He said he loved me back. It was in the heat of passion, but I believe him. I want to believe him. If he loves me, then he’ll love this baby. That’s how it’s supposed to go, anyway.
I sit up in bed, pulling my knees to my chest. My mother died in childbirth and my father blames me for it.Hatesme for it. If something should happen to me and Anton is left to raise this baby on his own, I would never want to doom someone else to the same fate as me.
I guess I won’t know anything for sure until the moment I tell him. I throw the covers off and get out of bed. It’s better to get it over with. Maybe sitting in the kitchen, talking over bowls of ice cream, it’ll go down easier…
I’m pulling my panties up when I hear a noise somewhere downstairs. Sounds like something was dropped. He must have dropped a bowl or something.
I put on my T-shirt and start hunting around for my jeans when I hear a louder clatter. It startles me as it echoes loudly from the other side of the door.
What the hell is going on down there? I’d better check on him.
I open the door and there’s a man standing there, dressed all in black and wearing a mask over the lower half of his face.
Panic grabs me and I try to shut the door. He pushes it open and the force throws me backward. I stumble and nearly fall over as another man comes in, his face covered too. The first one looks me up and down, a menacing smile in his eyes.
He glances at his partner and through the mask I hear him say in Russian, “Grab those pants.”
He goes to grab my jeans off the floor and the first one lunges at me. I scream, scratching and kicking at him. He lowers his head and lifts me up off my feet and throws me over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” I hear him say.
I’m being carried out of the room and in the opposite direction of the staircase. They get all the way to the other side of the hall and suddenly, my captor is leaning down and pushing me out of a window. The last thing I see before I’m grabbed from the other side is Anton as he reaches the landing.
The second man fireman carries me down a ladder and I hear shouting above me. Anton calling out to me. I scream his name and kick my legs, which makes the man holding me teeter a little on the ladder. He grips me tighter with his arm and speeds up climbing down.
It’s seconds later and we’re on the ground. I’m carried to a nearby car that’s parked on the lawn on the side of the house and thrown into the backseat. The guy slams the door closed and it locks almost simultaneously. He hits the top of the car and we’re off. The car speeds off toward the lot in front of the house, then to the lane leading out. I manage to sit up long enough to see us barreling toward the open gates of the property.
“Where are you taking me?” I scream. The driver doesn’t answer me so I throw myself at him, clawing at the fabric of his ski mask from the backseat. The car swerves, but he keeps control of the car with one hand and grabs my wrists with the other and pushes me back. I go to jump at him again, but I hear the familiar click of a gun.
He half turns to me, the barrel of a gun pointed at me. “Sit back and shut the fuck up if you want to get out of this alive.”
I listen to him, terrified. Who are these people? Where am I going?
I startto recognize the part of the city where I grew up about thirty minutes into the drive and it becomes clear. This was my father.
Of all the ways I thought he might react to finding out that I was living with Anton, I certainly didn’t expect a full on kidnapping. I ride in the backseat of the car, watching familiar streets pass us by, and all I can think about is how he just couldn’t let me go. I know that my leaving wasn’t the offense. He wanted that. Sleeping with a colleague was where I went wrong.
Anton is probably going crazy with worry. When I get home, I’ll have to find a way to call him…
Shit. My phone is still in Anton’s safe. Not that I’d have it anyway. They stole me out of the bedroom in only my T-shirt and panties. Speaking of which, I’m cold. I try tucking my legs up under me on the seat in an effort to get some body heat going, but it’s not helping.
I start to see my old neighborhood. Old acres of land and mansions separated only by hedges… and there’s my father’s house. The car turns onto the property and slows down as we get to the circle driveway in front.
The car comes to a stop and another car pulls up next to him. As the occupants get out, I realize that I recognize one of them. The one that told the other to grab my pants has taken off his mask. He’s tall and lanky and his dark hair is short and slicked back.
But the dark eyes I know. Those eyes belong to Arseni.
Of course my cousin is in on this. He’s been under my father’s thumb since we were seventeen years old. He goes to the backseat of the car and grabs my blue jeans, then walks over to the car I’m in.
The driver lets the window down and Arseni throws the jeans at me. “Put them on.”
I’ve got a good mind to call him out. He was always such a little twerp. Playing with matches and stealing his mother’s good knives… He was a nightmare when we were children.
Now, he’s just one more member of my father’s Bratva. I put on the jeans while he watches. Once they’re on and buttoned up securely, he nods to the driver to unlock my door and he lets me out.
He grabs my arm and I yank it away. “I can walk fine, thank you.”
He lets me walk while he and the rest of his goons surround me. I guess just in case I run. I’m barefoot. I don’t know how far they think I could get if I did run.
