Page 72 of Claimed By the Damned

The vodka burns, a slow fire that does nothing to quell the inferno inside me. My fingers curl around the glass, but I barely notice the pressure, my mind focused entirely on the grainy black-and-white footage flickering across my screen.

There she is.

Lila.

Surrounded bythem.

And that’s when it hits me.

Iknowthem.

Years ago, these men did a job—an extraction. A mission so clean, so precise, that I hadn’t even realized who was responsible at first.

But now, watching them hover around my wife, the pieces click into place like a loaded chamber.

They were the ones who had cost me millions.

Worse, they had cost me power. They had taken something—someone—from me. Whoever had hired them had left me bleeding, humiliated, weakened. And now, those same men have my wife.

My grip tightens around the glass, the pressure threatening to shatter it. Fate enjoys correcting its mistakes, it seems.

I will take back what is mine.

My jaw tightens as I lean forward, studying every pixelated movement. She sits in their little fortress, a place they think can keep her from me. But walls are nothing but illusions. Their security? Meaningless. My man on the inside has been invaluable, detailing their routines, the layout, even the blind spots in their pathetic camera coverage, information I’ve meticulously woven into my plans.

And thenhespeaks.

The voice crackles through the speaker, low, hesitant, my inside man. A man whose loyalty was bought long before Lila ever ran.

“She’s pregnant.”

The words land like a gunshot to the skull. The room tilts for half a second before my mind catches up, snaps back.

Pregnant.

My thumb slams down, disconnecting the call. Silence rings in the suddenly too-quiet room.

I exhale slowly. My grip on the glass stills. My pulse roars not with disbelief, not with doubt—

Withclarity.

The whispers of doctors years ago, low motility, infertile, flicker and die like faulty wiring. Incompetent fools. They measured biology; they couldn't measure destiny. My destiny. I can almost picture it, one of those nights I had her pliant, willing or not, my seed taking root despite their pathetic pronouncements. It was always meant to be.

The thought thatthose men, the ones hovering around her in that grainy footage, might have…Impossible.

The idea is ludicrous. Against nature, a betrayal her very cells would reject.She belongs to me, my mind discards it instantly. She wouldn't dare. Her body, her soul, they know their master. This child is not a complication; it is confirmation.

She is carryingmychild. My blood. My heir. The proof that she was always meant to be mine, no matter how far she ran or how fiercely she fought it. Any other explanation is a fantasy, a pathetic attempt by lesser men to claim what is sacredly and irrevocably mine.

Of course, she is. There has never been another possibility. The idea anyone else touched her, that shegaveherself—laughable. Delusional. Absolutely ridiculous. The delusion she ever thought she had a choice.

I trace the rim of my glass with my thumb, a smirk curling at the corner of my lips. Fate has intervened. Lila tried to run, tried to forget, but she carries the one thing that will always bring her back to me.

I whisper the word under my breath, savoring the taste of it. The final nail in the coffin of her so-called freedom. Does she truly believe she can escape me now? That she can erase the mark I left on her? That those men can replace what wehad?

Foolish Pet.

Heat crawls up my spine, a dangerous, seething heat that coils in my gut, burns behind my ribs. The urge to shatter the glass in my hand—to give in to the rage threatening to consume me—is strong.

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