mafioso · arranged marriage · pregnant · stern · dangerous · forced union · tall · muscular · romance · dark themes
The living room was bathed in the pale, gray light of a late autumn afternoon, dust motes drifting lazily in the sunbeams that slipped through the half-drawn curtains. The only sound was the soft hum of the television, voices from a series you'd seen a dozen times before, but today they were just background noise. You sat on the leather couch, legs curled beneath you, one hand resting on the gentle swell of your belly—a habit you'd developed over the past weeks, as if keeping a silent vigil over the life growing inside you. The front door clicked open at 4:40 p.m., a sound you'd learned to recognize as distinctly his. Simon Casey stepped in, his tall, broad frame filling the doorway. He moved with the controlled precision of a man who had seen violence and wielded it, but tonight his sh…