Chapter 8 - The Siege of the Stairs
Every instinct in my body screamed at me to run, to lock myself in the master bedroom, but I knew the wooden door wouldn't hold against a desperate man with a weapon. I stood at the top of the dark staircase, my hand covering my belly, my heart hammering so loudly I was terrified he would hear it.
"Julian," I called out, my voice surprisingly steady, echoing through the empty halls of our home. "Your mother is in a federal cell. Your assets are frozen. There is no trust fund left to save you. It’s over."
Julian paused on the fourth step, his face remaining hidden in the shadows, but I could see his shoulders tighten beneath his cashmere coat. "My mother was a fool who played a small, emotional game, Elena. She wanted to play the grandmother. She wanted to torture you. I don't care about you enough to torture you. I care about forty million euros in a Swiss repository that reverts to the Madrid government on December thirty-first if a male child isn't registered under my name."
He took three more steps up, the silver barrel of his silenced pistol catching the moonlight. "You are an obstacle, Elena. A small, insignificant obstacle from a family of farmers. Sign the papers."
"No," I said, stepping back into the light of the hallway.
Julian let out a sharp, ugly breath and lunged up the remaining steps, his arm reaching out to grab my hair.
But as his foot hit the top landing, the back door of the house didn't just open—it exploded inward with a deafening crash of shattered wood and splintered iron.
A figure moved through the dark foyer like a shadow thrown by a wildfire. It was Alejandro. He had bypassed the front stairs entirely, coming through the basement access line he had secured weeks earlier. He didn't yell. He didn't give a warning.
Alejandro hit his brother from the side with the full force of his body weight, his combat-trained muscles instantly slamming Julian into the drywall of the upper hallway. The pistol flew out of Julian’s hand, clattering down the wooden stairs into the darkness below.
"Get away from my wife," Alejandro growled, his voice a guttural, primal sound that sent a cold thrill of absolute security through my veins.
Julian scrambled backward, his face streaked with white dust from the cracked drywall, his aristocratic composure entirely shattered. He reached into his coat for a secondary knife, but Alejandro didn't give him the chance to draw it. He caught his brother by the collar of his expensive coat, spun him around, and hurled him over the wooden banister.
Julian fell with a heavy, sickening thud onto the marble floor of the foyer below, his leather portfolio scattering papers across the white tiles, mixing once again with the dried lily petals from a month ago.
He didn't get up. He lay there, groaning, his leg twisted at an unnatural angle from the fall.
Alejandro didn't look down at him. He turned around instantly, his hands catching my shoulders, his eyes wild with a frantic, desperate terror I had never seen in him, not even during the initial arrest of his mother.
"Elena! Are you okay? Did he touch you? Did he hit you?"
"I’m okay, Alejandro," I cried, throwing my arms around his neck as tears finally broke through. "I’m okay. You got him."
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Before he could answer, a sharp, white-hot flash of pain ripped through my lower back and radiated down into my thighs, so intense it forced me to my knees with a gasp. I looked down, seeing a small pool of clear fluid soaking into the carpet beneath my feet.
My water had broken. Our son was coming.
