Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85156 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here and make sure he’s okay. But he keeps at me until I agree to go take care of myself.
Two Kucherov men have been stationed outside his door since we took up residence, first in the ICU and now in the intermediate care unit. Big, hulking men no one wants to mess with. I say goodbye to them as I leave, but not before extracting a promise they will watch out for him. I know they will, but it makes me feel better.
I drag myself home and dimly realize “home” for me has become Evgeny’s estate.
I’m asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow, and I don’t wake up again until the following day, exhausted, fuzzy-headed, and wondering where the hell I am because this isn’t the hospital.
By the time I’m out of the shower and dressed in something other than my sweatshirt and leggings, Alona has breakfast and coffee ready for me. When I sit down, even though I should be ravenous, I’m not all that hungry. My stomach is still queasy from yesterday’s realization about my brush with death.
I push my food around my plate and raise my head to find Alona watching me, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I think all the stress has gotten to me. I’m not feeling great.”
“You have stomach pain?” she asks, her accent so thick I’m glad my father trained my ear.
“No.”
Her mouth bends into a frown. “You vomit?”
“Yesterday.”
“Fever? Chills?”
“No.”
Something sparks in Alona’s eyes. She must have a feeling about what might be wrong.
I have that feeling too. It won’t leave me alone, a quiet whisper in the back of my head that grows louder and louder. It gets so loud I stop at the drugstore on the way back to the hospital and buy two pregnancy tests. Then, because I can’t believe what I’m doing, I stop at a coffee shop and lock myself in one of their bathrooms, trying to work up the courage to pee on the damn stick.
I pee on the second stick because I can’t believe the results of the first.
I find myself in a coffee shop bathroom, entirely alone, staring down at two pregnancy tests that are undeniably, unquestionably, and extremely positive. The double lines are bright pink, almost mocking in their intensity.
“No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This can’t be happening.”
Someone knocks on the door.
“In a minute,” I call, my voice high and tight with panic.
No, this isn’t possible. I’m on birth control. I can’t be pregnant.
Except I skipped almost a week of pills when I’d first arrived at Evgeny’s, before Dmitri got me the prescription I needed. And then the first prescription was wrong, and he’d had to send someone back out to get the right one.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit!
We’d had sex way before I’d been back on my birth control routine for a month.
Several times.
I count back in my head, six, seven, eight weeks.
Fuck!
Someone knocks again, more forcefully this time.
“Miss? Are you okay in there?”
“Uh…”
Am I okay? Absolutely not.
I’m pregnant.
Pregnant.
“Miss? Other people need to use the restroom.”
“I’m coming,” I call, breathless, my fingertips numb with panic and anxiety. My heart feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of my chest.
I shove the tests into the trash, wash my hands, and yank open the door to find a barista with her hand raised to knock again. Several people hover behind her, annoyance written clearly on their faces.
“Sorry,” I mumble and rush past her before she can say anything else.
It’s all I can do to stand on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop and drag in huge gulps of air. Panic washes through my body, and I begin to shake as hot tears press against the backs of my eyes, thicken my throat, and make my nose burn.
What the fuck am I going to do?
21
EVGENY
Ilet my eyes fall shut. The soft wash of light behind my lids deepens the warmth spreading across my skin.
The sun feels incredible after the hospital’s fluorescent glare. Birdsong and the crash of waves far below are minor miracles after nothing but beeps, the whoosh of oxygen, and blaring PA announcements. I can smell salt in the air, the perfume of bougainvillea, and fresh-cut grass. It’s the opposite of the sterile air in my sickroom.
Two weeks in the hospital.
Two weeks that kept me from my duties, from running my business and my Bratva. I remember only one of those weeks, but I spent the rest of the time focused on who I was going to kill once I was out of danger and well enough to go home.
And I know who that person is. Andrei Tsepov. Dmitri and the others assume the strychnine was for Vasya. It was his bottle of wine, after all. But since that day in the restaurant, I haven’t been able to get Tsepov’s warning out of my head. He asked if I knew who my friends were.