My Mafia Husband Used Me to Carry His First Love's Baby

The man who saved me at my wedding was the same man who destroyed it.

It took me three years and six dead babies to find out.

...

"Grayson Whitmore, do you take Sienna Hart to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

The priest smiled at us. Two hundred guests waited behind me in the ballroom of the most private hotel on Miami Beach. My dress cost more than my father's house. My hands were shaking anyway.

Grayson, heir to the Whitmore fortune, squeezed my fingers.

"I—"

The screen behind the altar flickered on.

Light flooded the room. Then the sound came. A girl screaming.

Me.

I knew that scream. I'd heard it every night for a week, inside my own head.

"Turn it off," I whispered. Then louder. "Turn it off!"

Nobody moved. On the screen, a camera shook in a dark room. My torn blouse. Zip ties on my wrists. Men's hands.

A woman in the third row shrieked. Somebody's champagne glass hit the floor. Phones rose like a field of tiny flashlights, every lens pointed at me.

"Oh my God, is that the bride?"

"That's her. Look at her face."

"Get closer, get closer!"

Grayson's hand slid out of mine.

He pulled a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his fingers. One by one. Like he'd touched something rotten.

"Grayson." My voice cracked. "Grayson, please. I was taken. You know I was taken. I told you—"

"You told me you were *mugged*."

"I was ashamed! I was going to tell you everything after—"

"After what? After you had my name?" He folded the handkerchief and tucked it away. His eyes were flat and gray. "The Whitmore family doesn't marry scandals, Sienna."

"I'm the victim!"

"You're a headline."

Then he turned to my maid of honor.

Brielle Monroe. My roommate from college. The girl who had held my hair back when I threw up after the police interview. She stood there in pale blue silk, eyes wide, one hand pressed to her chest.

Grayson took the ring box from the best man. My ring. The four-carat diamond his grandmother had worn.

He slid it onto Brielle's finger.

"I should have done this a long time ago," he said loud enough for the cameras. "It was always you, Brielle."

She gasped. Then she cried. Pretty, shining tears.

"Gray, I never wanted it to happen like this."

I laughed.

I didn't mean to. It just came out of me, high and broken, and the whole room went quiet for one second before the whispers came back twice as loud.

"She's lost it."

"Poor Grayson."

Somebody shoved me from behind. My heel caught on the hem of my gown and I went down hard on the red carpet. My palms burned. A shoe came down on my train. Then another. Black prints spread over the white silk like bruises.

"Smile for the internet, sweetheart!"

A reporter crouched right in front of my face with his phone.

I curled into myself. I wanted to disappear. I wanted the floor to open.

*Bang.*

The screen exploded.

Glass rained down behind the altar. The video died mid-scream. People dropped to the floor, shrieking.

The ballroom doors stood open. Six men in black suits walked in. And in front of them, a gun still raised, came Maddox Kane.

Everyone in Miami knew that name. Nobody said it above a whisper.

He lowered the gun and handed it to the man beside him without looking. The room had gone completely silent. Even Grayson had stepped back behind Brielle.

Maddox walked straight down the aisle. He stopped over me.

Then he knelt.

He shrugged off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders. It was warm. It smelled like cigarettes and cedar.

"Can you stand?" His voice was low, only for me.

I shook my head.

"Then don't."

He gathered me into his arms and lifted me like I weighed nothing. My dirty train dragged over the carpet. He turned slowly, so every single person in that room had to look at him.

"Phones down."

Phones went down.

"Anyone who speaks one more filthy word about this woman," Maddox said, "speaks it to me first. Anyone who posts that video, I'll find. Understood?"

Nobody answered. Nobody breathed.

He glanced at Grayson. "Whitmore. You're a coward."

Grayson's jaw went tight. He said nothing.

Maddox set me down gently on the front pew. Then he snapped his fingers.

His men carried in ten wooden crates and set them in a row along the aisle. One of them pried off a lid. Gold bars caught the chandelier light.

A gasp swept the room.

Maddox took a small velvet box from his pocket and went down on one knee in front of me. In front of all of them.

Inside sat a pink diamond, rare and huge.

"Sienna Hart."

I stared at him. "I don't even know you."

"I know you." Something softened in his dark eyes. "Eight years. I've loved you for eight years. Since you were nineteen and you gave your umbrella to a stranger outside the Brickell metro station."

I remembered the rain. I didn't remember his face.

"What happened to you doesn't make you less," he said. "Not to me. Never to me. Marry me, and nobody will ever touch you again."

My eyes burned. Behind him, Brielle had gone pale. Grayson looked like he'd swallowed glass.

"Yes," I whispered.

Maddox slid the ring onto my finger.

I thought I'd been rescued.

...

Three years later, I stood outside the VIP room of Maddox's private club with a paper in my hand.

*Pregnancy confirmed. Estimated six weeks.*

Seventh round of IVF. Six miscarriages behind me. Six tiny graves in my heart. This time the doctor had smiled.

I raised my hand to knock. Laughter leaked through the door.

"Man, I still think about that wedding." Derek Voss. Maddox's right hand. "The look on her face when the video started. Classic."

My knuckles froze an inch from the wood.

A lighter clicked open. Shut. Open. I knew that sound. Maddox did it when he was bored.

"It got the job done," Maddox said. "Whitmore dumped her on the spot. Brielle got her ring."

"Still. Hiring guys to grab her? Filming it? That's cold, boss."

"Brielle wanted Grayson. I wanted Brielle happy." The lighter clicked again. "Simple."

The floor tilted under me. I put my palm flat against the wall.

"And the babies?" Derek asked. "Six, right? You really swapped her meds every time?"

"Every time. Wrong embryos for the first few. Then I just needed her body ready."

"Ready for what? Why even keep her around?"

Maddox laughed. Easy. Warm. The same laugh he used when he kissed my forehead every morning.

"Because Brielle's scared of pain. She doesn't want to carry a baby. Sienna does. So Sienna carries Grayson's kid, Brielle gets the heir, and everybody wins."

The paper crumpled in my fist.

*Six weeks.* Whose embryo was inside me?

"Damn," Derek said. "And she thinks you worship her."

"She was never my first choice." The lighter snapped shut for the last time. "She was just useful."

I didn't scream.

I didn't cry.

I stood in that hallway with my hand on my stomach, and I finally understood.

The man who carried me out of hell was the one who threw me into it.

And now he had something growing inside me that he wanted to take.

The door handle began to turn.