Page 11 of Diary from an Inked Throne

I didn’t want to feel anger at that moment. It was there, the blind fury that Dax could just walk away from this, but in that moment, all I wanted to feel was love.

“What’s his name?” Sindy asked through her tears.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

She laughed. “Girl, you had nine months to think about it, and you didn’t come prepared with a name?”

I didn’t tell her that as soon as Dax had walked away, and Luca had died, and Lynx had been locked up, that I’d basically stopped thinking about the future at all.

Sindy must have seen the panic on my face, because she rubbed my leg reassuringly. “He doesn’t need a name right now. You have time.” She frowned at us though. “He’s still attached to you though. Is that bad? Don’t we need to cut the cord?”

I rubbed my baby’s back and he rooted around my chest. Instinctively, I dragged down the bloodied fabric of my dress and let him find my breast. In amazement, I held him carefully, letting him attach and suckle. “We need something to tie off his cord first. Every birthing book I read said that.” I peered through the gloomy light at her. “Do you have shoelaces?”

She shook her head, a frown pinching between her eyebrows. It smoothed out in the next moment though. She took a tie from her hair. “What about this? I think I can break it so it’s more like a string…” She concentrated on the small circle of elastic for a second. There was a tiny tearing sound, and then she grinned at me, victorious. “Here!”

I inched closer to her, and she reached out, gently tying it around the cord and pulling it tight.

I tugged a tie from my own elaborate up-do and passed it to her. She had to use her teeth to get it to break, but under my instruction, she made a second knot around the cord, clamping it off.

“How do you know this?” she asked breathlessly.

“I don’t. But my best friend watches a lot of Grey’s Anatomy, and I’ve watched enough episodes with her that I know this is what they do. Shonda wouldn’t let us down.”

I hoped.

The door slammed open, and Enzo walked in. He did a double take at me and Sindy, and the baby I clutched in my arms, wishing I could blink and magic us out of here, away to somewhere safe.

“Do you believe me now?” I asked him wryly.

Enzo just stared. “Is it a boy?”

I wanted to lie and say it was a girl. Maybe, somehow, that would have saved us, and Enzo would have had to change whatever plans he’d made to take over Carlos’s empire. But he peered over at us, and his grin widened.

“It’s a boy.”

He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked my cage, but his phone rang at the same time. He frowned at the screen, then pressed it to his ear. “What?” He listened intently for a second, then turned around, pacing a few steps away, his back to us.

Sindy’s gaze darted to the open cage, reminding me it was unlocked.

Like I might be able to get up, rush Enzo, free her, and escape, all with a baby in my arms. She’d clearly never given birth. I doubted I could even crawl my way out of this cell right now, let alone jump up and fight off a man twice my size.

Enzo was so intent on his conversation that he didn’t even glance our way. “What the fuck do you mean he’s alive?”

“I thought you said Carlos was dead,” Sindy whispered to me.

I frowned, trying to make sense of Enzo’s words. “He is. There’s no way…”

There was no way Carlos could have lived through that many gunshots. His eyes had been still, unseeing.

Dead.

I shook my head. “He is.”

Sindy squinted at Enzo’s back. “Then who the hell is alive?”

Enzo’s voice rose an octave and he spun around to face us, even though he continued his conversation with whoever was on the phone. “You’re telling me my nephew rose from the dead like he was fucking Jesus? He just walked out of the goddamn church? We had a deal! He was supposed to be burned to a fucking crisp!”

My entire body locked up. Every muscle. Every bone. My baby clutched tight in my embrace. My breath faltering because none of what he was saying made sense.