20
CASTELLO
I’d like to think I was a strong man. That I was prepared for everything life wanted to throw at me. Feelings and emotions never controlled me, while power and authority had been the force behind every decision I made, behind every action I had taken. But since Tatum had been brought—yes, brought—into my life, she managed to change everything without even trying.
Now, while I stared into her crystal eyes, her words resounding inside my head, I felt powerless. I felt confused. And I felt like I no longer had any control.
“Excuse me?” My voice was barely a whisper, and my lack of confidence pissed me off.
“I’m pregnant, Castello.”
I reared back, my hand no longer on her cheek. “How?” Stupid question. “When?” Even stupider. “What do you mean, pregnant?” Dumb-fuck.
Tatum tried to loosen the clasp around the ring of her collar, but she was shaking too much.
“Castello, could you please loosen this?”
I blinked, then reached out to unclasp the ring. I stood up the same time she sat up straight.
“That’s why I fainted,” she started, her eyes looking everywhere except at me. “Doc asked me if there was a chance I could be pregnant.” She shrugged. “And turns out, I am.”
I was a grown fucking man. An intelligent fucking man. Yet every word that came out of her mouth made absolutely no sense at all.
“You’re on birth control. I know you were on birth control.”
She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. “I was. And…how did you know?”
“Don’t play dumb, Tatum. You know I did my homework before I—”
“Before you kidnapped me.”
Silence.
“Yes.”
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, her face cast in shadows of doubt and uncertainty. But I needed her to talk. I needed her to make fucking sense.
“Tatum. What the fuck?”
“I was supposed to go for my shot about a week before you…took me.”
“You should have told me.”
“I’m sorry—” her jaw tense, and lips taut “—I was too busy not to die for me to worry about birth control, Castello.”
My heart and my stomach both fought for a way out my throat. My pulse raced, and every ounce of my blood had gone cold.
Pregnant. Fucking pregnant. We were in the middle of a goddamn civil war and Tatum was pregnant?
My mind started to reel, and I started to pace up and down. “This isn’t happening.”
“I’m afraid it is. There were two pink lines, and I did the test…twice.”
More pacing, more reeling thoughts.
“How far along are you?”
“Not sure. Doc is trying to arrange an ultrasound. Then we should know how far along I am.”
I stopped and pinned my stare on her. “Have you…”
“No. Not since Carlo. There was no one else. Just you.”
With my hands in my hair I dropped an entire vocabulary of f-bombs. And then it occurred to me.
“You drank champagne while you knew you were pregnant?”
“I pretended. I didn’t even take one sip.”
I looked down at the floor, my hands now on my hips. Jesus Christ. “You let me do this to you. You let me tie you up and beat you with my fucking belt…and you’re fucking pregnant. Tatum, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you stop me? And the tattoo.” Oh God, this was all just too damn much.
With shame in her eyes she dropped her gaze from mine to the floor. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“It’s pretty fucking easy actually. You just open your goddamn mouth and tell me.”
Tears trickled down her cheeks when she finally looked at me again. “It’s not that simple, Castello. Nothing about you, about us is simple.”
I stormed forward, anger fueling me, adrenaline pumping through my veins like venom. “It’s you who insists on overcomplicating everything!”
She stood up on her knees, her shoulders squared. “Can you honestly say that nothing about this is complicated?”
“Can you honestly say the only reason you kept this from me was because you didn’t know how to tell me?” I slanted my head to the side as I stared into her soul through the crystal blue of her eyes. “Or did you choose to keep this to yourself because you aren’t sure whether you want this or not?”
More tears, more shadows of shame, her face showing her every emotion.
“Both,” she whispered.
I knew it. I knew she kept it from me because she wasn’t sure.
I stepped back, grabbed my pants and pulled them on. But I kept my gaze on her face. “Just a few minutes ago you said you didn’t blame me for everything that’s happened.”
“I don’t.” She shook her head, and I smiled, a fake smile which I knew didn’t reach my eyes.
“Then why would you doubt whether you want my child or not?”
“That’s not what I doubted, Castello. I doubted whether you loved me or not. I doubted whether this would be something you wanted because you never tell me anything. It’s like you expect me to come to all these conclusions on my own.”
“Don’t play games, Tatum. You knew how I felt about you, how things changed between us. You were just too scared to acknowledge it, to admit it.”
She got off the bed, the collar around her neck glinting under the light, the ‘mine’ of diamonds taunting me.
“If you had been through what I have, you would doubt everything, too. You would see deception behind every word as well.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. My mind was on the brink of exploding. For the last ten minutes I haven’t been unable to form a single coherent thought. My entire world changed within the blink of an eye and I had no idea how to deal with that. How to deal with the fact that I was no longer in control of anything.
Irony, you son of a bitch. I changed her world within the blink of an eye, and goddammit, she just did the same to me.
So I left. I turned around and stormed out the door, slamming it shut behind me. And then I locked it. I locked her inside the bedroom...again. I was losing control and I fucking hated it. This goddamn woman was causing me to lose myself. She was making me weak, unsure about everything, and right now I couldn’t afford that. I had Vico to worry about. I had the family business to worry about. I had Tatum to worry about.
And now I have a baby to worry about.
Frustration ticked in my jaw, anger simmered inside my veins as I pulled my fingers through my hair, suppressing the need to scream.
Pregnant? What the fuck was the universe trying to do? How in God’s name did we manage to create a life when we were surrounded by death and lies from the start? All the plans I had for her, for us no longer mattered. A few simple words and everything changed.
I leaned back against the door, and I could hear her whimpering from inside the room. The sound of her sadness tamed my anger, and for a second I tried to think about how she was feeling. That’s what people do when they love each other, right?
Of course she would be afraid to tell me. If it were me I’d be afraid too. This was a whole new world for her, a world I’ve been in all my life, and she’d only been here for a short while. And then finding out she was pregnant by the man that at first wanted her dead? I couldn’t blame her.
I closed my eyes trying to imagine a baby—our baby. It wasn’t something I ever thought about wanting. A family. I’ve been living with a dark depravity inside me for so long, I didn’t think a family of my own would be possible for someone like me. But dear God, here I was with a woman I had fallen completely in love with, and she was carrying my baby. There was a life growing inside her, a life that was half her, half me. Jesus Christ. We were having a baby!
“Fuck!” I turned, unlocked the door and stormed inside, kicking the door closed behind me.
Tatum was sitting on the bed, still naked, and crying. She had loosened the ponytail in her hair, and golden strands covered her face like a veil.
“You’re pregnant,” I stated the obvious.
She nodded, her soft sobs filling the room.
“You’re pregnant,” I repeated to myself.
She looked up and when I saw her tear stained face, the emotional pain radiating from her crystal blue eyes, it pierced straight through my chest, shattering my heart into a million pieces.
I launched forward, pushed her down on the bed, pinned her arms above her head, and straddled her.
I forced her to look up at me. “You need to listen to me very carefully.” I tightened my grip around her wrists. “This ends today. You will no longer dwell in the past. You will no longer think of yourself as a victim so you can have a reason to doubt me, to doubt how I feel about you. Yes, you’ve been through hell. Yes, I didn’t do right by you in the beginning. Yes, you lost something. But I’m trying my fucking best to make it right. And this—” I grabbed her arm with the tattoo, “—is a vow I had imprinted into your goddamn skin. This was my way of saying no more lies, just vows.”
“Castello—”
“Stop allowing the past to weaken you. Stop using it as an excuse to not trust what is happening between us. I love you. I love you so much it fucking hurts. Nothing will change that. You are mine, and you always will be.”
I leaned down, allowing my hand to travel from her neck to her breast, all the way down to her belly. “And now that you’re carrying my child, you have no choice.”
“I told you earlier, I choose to be here with you.”
“You did. But now I can’t help but wonder, is it because you want to be here, or because I managed to plant my seed inside you?”
I watched as her throat bobbed, her chest rising and falling. Her crying had stopped, and determination replaced the tears. “No more lies?”
I nodded, doubt momentarily rendering me incapable of breathing.
She sat up on her elbows. “The moment you killed your mother to save me, that was the moment you ripped my heart from my chest and made it yours.”
This time it was my turn to swallow hard, her words taking all the jumbled thoughts inside my head, forming one single, most important thought and decision of my life.
No more lies. Just vows.
“Marry me. Marry me, Tatum.”
And then she knocked my feet right from under me. Without a single moment’s hesitation, she answered a loud and clear, unmistakable... “Yes.”
With that one word she had managed to make me feel like the most powerful man in the world. I had all the money one man would ever need. I had all the influence I needed to build an empire, yet with a single word she made all of it seem irrelevant.
I kissed her. I kissed her like a man in love. The need to possess her wasn’t there pounding against my ribs. The only thing I wanted to do was love her. I wanted my love for her to be present in the way I touched her. No toys, no whips, no chains or knives…only me. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to make her bleed. The only thing that was bleeding was my goddamn heart.
The saltiness of her tears invaded our kiss, making me more determined to show her how she had managed to turn my obsession with her into a love that had the power to bring me to my knees. After all this time of me trying to own her, she was the one who ultimately ended up owning me.
I moved, settling between her legs. My cock was ready—not to claim, but to forge our bodies into one.
My lips travelled down her neck, my tongue dipping in the hollow below her throat. “Let me love you, Tatum. Let me love you for the rest of my life.”
She weaved her fingers through the hair at the back of my neck. “Only if you let me love you back.”
My mouth was back on hers the second those words rolled over her lips. A soft moan poured from her mouth to mine, our tongues dancing and seducing, refusing to stop.
The way her hard nipples pressed against my chest, her skin like velvet against mine felt better than any whip or spanking. Better than any burn against my palm.
I tore my lips from hers and stared down at her, crystal blue eyes staring up at me. And as I slowly eased my cock inside her, I watched her eyes roll closed, her neck arching up as the pleasure consumed her. It was the best thing I’ve ever witnessed.
Without taking my eyes off her beautiful face, I pulled out completely before gently sinking back in. This time I pushed deep, earning a moan that sounded like a melody coming from her lips. Her legs wrapped around my waist, her heels digging into my ass.
“I love you,” I murmured, continuing the slow rhythm of moving in and out of her.
“Say it, Tatum.”
“I love you.”
“No, I need you to say that I love you. I want to hear those words come from your lips.”
She opened her eyes, her gaze pinned on mine. I didn’t stop moving. I couldn’t.
“Say it.” I gave a hard thrust. “Say it.”
“You love me.”
“Again.” I pushed deeper.
“You love me.”
“Again!” I needed her to say it until she fucking believed it.
“You love me!” She cried out, my rhythm increasing, my thrusts going deeper, harder.
“This is my last and final rule for you, Tatum.” I traced my hand down her side, over her hip, wrapping my arm around her ass, and pushing her up closer against me. “Never will you forget that I love you. Do you understand me? Never.”
“Never,” she whimpered, her body trembling beneath me.
“Your name is engraved on my soul…and not even the flames of hell will be able to erase it.”
And then I lost myself in her. Two bodies became one, our hearts and souls melting together like priceless elements of the Earth. Everything shifted. Everything changed. Doubt and uncertainty got expunged with every thrust, with every touch. It was just us, and the love that had managed to bloom out of all this cruelty.
I whispered the words one more time. “I love you, Tatum.” And then I felt her clamp down on me, gripping me tight. She cried out, and I buried my face in the crook of her neck as we reached our release together.
My body trembled, my heart pounding like a jackhammer against my ribs.
It was final. I loved her, and she loved me. And nothing in this goddamn world was strong enough to change that.