Chapter 3

Isabella’s smile stiffened, and her fingers tightened around Lucian’s sleeve.

Lucian did not look at her. His eyes stayed on Adrian.

“Vivienne,” Isabella cried, as though a thought had just occurred to her, “so that’s why you refused to come with us. Is this man your lover?”

Lucian’s expression turned instantly dangerous.

“No!” My chest tightened. “Adrian, go. Find someone from Valenti headquarters, the De Luca family, or the Kane network.”

Adrian hesitated, then turned to leave.

Something in Lucian snapped. He drew his gun and fired at Adrian’s back.

“Lucian, stop!”

My voice broke.

He ignored me.

Adrian twisted aside. Before he could regain his footing, Lucian’s guards rushed him from every direction.

Guns, batons, and knives boxed him in.

“Don’t hurt him!”

I lunged forward, but Alessia grabbed me.

A knife punched through the protective panel over Adrian’s shoulder.

He grunted and dropped to one knee.

Then the blows rained down.

When fragments of his black armor scattered across the ground, my mind went blank.

“Stop!” My throat was raw. “He came to take the children home!”

No one believed me.

By the time the guards stepped back, Adrian was covered in blood and barely upright.

Isabella walked toward him, smiling more gently than ever.

“Where did you find someone this stupid, Vivienne?”

“All this for three children raised in a slum?”

She waved one hand.

Three knives were placed in front of me, their edges gleaming.

“You should worry less about him and decide whether you’re saving these children.”

“I’m saving them.”

Three wounds.

None of them would kill me.

I owed their families too much to abandon the children now.

The first knife cut into me, and my vision went black at the edges.

The second sliced across my shoulder. My fingers clawed into the dirt until my palm was torn open.

Alessia stopped the third blade, fury blazing in her eyes.

“Vivienne! You still insist on protecting them?”

Sweat covered my forehead, but my voice did not shake.

“I’m protecting them. And I’m not returning to the Moretti family.”

Alessia lost control and slashed my shoulder herself.

“That is not your decision.”

“You still owe Isabella. You still owe this family.”

So that was why they had come to take me back. They meant to squeeze every last bit of value out of me.

Every breath shook with pain, but I forced myself upright.

Isabella watched the blood spread across my clothes, barely able to hide her satisfaction.

“She’s fighting this hard for a few little bastards,” Isabella said, covering her mouth as though a thought had just occurred to her. “Do you think she really slept around out here and had children?”

I looked down.

The blood on my clothes came from my shoulder and torn palm.

Lucian turned sharply, his eyes dangerous.

“Search her.”

Two guards wrenched my arms behind me and shoved me to the ground.

They tore open my coat, emptied my pockets, and pressed brutally into my old injuries, looking for anything that might prove the children’s identities—or reveal what I had done for the last ten years.

Pain exploded through my body. Blood flooded my mouth, and I could not speak.

“Those children aren’t hers,” Adrian rasped through blood. “I know exactly who their fathers are.”

Isabella turned to him and smiled slowly.

“If they aren’t hers, why are you so desperate to protect her?”