Carried harshly in muscled arms was one mode of transportation. Other times, I was forced to run with the hard press of a gun poking my back. Then there was the blurring memory of being tossed into a trunk, urged to get on a boat, a plane, then some more.
According to my best estimate, which seemed hazier with every passing day, I had been relocated and moved in captivity for weeks. Two and a half? Three?
The longer I was deprived of using my senses normally, blindfolded and kept in the dark, the more it increased the confusion in my mind.
And the more that I was held like this, separated from the man I was ready to align with for good, the worse my heart sank that this would be the end of my life.
When a month came to pass, I tired of this desperation to stay alive. I wasn’t an animal to cage up and relocate. I wasn’t a toy to displace and ignore.
In the embers of rage that my captivity couldn’t extinguish, I resolved to never break. To never give up.
My baby kicked within my belly, a physical reminder of why I had to fight so strongly. All my life, I'd vowed to make the world a safer place, but in the position of bringing a child into existence, I had to home in on how to make that happen for him or her.
I had to survive so I could give this baby all the love and safety possible.
I had to endure and make it to another day because this couldn’t be the end.
Hungry, thirsty, tired, and disoriented, I clung to the fading hope that this just couldn’t be the end.
They didn’t want to end me, at least.
Instead of beating me, orders were given to the thugs to leave me be. No one outwardly touched me. No one bothered with me to make me fear the horror of rape. And no one ever seemed to touch my stomach as a means of wounding my baby. That didn’t keep me from holding my handcuffed hands over my growing bump, using my arms to shelter this new life.
Because I wasn’t starved or beaten, I learned early on that whoever had taken me saw me more valuable alive than dead.
It was a small mercy.
A slight silver lining.
But on the tails of that thought, I had to consider why I was taken.
If I was supposed to be relatively unharmed and alive, they had to want something from me. Due to my career of spying on crime families and obtaining intel about a variety of Mob bosses, I convinced myself that whoever ultimately wanted me was after the secrets and facts I could share.
Please. Please let this be the last day.
Something had to give. Something had to change. My sanity was about to snap with this constant darkness, being hooded and deprived of knowing where I was in the world. My baby was growing faster, heralding the end of my pregnancy.
Are they waiting for me to deliver? Did they take me to hold me until I am in labor, just to take my child?
That was a real and present fear I couldn’t shake. Despite my loose concept of the date, I felt how much further along I was. How my body changed more and more. If I were to go into labor early, I could do so like this. Blindfolded, handcuffed, and without any medical care.
No. It can’t happen.
I squeezed my eyes shut again, forfeiting the view of the alley where I’d been chained up.
If I focused hard enough, I could relive the security Emil showed me when he put his hand on my bump, as if he wanted to help hold the burden of the weight on my body. To shelter this new life we’d created in the midst of so much antagonism and unshakable desire.
These moments of revisiting those memories were all that could keep me going, to encourage me to stay strong and hold on.
Something has to give.
If I wasn’t taken in that coordinated raid for the sake of their taking my child, there had to be a motive behind it all.
Yet, that wasn’t so easy to discern, either.
I was taken and moved, but per the sounds of a fight, others had captured me again. Then once more, based on the sounds of fighting, I was recaptured by another. Hearing too many different voices and accents threw me off. They never spoketome, other than to interrogate me on what Luka Dubinin planned.
I told them nothing. Obviously, I had no clue what Emil’s father planned. I was in the dark, literally and figuratively.
