
Coming back down is hard. When my mind clears, the reality we’re brought back into is devastating. My body shakes as the tears that never ceased continue to flow out of me at an even more rapid pace. Leo holds himself inside me and leans down to cover my upper body with his. I feel the wetness of his own tears against my cheek and desperately wish that I could make them go away.
I came here to save Leo, but I fear I’ve only made everything worse.
31
Different
Leo holds me all night, his arms and body wrapped around me in every possible way to maximize the contact between us. He knows I need him, and he needs me just as much. Our entire fucked-up world got even more twisted in the course of just one evening, and I don’t know where that leaves us.
It’s different waking up this morning knowing that tiny natural processes in the creation of life may be occurring deep within me. Part of Leo and part of me may be coming together to make something that should be beautiful and amazing, an absolute miracle, but in reality this is not something Leo or I would have chosen for us, at least not right now. We’re just starting our lives together, and we are not truly free, still under constant threat from Mark and trapped within his walls. This is no time to create a baby.
A baby.
My entire body shivers, and Leo instantly holds me closer to him. The heat of hi
s chest against my bare back gives me comfort. I can feel the sting of tears behind my eyes, but I won’t let myself cry. I need to be strong for me and for Leo. I need to be strong for our baby who may or may not be forming inside me.
“Morgan,” Leo whispers, his voice raspy. “You okay?”
I think about Leo’s question and answer truthfully. “No, but I will be.”
His arm adjusts to allow his hand to linger over my lower abdomen. I know exactly what he’s thinking. As we both lie still together, the miracle of life is racing to complete its mission within me. It’s the scariest thing I have ever experienced in my life.
“I’m sorry, Leo. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Leo quickly shushes me before turning me over to face him. “You have nothing to apologize for. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did.” He pauses cautiously. “I’m just so afraid of losing you. If I lost you and our baby, it would devastate me. I can’t even fathom it.”
“I know. I gave us even more to lose.”
“Don’t say that. You didn’t force me to do this. I made the decision to go forward with it.”
I stare at Leo’s face, noticing every worry line on his forehead even through the strands of dark hair that try to hide them. “Jack’s plan has to work.”
“It will,” Leo says confidently. “It’s a sound plan. I don’t want you to worry, okay? Jack’s taking care of everything. We just have to play our parts.”
“When? When is this going down?”
“As early as tonight. We won’t know for sure until Mark accepts the meeting.”
Relief washes over me at the thought of getting the chance of escaping Mark without another night passing. “Thank God.”
Leo sits up in the bed and looks at me seriously. “We need to act completely normal until then. If we act differently, he’ll know something’s up.”
Beyond Ransom (The Ransom Series) Page 19