Chapter 4 - The Safehouse Bastion
The armored Escalade turned off the highway thirty minutes later, winding through a heavily wooded private estate outside the city limits—a place I had never seen before, hidden behind ten-foot iron gates and dense pine trees.
It wasn't the main Moretti compound in the city. It was a secondary safehouse, a fortress of stone and reinforced glass designed to withstand a siege.
The vehicle rolled smoothly into the underground garage, the heavy steel security door lowering immediately behind us with a sealed, pneumatic thud.
Before the engine had even died, Damen pushed his door open and stepped out. Before I could reach for the handle on my side, he pulled it open, his dark eyes searching my face with an intense, suffocating scrutiny.
"Get out," he commanded, though his tone was fractionally less rigid than it had been in the diner.
"I'm not moving," I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring up at him from the leather seat. "I'm not playing your prisoner, Damen. If you think you can lock me up here like some kind of trophy wife while you run your empire, you're out of your mind."
Damen stared at me for a long, silent moment. Then, without a single word of warning, he reached into the back, slid his arms beneath my knees and behind my back, and scooped me straight out of the car.
"Damen Moretti, put me down right now!" I gasped, my hands flying to his shoulders to keep from falling as he carried me effortlessly toward the private elevator.
"You're carrying my son," he said evenly, ignoring my struggling. "And you've been eating diner grease and sleeping on a lumpy mattress in a studio apartment above a laundromat for eight months. You are not in any condition to negotiate terms."
"I managed just fine—"
"You survived," he interrupted, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling growl that vibrated against my chest. "You survived because you were terrified of what would happen if you reached out. But you're done running, Serena."
The elevator doors slid open to reveal a sprawling, high-ceilinged penthouse level finished in dark wood, leather, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the misty pine forest outside. It was luxurious, sterile, and heavily fortified.
He carried me straight to the master bedroom, setting me down gently on the edge of a massive king-size bed covered in heavy white linens.
"Stay here," he instructed, turning toward the adjoining bathroom. "I'm calling the family physician to check on the baby."
"I don't need a doctor, I need you to listen to me!" I shouted, kicking off my worn sneakers.
Damen stopped at the bathroom door, looking back over his shoulder with a cold, unyielding stare.
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"You can yell at me all you want tomorrow, Serena," he said quietly. "Right now, the only thing that matters is that you're breathing, and my son is kicking. Everything else can wait."
The bathroom door clicked shut behind him, leaving me alone in the silent, heavy stillness of the room.
