Ruthless Heir: Chapter 38

By the time we’ve both fully recovered from our injuries, Bianca’s flat stomach has turned round.

It somehow makes her even hotter.

Every time I see her naked, I can only think about how I did that to her. How that’s our child stretching her skin. How it was my cum that filled her up to the brim; that helped start a new life; that made her glow and swell up like this.

It makes me so fucking hard.

And when I get hard, Bianca gets wet.

Shit. Back when I put that baby in her belly, I could have counted on one hand the amount of times I’d fucked her.

Not anymore.

Now, we’ve fucked more times than either of us can count—and we’ve made love on even more occasions.

It doesn’t matter how busy we get, there’s always time to give into our deepest desires and explore our wildest and darkest fantasies.

Sometimes, our pleasure even bleeds into our work.

Hell, that’s what happened just last night.

My pulse quickens at the memory. My cock bulges.

Sinking into my seat, I look out the window next to me. Fluffy white clouds roll over the wings of our private jet. Across from me, Bianca is curled up into a ball, her hands on her belly, protecting our unborn child.

I watch over them both.

It’s almost nice to see Bianca looking so peaceful. But I’m already halfway hard. And there’s nothing I want more than to gently coax her awake, drag her to the bathroom and let the sink hold up her belly as I fuck her brains out… again.

But Bianca needs her rest.

In a few months, we’ll be anointed.

Ray Byrne is stepping down.

Bianca and I are to step up in his place.

The transition will be hectic.

But then, the west coast will be ours.

Shit. It’s still hard to believe.

We’ve been working extra hard to lay the groundwork of our future reign. And that started yesterday.

Two days ago, Bianca and I flew down to the Mexican border, where a notoriously tough biker gang had set up a blockade around some of our most profitable trade routes.

They must have thought it would be easy to pull one over on Ray as he was preparing to retire. But they didn’t take Bianca and I into consideration.

No one did.

We both wanted to set the tone for our new dynasty. We wanted everyone to know what crossing us means.

I can still hear the sweet screams of our burning enemies.

I can still smell their sizzling flesh as it fills the arid desert night.

Fucking hell.

My erection fills at the memory of how Bianca and I fucked in the shadows of those flames.

And I’m not the only one who remembers.

Word of our massacre quickly spread.

By the time we got back on the plane, our phones were buzzing off the hook. Everyone was calling in to swear fealty to us. No one wanted to end up like the bikers.

I told Bianca to rest. I’d take the calls. But she wasn’t having it. My queen wanted to hear the fuckers grovel.

And she knew just how to convince me.

Getting on her knees, my pregnant wife sucked my cock as I took a call from the terrified leader of a supposedly savage cartel. Then, I ate Bianca out as she discussed numbers with an important European syndicate.

The power was intoxicating. Our lust was endless.

But not even my tongue can keep a pregnant woman going for too long. When I spotted the fire fading in Bianca’s beautiful blue eyes, I put my foot down.

She needed to sleep.

Because my queen isn’t just learning to rule an empire, she’s also growing a fucking life inside of her.

Our child.

I’ll do anything to keep them both healthy.

So, I switched off all communication devices for the rest of the flight. I forced her to rest.

Now, I’m wishing I hadn’t.

But it’s not just because my cock is swollen at the sight of her sleeping body.

There’s something else.

Something that I’ve been trying to ignore ever since I nearly died all those months ago, hanging from those cursed rafters in that dark gymnasium.

Something that doesn’t feel like it should be as important as everything else.

But when Bianca falls asleep before I do; when there’s no more work to do for the day; when I’ve turned off my phones and cut out the world, this troubling thought always seems to crawl back inside my mind, no matter how horny or tired or happy I’ve been.

“…What’s wrong, baby?”

It’s like Bianca can sense my restlessness. She stirs awake across from me, stretching out as a yawn drifts out from her perfect pink lips.

“Nothing, myszko. Go back to sleep.”

“You know I can’t sleep when you’re like this.”

“I’m always like this when you’re asleep,” I mumble.

“Well, that would explain why I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Now, do you want me to be well-rested, or do you want to keep holding onto your secrets?”

Her lashes flutter as those crystal blue eyes take hold of my heart.

God. I love her so fucking much.

And that’s such a double edge sword.

Because while I may be the only person in the world who can convince her do something she doesn’t want to do, she has the exact same power over me.

“It’s about my father,” I admit. Leaning forward, I take Bianca’s soft hand in mine.

“What about him?”

She already knows the full story. I told her everything, exactly as Drago told it to me back in the gymnasium. Then, I made sure she knew it was all true after I’d managed to corroborate every last detail myself.

Fuck. It still doesn’t feel real.

“He… he was always supposed to be the villain in my story,” I say, unsure of how to express what I’m feeling. “Kamil Reca—the man who I thought killed my father; the man who I believed took everything from me—he was my father. And I only ever had any hope at all because of his despicable actions.”

“That’s not true,” Bianca sternly insists. “You would have been successful no matter what… and since when have we been bothered by someone else’s despicable actions?”

“Ever since they involved women and children… and drugs,” I sneer, remembering all that I know about the deplorable man.

Drago may have been lying about who Kamil Reca was to me, but before that, he’d never lied about just how depraved the man really was.

I’ve been able to confirm nearly everything. And it’s flipped my entire world on its head.

At times, Bianca’s presence has been the only thing keeping me from losing sight of who I really am.

She’s my rock.

“That’s because you live by a code,” Bianca says, pushing herself up. “Your real father didn’t. But who cares? You don’t have to be like him if you don’t want to be. Forget the bastard. You’re already better than him. More powerful. More successful. Crush him like we’re going to crush the rest of our enemies. Why let him drag you down at all?”

“He’s not dragging me down,” I grunt.

But that’s not true.

“Then what’s the problem?” Bianca pushes. “And don’t tell me there’s no problem, Gabriel. I can tell when something’s wrong with my king.”

“Fine. The problem is that this whole thing is making me hesitant,” I blurt out. “And I don’t like to hesitate.”

“Hesitate about what?” Bianca asks, tilting her head.

She’s knows that I rarely ever hesitate.

“Our story isn’t over yet,” I remind her. Shifting up in my seat, I reach across the aisle and slip my fingers beneath her shoulder strap.

She sinks into my touch as I trace the initial I once carved into her tender skin.

“… Our last name,” she whispers, immediately understanding.

“I don’t want to give Kamil the satisfaction,” I sneer.

“Kamil Reca is dead,” Bianca reminds me. “All of the Recas are. And that includes their disciples. We made sure of that.”

“And they should stay dead,” I respond. “That name should be forgotten. It should be buried forever.”

“No,” Bianca disagrees. Her fingers find the carving she made on my forearm. Then, with her other hand, she brushes over the mark she tattooed beneath my eye. “The name shouldn’t be buried. It should be conquered. Just like we’re going to conquer everything else.”

Fuck.

I’ve created a monster.

A beautiful, strong, ruthless monster.

And she’s absolutely right.

“I fucking love you,” I growl.

Without giving Bianca a chance to respond, I cup her jaw and pull her in for a kiss. I can feel her swollen belly brush softly against my chest as I taste her delicious lips.

“I love you too,” Bianca whispers into my mouth.

“Bianca Reca…” I chuckle, pulling back to look into those otherworldly blue eyes of hers. “Don’t lie, you just want to get rid of that ugly alliteration in your name once and for all.”

“That depends,” she giggles back. “Does Bianca Reca sound better, or does it also sound like the name of some second-class comic book character?”

“It sounds like the name of some badass bitch. It sounds like the name of a queen. My queen.”

“And Gabriel Reca sounds like the name of a king. My king.”

“Then so it shall be.”

Bianca’s crystal blue eyes flicker downwards as she chews on her tongue.

“… Does that mean I get to finish the tattoo?”

Lifting my hand, I hold her palm against my cheek.

“I think that’s only right. In fact—”

Before I can finish, I’m interrupted by the harsh buzz of a ringing cellphone. It vibrates in my pocket at a frequency that makes my hackles rise.

Bianca feels it too.

My phone is supposed to be off.

But there’s a failsafe.

“That’s the emergency line…” she recognizes, her hand falling back onto her belly as I rip out my ringing phone.

“That can only mean trouble.”

Even before I read the incoming message, I’m already sneering.

“What does it say?” Bianca asks.

It takes me a second to realize I’m looking at a series of coordinates.

“That’s somewhere in Poland,” I realize, handing the phone over to her.

“No… You don’t think… Do you?”

My mind is already racing. Standing up from my seat, I begin to pace down the aisle.

For as troubling as the revelation about my father has been, it’s really only a personal issue; a problem that has haunted me exclusively in my downtime.

But there are bigger issues at hand. Issues that I haven’t been able to keep to myself.

“You think these locations could be where your inheritance is hidden?” Bianca asks.

Then, the phone vibrates again.

“Who is it?”

“Uncle Maksim,” Bianca says, furrowing her brow. “He says Rian’s program was finally able to decrypt that encoded message we received last month. Apparently, it contained these coordinates, and nothing else.”

A knot twists in my gut as I realize what that could mean.

No way…

Last month, our private servers went down for an entire day. With Rian’s help, we finally got everything back up and running… but not before the lion found a tiny digital envelope hidden behind all of the tangled wires.

He made it sound like the envelope had been hiding there for a while, and that the outage may have been purposely designed to lead us to it.

But not even the legendary Rian Kilpatrick could find a way to hack into the encrypted package right then and there. Instead, he had to create a program to slowly work its way through all of the intricate built-in locks and traps, all while safeguarding our system against any potential viruses and booby-traps.

The sophistication of the technology immediately made me think of Roz.

Shit.

Just thinking about her and Tytus makes my heart hurt.

It’s been months since I last heard from either them.

In fact, the last time I heard from either of them was when Roz sent me the text that helped us expose Drago’s security system.

Since then, they’ve been radio silent.

It’s been a constant rain cloud over my happily-ever-after. But I also haven’t been sitting on my ass twiddling my thumbs.

I’ve committed a considerable amount of resources to finding my friends—even if I’m not sure they want to be found.

But are these new coordinates going to lead me to them? Or perhaps to the inheritance they were supposed to collect on my behalf…

… Or maybe even to something else entirely…

There’s only one way to find out.

“We need to go to these coordinates, now,” Bianca blurts out before I can. “Even if it’s not where your inheritance is, there may be clues about what’s happened to Rozalia and Tytus.”

Sometimes, I forget about the little bond that Roz and Bianca created.

Hell, they may have only burst into each other’s lives for a quick and violent flash, but Bianca got her first ever kill with the knife Roz gave her. That has to count for something.

Still, Poland is no joke. And it’s definitely not a place to drag your pregnant queen—especially not after what we’ve just been through.

The country’s underworld remains a chaotic and volatile mess, devoid of any structure or steady leadership. And there’s nothing I can do about that until I receive my inheritance—not that I plan on pushing too hard on either of those fronts.

I already have control of everything I need, as well as everything I want.

I have my queen, and an empire to rule with her.

That’s more than I could have ever dreamed of.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “We need to go home. You need to rest. If not for yourself, then for the sake of our child. I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

But I should know better than that by now.

Even with a precious human growing inside of her, Bianca shoots onto her feet like a rocket.

“You aren’t going anywhere without me,” she challenges. “We can make a quick stop to refuel, but after that, we’re heading straight to Poland.”

Fuck.

It makes me so hard when she gets like this.

This is the ruthless queen of my wildest fantasies… and my dirtiest dreams.

And she’s all mine.

“Fine,” I grunt, biting down on my lower lip. “We’ll go together. But Poland isn’t like America. And the people there are harder and more dangerous than any of those bikers. You’ll need to prepare. So, I’m taking you to bed. We can spend the rest of the flight there. End of discussion.”

“You’re taking me to bed, just to get some rest?” Bianca teases, a sly smirk lifting up the corners of her pretty pink lips.

My cock gets so hard it threatens to rip out of my pants.

“No. I’m not taking you to bed so you can rest, myszko,” I respond. “You’ve done enough of that already. We’re going to bed so that I can tire you out. There are too many fights to be had in Poland, and I don’t want to leave you with enough energy to seek them out.”

Pinching her chin, I lead Bianca’s lips up to mine.

“Then fuck going to bed,” Bianca rasps. “Take me back to the bathroom. That was so much hotter.”

“Very well,” I growl, slipping my thumb into her wet mouth. “I’ll take you to the bathroom. And then I’ll take you back to the place where this all began.”

Bianca’s grip tightens around my palm as we step into the darkness.

I would never dare to assume that my queen was scared of anything, but she hasn’t held my hand this tightly in a long time.

Fuck. I don’t blame her.

Even with a veritable army standing watch outside, this site feels irredeemably cursed.

“What is this place?” Bianca whispers, her breath billowing out like smoke.

Ahead, on the other side of the dark doorway, are the charred ruins of a once towering castle.

The roof has long since caved in, and the charred, crumbled remains are bathed in pale moonlight.

Collapsed stone walls rise like claws out of the rubble, casting deep shadows over the wreckage.

The deeper we roam, the colder it seems to get.

“I’m not sure,” I cautiously admit.

The locals wouldn’t tell us shit. Hell, they hardly even spoke at all. Threats. Bribes. None of it worked. No matter how hard we pushed, their thin cracked lips remained sealed.

And we remained in the dark.

And that’s where we are now. In the dark—at least, we are until we step out of the tunneled doorway, and into the moonlit courtyard.

“What’s that?”

Despite the fear I felt in her grip, Bianca’s fingers quickly fall from mine as she leaves my side to investigate something glinting in the moonlight.

“Be careful,” I grunt, quickly catching up to her.

The fractured floor is covered with all kinds of debris. Toppled stone statues lean precariously against the ruins, headless and splintered. Shattered stained glass litters the ground.

This is no place for a woman who’s carrying such fragile cargo—though, it does feel like the exact kind of place a dark queen like Bianca might have once lived.

“What is this…” Bianca trails off as she reaches into the black rubble.

The act causes a small landslide to break out, and a pile of ancient stone comes crumbling down at her feet.

Bianca jumps back. I catch her in my chest.

But not before I see what her landslide has just unearthed.

Instantly, I recognize the black biretta… and the ghastly face gaping up from beneath it.

“The priests…” I mumble, shocked. “Well, one of them, anyway.”

Dry patches of blood stain the dead man’s paper white skin. His once stoic face is twisted into a look of pure horror.

He was screaming before he died.

But what the hell could make one of these dark priests scream like that?

“Gabriel,” Bianca’s warmth shifts against my chest as she lifts something up to her face. “This was in his hand…”

The object glints against the pale moonlight.

A bloody coin.

But not just any coin. A Slavic silver piece, with a very specific symbol engraved at the center of it.

My hackles rise and my fingers curl into fists.

I know this calling card.

“This is where it was,” I dare to realize. “My fortune. And maybe my army too.”

“But who took it?”

The answer looms in the back of my mind like a raging leviathan.

“Shit. Other than the priests, I can only think of three people in the entire world who would know where to find this place… and no one has seen or heard from any of them in months.”

“No,” Bianca gasps. “You… you think this was Drago?”

Taking the coin from Bianca’s hand, I study it, hoping that I’m wrong.

I’m not.

I’ve left coins like this behind at so many gruesome scenes before. But only back when I worked for the dragon himself.

The same dragon who’s been missing ever since we smoked him out of his underground lair.

“He’s still out there,” I grumble. “… But this can’t be him. Drago doesn’t have the resources to cause such destruction. Not anymore. Not without me. Not without Roz and Tytus.”

Before I can finish, the most dreadful fucking thought I’ve ever had drops down on me like a fucking guillotine.

Drago couldn’t have done this.

Not alone.

“What does it mean?” Bianca asks, still stunned.

I let her take the bloody silver piece from my hand as I contemplate the unthinkable.

Without his minions, Drago has no power. No one to lead him to the treasure he’s spent my entire life chasing. No one to do his bidding. No one to fight his battles.

But this doesn’t have to be him.

Two other people have been missing since that battle in the tunnels.

A jagged breath rips from my lungs as I remember how we first found the coordinates to this place.

The digital envelope.

We still don’t know who left it. But I have my suspicions. Strong, gut-wrenching suspicions.

“Fuck…” I curse, suddenly light headed.

No. It can’t be. Not them.

Roz and Tytus would never betray me.

Would they?