Free Monster: Made & Broken (A Mafia Bad Boy Romance) by Nora Ash

the sole. He dug a hand into one pocket and produced a couple of bandages, a small metal pot, and a pair of tweezers. Then, with a firm grip on my ankle, he began plucking small shards of glass from my damaged foot.
    I winced and whimpered all the way through, and had to steel myself to not kick him when he pulled at some of the deeper splinters, but the salve he rubbed on after was soothing and his fingers impossibly gentle while he covered the wounds with a bandage.
    After he was done with my second foot, he wiped his salve-covered hands in his pants and finally looked back up at me.
    “ Thank you,” I said softly. “You didn’t have to do that.”
    He didn’t respond, his face still disturbingly grim—an expression that completely contradicted the gentleness with which he’d tended to my damaged feet.
    But despite his persistent anger with me, the fact that he had taken care of my wounds made something inside of me click into place. I might have seen him brutally slaughter another human being, but as I looked down at him from my perch on the chair, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.
    “ I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want to lie to you, or steal. Brigs… I owe him a lot of money, so I…”
    “ You’re a honey trap,” he said calmly, though his expression never changed.
    “ Yeah.”
    “ You’ve done this before.”
    I opened my mouth to protest, but I doubted he cared about the differences between what I’d done in the past and what I’d done to him. “I didn’t want to do it to you too,” I said softly. “I know you probably don’t believe me, but… if I hadn’t, Brigs would have hurt me.”
    “ He hurt you anyway,” he said, letting his eyes linger on my swollen eye.
    “ Is that why you killed him?” I don’t know what made me brave enough to ask, but the words tumbled out of my mouth before I could reconsider.
    Marcus looked at me for a long moment, but he didn’t reply. Instead he said, “You put yourself in harm’s way to protect me and my family. I am grateful. But I can’t let you leave. I hope you understand that.”
    I gaped at him, caught between shock that he said he was grateful to me and worry over what he meant by not being able to let me leave. “Why not?”
    “ You saw what was on the video. I can’t risk Brigs or anyone else catching you again,” Marcus said as he got up from his kneeling position. He began to pace back and forth in the small cell like a lion in a cage.
    “ I promise, I won’t ever use it against you. I won’t tell anyone. Just let me leave, please,” I begged him. “I won’t ever return to England.”
    “ Perhaps you are telling the truth. Perhaps not. But that doesn’t make the threat to my family any less. Brigs could find you. Or someone else could. We have many enemies and no room to take chances.”
    “ What if…” I looked up, an odd bolt of hope spreading in my stomach. It was an insane idea—he was a killer , and he had every reason not to want anything more to do with me, but… “What if we made a deal? You protect me from Brigs, and in return I stay with you.”
    He stopped his pacing, arching an eyebrow at me, and I grimaced.
    “ Not here, not like a prisoner. In your flat. I’ll… be your companion. I’ll make your food, do your laundry… share your bed.”
    His brows furrowed as he stared me down, and some of my enthusiasm withered under his gray gaze.
    “ Okay,” he said after what felt like several long minutes, surprising me.
    “ Yeah?” I asked, relief slowly starting to seep through my battered body. It might technically be prostitution, but it didn’t feel like it. Not with him.
    “ On one condition,” he continued, leveling me with an inscrutable stare. “You agree to have my child.”
     
    * * * *

Chapter 10
    Evelyn
     
    “ Your child?” I repeated, not entirely sure I’d heard him right. “I… what? Why?”
    “ I want a family,” he said without a hint of emotion in his voice, as if that was all