Page 36 of Forced Mafia Bride
“I just noticed—for two months…two months, Hannah. No flow. No period. Nothing. I panicked but didn’t want to think much about it because, like I said, we used a condom, but I gotworried and got one of his maids to bring a pregnancy test kit. I’m sorry. I lied to her that you were too shy to request it yourself so she wouldn’t get too suspicious and rattle to her boss. But I…I peed on the stick and….”
I produced the stick from my back pocket and busted into more tears when the shock on her face translated to a gasp.
“It’s positive, Hannah,” I wailed, choking on tears and crumpling into her arms yet again. “The condom…it must have been a fake. It must have broken!”It must have fucking broken.
Now, I was pregnant withhischild.
I blamed him, my inexperience, my recklessness.
“So, he doesn’t know?”
I shook my head, trembling. This secret was mine, and now Hannah’s. Just two of us against the harsh reality of life.
Hannah hushed me, patting my back like a crying baby. She kept a poker face, and it didn’t betray her with any emotion. She just swept my hair behind my ear and comforted me with silence.
After a rather long, devastating moment of weeping, she pulled back with a suggestion that thrust the stake in my heart even deeper.
“You don’t have to keep it.”
It wasn’t the most absurd option. The thought had crossed my mind: I didn’t have to keep it. There was no law anywhere that mandated otherwise. I could get rid of it and be free of the burden once and for all.
But….
“What do you mean I don’t have to keep it?Itis already two months old.Itis practically a human being.”
“Itis not yet born. Consider an abortion.”
“Hannah….”
“Rosalyn, look around. We’re hiding in this shit hole like fugitives on the run from two dangerous men. One who happensto be your brother, and the other….” She shuddered. “I’ve heard things about that man, Lyn. Horrible,despicablethings. Sometimes, I’m not sure who to be more scared of: your brother or him. He is not the kind of man you mess with, andheis one of the two men on our tail. We can’t introduce a child into this picture. That’s a lot to bear.”
“And you think I don’t know that?” The tears found their way up again, and I clutched my chest. “It’s a lot to bear, but the child is already here. It’s a living, breathing thing, and I can’t decide to…unaliveit at this moment.”
She was quiet for a while before speaking up again, her eyes holding back more words than her mouth spoke. “You know what’s going to happen when he finds out you’re pregnant, and his blood flows through that child’s veins, right?”
I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t because I knew what was going to happen: He wouldneverlet me go.
Her fingers slid through her short hair, and the heavy silence hovering between us meant she was as clueless as I was. My decision to keep the baby was only going to further complicate our situation, making our lives more miserable.
Chapter 16 – Nikolai
Two Months Later
Anatoly dragged the unconscious man on the floor, leaving a thick red trail across the room to a chair placed by the wall. He dropped the hefty man on the seat like a sack of weighty potatoes and crouched to his knees to tie him up. The man’s bloodied head lolled forward. Anatoly shoved it back with a grunt, impatiently working the knot on the twine.
Leaning back in my desk chair, my eyes caught and narrowed on the fancy desk calendar. One of Timur’s weird gifts before his quick trip back to Mexico. The date, in small black serif fonts, glared at me.
Two months.
She’d been gone for two months, and there was no word. Nothing but silence. I secretly commended her for being able to maintain a low profile for that long. Honestly, I didn’t think she had that stealth ability in her. Even some of the men had grown weary of keeping an eye out for her. The routes had been closely monitored since her escape, but there were no traces that she had made any attempt to leave the city, and it made me wonder why.
Anatoly successfully finished the last knot. He rose to his feet and flicked the man’s limp head before turning over to my desk. Fishing out a cloth from the inner pocket of his suit jacket, he relaxed on the chair opposite mine, and my mind was too preoccupied to care when he started wiping the blood off his tattooed fingers, one after the other.
I wonderedwhyshe was still here, in L.A., lurking in the shadows. Or maybe she had a plan. Ormaybeshe’d been smart about it. It was possible that she’d found a quiet exitwith the help of someone even smarter. My mind wasted no seconds pulling up Aiden’s picture. The idea that he’d helped her wasn’t improbable. The only problem was that it was unlikely that he had because if Aiden knew Rosalyn was missing, then Ronan knew. And so far, he didn’t. We’d managed to keep that information under wraps.
“So, am I going to leave him here or send him to your brother?”
Anatoly’s voice reminded me that he was in the room. His thumb jerked to the man at the back of the room unenthusiastically. I smoothened a crease on my shirt, supported my elbow on the armrest, and raised an eyebrow.