Page 60 of The Pakhan's Secret Baby

"We have orders, ma'am." I don't care if he has orders. I'm terrified and I want to leave.

"I don't care about your orders. That is my son and you have no right to stop me from leaving with him." My chest is heaving and the cold is starting to sink into my bones. I notice the wind now, biting at my exposed skin, and realize how stupid I am for thinking I could run barefoot six blocks in the middle of February.

The second guard takes my other arm. Between the two of them my feet barely touch the ground as they drag me back across the yard. I kick at their legs and my voice goes raw from screaming, but my protests are pointless. Lex's cries mix with mine, and the noise is our constant escort until the door swallows all of it and the warmth of the house wraps around us.

Rashid stands at the end of the hall in a robe, his hair pushed back and a glare on his face. The guards stop in front of him, dropping me at his feet. He flicks a glance at Lex who's still sobbing, now reaching for me, and he runs a hand over his face in exasperation.

"Give the boy to my mother," he says.

"You're not taking him from me again," I start, lurching to my feet, but Rashid wraps an arm around my waist and pins me to his body as Anna appears from a doorway behind him in her housecoat. She glares at me with a stony cold expression as she takes Lex from the guards, and my tears well up.

"Please don't do this," I tell her. "He's scared and he needs me right now."

"He needs to sleep," Anna says quietly. "And so do you. Whatever is going on between you and my son can wait until morning." She turns, walking off, and I pound my fists into Rashid's arm, trying to get him to let me go.

"This is not between me and your son. This is about my child and my right to leave this house with him," I shout after her. It doesn't make her turn toward me again, so I turn on him, clawing at his skin to make him let me go.

"Fuck's sake," Rashid grumbles, lifting me effortlessly with one arm. He balances me on his hip as I continue clawing and kicking, and he marches back up the hallway into a part of the house I've never been in.

"Where are you taking me?" I snarl, not quite ready to give up fighting.

"To bed."

"I'm not going to your room, Rashid." I'm frantic now, thrashing in hopes he'll drop me. "Take me to my room."

"You climbed out a window with my son in the middle of the night," he says. "You're not going back to your room."

The door to his bedroom opens and he carries me through it.

My feet plant hard and both hands shove against his chest, but he absorbs it and kicks the door shut behind us.

He walks me backward until my legs catch the edge of the bed.

"Let go of me," I say through my teeth. "I swear to God if you don't let go of me right now I will scream this house down."

"You've been screaming since you got here, and nobody has come to save you," he says. "Lie down."

Rashid pushes me until I'm prone, and then he climbs onto the mattress and pulls me into his body where I'm trapped and I can't move. When his leg drapes over mine, I can't even kick him.

"You can't keep me in your bed like some kind of prisoner."

"I'd like to sleep now," he says, yawning.

His arms drapes across my waist to hold me still, but I twist and fight, trying to drive an elbow into his ribs. But he holds me against his chest effortlessly.

Every name I can think of comes out of my mouth in a string of insults, but my body gives out before my anger does.

The fight drains away and leaves me limp and breathing hard. It's useless to continue struggling when he's so much stronger than me.

I lie there trying to calm myself, but the emotion of the past thirty minutes overwhelms me.

I need to get out of here, because I need to make sure my father is safe.

When I agreed to stay forever I did so thinking they wouldn't harm him.

But when I saw him on that security feed, I saw blood. I know they hit him.

"Is my father alive?" I ask quietly, much more subdued than a few minutes ago.