As the days blurred by, I noticed the changes in my body: swollen breasts, mood swings, strange cravings, etc. Still, I thought it was just the normal signs of my red friend. My head was always aching, and my back was killing me. It got so bad that I had to ask the maid, Katerina, for some painkillers.
During this period, I made it my mission to avoid Nik like a plague. I just needed some time to myself—I needed space to think and get my shit together. Also, I was afraid to face him after snitching on him to the agency on the very night he took me to have dinner with his family.
I felt like a bad person for planning his downfall right under his nose. But I had to remind myself that if he weren’t guilty, then there’d be nothing to be worried about. My biggest concern wasn’t making a mistake with Nikolai Tarasov.
I couldn’t afford to get caught because there was no telling what the man would do to me. And I also couldn’t afford to develop some kind of attachment to him—nothing at all to link the two of us.
How ironic!
To keep my mind busy with something productive, I buried myself in some menial tasks around the mansion. I cleaned my own room about five times a day, and helped the maids with some chores around the house whenever I wanted to. It was always a tug of war between them and me because they’d rather jump off a cliff than let me help out with their jobs.
Of course, in the end, I always won.
They accorded me a lot more respect than I deserved, even though technically I was still a prisoner. Unlike them, my movements were restricted, and I wasn’t allowed to leave whenever I wanted. Plus, I wasn’t on the boss’s payroll every month.
I kept deluding myself into thinking that I was going to eventually see my period—that it had only shifted a few days further.
However, the day the aroma of roasted garlic upset my stomach so much that I had to rush to the toilet and vomit was the day it began to dawn on me. I might be….
I still didn’t want to believe it, so I pushed that thought to the back of my mind. Why would my first time having sex turn out differently?
My period shift had never exceeded five days, and on day six, doubt started creeping in. But I was still holding on to a fragile thread of hope. By day seven, it was impossible todeny anymore, especially after the head maid, an elderly woman, looked at me and my belly in a very suspicious way.
She didn’t have to say anything about what she was thinking. The message was crystal clear.
I secretly asked Katerina to get me a pregnancy test and told her not to tell anyone. She was shocked by the favor I asked, but she did as I instructed.
This morning, I took the test in the bathroom, and it was positive. I was pregnant. My whole world came crashing down around me, my heart stopped, and my pulse spiked. I wished the ground would open up and just swallow me.
As I sat on the bed, hugging my trembling legs, a million thoughts overlapped in my head. This was a very terrible situation I found myself in—terrifying and embarrassing too. I had no idea what to do now that the monster’s seed was growing inside me.
I hated myself so much for ever letting this happen. If I hadn’t given in to that temptation, I never would’ve been in this predicament in the first place.
Well, it was useless crying over spilled milk. The deed had been done already—the question lingering on my mind was, now what?
I thought about escaping this place—like really putting a lot of effort into finding a way out of here. But to what end? Even if I managed to run away, there was nowhere in the world that Nik wouldn’t find me.
He would come after me—if not for anything, for his unborn child. If I escaped this place, he’d question his guards and the maids about how I managed to pull that off.
Eventually, the head maid would tell him what she had noticed, and under enough pressure, Katerina might expose the little secret I had entrusted to her. Hearing this, nothing would stop Nik from traveling the world to find me.
The mere thought of what he’d do to me if he found me scared frightened me to my core.
I got out of bed and threw my hands on my head, my heart sinking into my stomach.
“This can’t be happening. No, no, no…it just can’t,” I murmured to myself, confused about what to do.
Obviously, running away was out of the equation; there had to be something else. I considered flushing it out of my system before it grew any bigger. However, I couldn’t bring myself to dwell too much on that idea.
I looked in the full-length mirror, watching my own reflection with a pale face framed by wide, frightened eyes.
It would take at least three months before my condition would be obvious. Hopefully, before then, I’d have cracked the case and sent him and his kind to prison for a really long time.
I placed my hand on my belly and blinked back the tears that welled in my eyes. I wasn’t ready for this. But it was here now, and I might as well just face it.
I’d played with fire, and I got burned.
But the game wasn’t over yet.
