I swore harshly, walking backward in circles around the table, Daniil following. I didn’t even have the common sense to take the conversation elsewhere, pretty much forgetting anyone else was around but him. “You’ve already done enough. Stay back.”
My period should have come…yesterday. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Fuck!” Puking, smells, the tender breasts, not to mention the unprotected sex. I pointed at him again, shouting, “You asshole!” I was pissed and scared, and Christ, he was the fucking head of the Russian Mafia. I would have a little mafia heir. “I think I’m gonna puke again.” I felt it rising. Especially, as I passed Ember where she sat, staring at her lap with her hands in the air.
Grigori was spouting off harshly to the bodyguards in Russian.
“Beth,” Daniil spoke softly, holding his hands up, trying to look innocent. Too bad it lifted his black shirt up to show his abs a little…and also showed the holster he wore under his shirt. I whimpered, turning the table, using Eva’s chair—God, she was going to have a new little brother or sister soon—to steady me. Daniil kept pace with me, moving slowly even as I moved fast, the bodyguards herding everyone out of the restaurant. “Calm down. Everything’s all right.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit!” I shouted, stumbling. Grigori caught me somehow, and I pushed away from him quickly and started moving again. God, this was awful. My life was over as I knew it. My youth was gone in the blink of one drunken night. Not to mention my parents were going to disown me. No matter how much charming Daniil had done—it was nowhere near enough for me to have his baby.
“Papa, what’s going on?” Eva asked quietly, startling me since the place had gone silent like a crypt. Like my life.
I whimpered. One day my child was going to call a gun-wielding crazyPapa.
“Not the time,” Zane grumbled quietly. But we all heard it.
My attention snapped to him. “You fucking know? How the hell was that possible when I didn’t?”
Zane’s mouth closed. He glanced off to the side, not wanting to enter this.
My jaw clenched, and I looked back to Daniil…and shrieked. He was right in front of me. Moving so quickly, I didn’t even see him. He wrapped his arms around me, smashing me against his chest, saying quickly, “It’ll be all right. You just need to calm down. We can talk about this.”
And…I started bawling.
Ember stomped by, walking like her legs were made of solid wood. “Congratulations.” She banged through the bodyguards and out the restaurant’s door.
I sobbed harder while Daniil held me in an unbreakable embrace.
A half hour later, I was peeing on a white stick proffered by a bodyguard to the head of the Russian Mafia. While said head of the Russian Mafia and his heirs, plus a few stranglers of the United States best security company and New York’s favorite nightclubs, waited outside the bathroom door for the verdict.
Not exactly how I had envisioned taking my first pregnancy test.
These people did nothing privately.
When Daniil and I had gone to my room, hoping for solitude, he explained that he already suspected I was. He had noticed—snooped—that there had been no feminine wrappers in the trash after I had said I was on my period. Then the whole damn gang just barged in through the door—via a magical keycard everyone seemed to have—or through the adjoining door I had locked to Ember’s room. I didn’t even try to get them out. I just kept hiccupping and staring out the window while Daniil consoled me, and ordering one of his guards to buy a test. To say this group didn’t know everything about the other and weren’t involved in everyone else’s business would be only a hopeful dream.
I set the now yellowed stick on the edge of the bathroom sink, pulled my pants up, and flushed. I slammed the toilet lid down before thumping down on it and choked, “Start timing.”
I heard Artur say, “Fuck. It won’t work.”
“Give me the damn thing,” Chloe griped loudly.
I let my head fall into my hands and started counting in my head as they all started arguing outside the door. I was on a minute-twenty when I felt a hand on the back of my head. It didn’t scare me. I knew it was him. The father of my possible child.
Squatting in front of me, he lifted my chin and stared me in the eye. And I lost count. He stayed that way on his haunches, his hands going to my cheeks, wiping away the last few tears I had shed. And while that last minute-forty passed by, his eyes told me that he wasn’t going anywhere. If I were pregnant. Or even if I wasn’t. He wanted more than to be just lovers.
That calmed me. Knowing he wanted me. Just me.
Somehow, he had seriously come to have feelings for me.
And…I liked that idea.
My lips twitched as I took in my first deep breath since the restaurant. “You and I couldn’t be any more fucking different.”
His lips curled. “And that’s the beautiful irony of it.”
“You’re crazy, you know?”
He grinned. “Yes.”
