by Zoey Parker
“Don’t worry, Mom.” I clasped her hands to my chest. “I will never leave you again, Andrei or no Andrei.”
Maybe I could bring her with me. She would need a new doctor, but we might be able to make it work.
Her gaze drifted to my belly. “If he’s a… The contract. If you…you’re thinking about…you came here because you’re leaving him? Running away with his child?”
I nodded, defiant, ready…well, as ready as I could be.
“I don’t know,” she murmured. She freed a hand and touched my stomach. “He will not let you both go. You have to realize that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said stubbornly. I shook my head, but my stomach churned. She was right.
“He has the power, the money, the prestige…” Mom grimaced. “What if he has his men kidnap you? What if he drags you to court? What if he demands his money back because you tried to breach the contract?”
I pulled away and stood, staring down at her. “What are you saying?” I asked, my voice trembling. I wrung my hands. “What do you think I should do?”
“I think…” My mom shifted and stared out the window for a long moment. “I think,” she said finally, “you need to work things out with Andrei, for the baby’s sake.”
Work things out? She couldn’t be serious.
“But you don’t know what he’s done!”
“Has he hurt you?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Do you think he’ll start hurting you?”
“No, but—”
“He’s a man with resources. He would be able to hunt you down, Kelly. If you stay, he’ll make sure you are cared for, that the baby is cared for.”
She had a point.
But he had killed a man. While I didn’t think he would harm me, he was clearly desperate for a child. If push came to shove, would he threaten me? Would he hurt me? I’d like to think he wouldn’t, but did I really know him?
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
My mom appraised me. “There’s something else,” she said quietly. “What else is it?”
“What? No.” I rubbed my throat. She always could tell when I was trying to hide something. “There’s nothing—”
“You feel for him, don’t you? It’s bad enough you signed that contract and got yourself pregnant and now have to give over your baby—”
“I won’t give over my baby,” I said firmly. My hands curled into fists.
“I don’t think you have much of a say in that,” my mom said sadly. She looked so forlorn that I felt torn up about everything all over again.
“I…I can’t. I can’t.” Can’t love him. Can’t leave him. Can’t do anything. I was stuck.
“It is your life,” my mom said. “You aren’t a child. I can’t tell you what to do.”
“If you were me…”
“I wouldn’t have signed the contract,” she said wryly.
“Not even to save your mom?” I asked, crossing my arms. Even she couldn’t deny my intentions were good.
“Well…” My mom considered her options. “I wouldn’t risk leaving. You took his money. You spent his money. Claire. And the chauffeurs. They’re from Andrei I take it?”
“Yes.”
“Were they part of the contract?” she asked.
I hesitated. “No.”
My mom nodded as if that explained a lot. “Did you ask him to provide them?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“So he did that on his own, without any prompting.”
I nodded.
Silence descended. I tried to think, to reason things through, but I couldn’t concentrate. I had been with a few men before Andrei, but I hadn’t fallen for any of them as hard as I had Andrei. With them, there hadn’t ever been a point of time when I thought I might be with them for the rest of my life. With Andrei, I might’ve thought that once or twice, but that had been before I learned for certain of his job and before he told me he had killed a man. He hadn’t told me why he had killed him, and I hadn’t asked.
My mom cleared her throat. “Is he a good man?” she asked quietly.
Was he? For being a mob boss, he wasn’t a terrible man, but that didn’t mean he was good. “I don’t know,” I finally answered.
“What has you running? You came here wanting to leave. Why?”
“I just found out I’m pregnant.” I hunched down, curling into a ball, my arms wrapped around my belly.
“So you got scared?” My mom was watching me closely.
“Yes.” Not a lie, but it wasn’t the complete truth either.
“I don’t know all of the ins and outs about this, but I hate that you felt the need to get involved with a man like him. I hate that I’m sick. I hate that I can’t work, can’t provide for myself, for you. That you would feel the need to—”
“Mom, I did what I had to in order to help provide for us.” And if I went back in time, I doubted I would make another choice. I hadn’t had another viable option.
“I just don’t…” She shook her head and wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“Mom.” I sat back down beside her and hugged her tight. “I don’t resent you. Is that what has you worried?”
She looked back at me, tears in her eyes again. “I’m sorry.”
“You have no reason to be,” I reassured her. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow, but for now, I’m staying right here.”
Yes. I’d stay the night and think things over and figure out what the heck I was going to do. Running might not be the easy option I wanted it to be. My mom made a good point: Andrei would have the means to locate me easily. He had the resources.
But someone was obviously targeting him, someone powerful enough that he desperately wanted an heir. Would he be too caught up in that to worry about me?
Maybe he could easily forget about me, but there was no way he was going to forget about the baby I was carrying.
I had no idea what to do.
Chapter 26
Andrei
Life was looking up. Everything was falling into place. My plan for Mikhail Vasilev was slowly coming together, and Kelly was pregnant. I didn’t need anything else. Revenge and a new start, together.
I was even whistling as I sped along. Happy. Imagine that. Happiness wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed too often, honestly, but that was exactly how I could describe my current mood. Too bad happiness only lasted for a few short minutes.
My phone vibrating from what had to be several calls had me pulling over to the side of the road. I removed my phone from my pocket. Lucas. A bad feeling formed a rock in my stomach and another in my throat.
“What is it?” I asked, not bothering with niceties. If he were calling, he wouldn’t have good news to share. Had something happened to Kelly? Had something happened to the baby? Maybe I should’ve called the doctor as soon as I woke up this morning.
All kinds of scenarios, each one worse than the previous one, ran through my mind as I waited with baited breath for Lucas to answer.
“It’s Kelly,” Lucas said. He sounded nervous. It took a lot to make Lucas nervous. He was generally unflappable, which was why I assigned him to Kelly in the first place.
“What about her?” I growled.
“She ran off.”
I closed my eyes. Out of all the things that could’ve happened, I couldn’t believe it. How dare she run off! My free hand curled into a tight fist. Anger rolled through me. What had she been thinking? Obviously, she hadn’t been. I couldn’t believe she would be so stupid as to endanger herself and our child just because of a spat. Yes, I should’ve known better than to tell her I had killed a man, but I had been pissed that she hadn’t immediately told me when she discovered she was pregnant. She had been playing games with me, so I decided to play back. I wasn’t the kind of guy to take betrayal well.
I hadn’t even given it enough thought as to why she had kept her pregnancy a secret from me in the first place. Why had she kept it a secret? Was she thinkin
g about backing out? About ditching the contract and ignoring our deal? Was she trying to keep the baby from me? The baby I had paid for? The baby I wanted more than anything?
I hadn’t bothered to explain to her why I had killed the man. Maybe I should have, but I had my reasons. One, I would’ve had to tell her everything about Vasilev and my revenge, and, two, my goal had always been to keep her separate from my work life. I wanted to keep her away from that part of me. I cared for her more than I should. It’s not fair for me to want her as much as I do. She could never be safe while with me; that much was clear. The two aspects of my life couldn’t remain separated. If she was going to be the one to give me my child, she would need to understand what exactly she was getting into, and, yes, I had probably done her a great injustice by not being upfront from the start, but how could I be certain she, or any other woman, would stick around to give me an heir if they knew the truth? That not only was I a mob boss but my biggest enemy was on the loose. That I had plans for revenge. That I would kill and kill again. That I had more enemies than just Vasilev. That my life had plenty of danger to it. That my life might soon be ended if I weren’t careful.
And what killed me was that Kelly actually knew or at least suspected how dangerous my world could be. She had been accosted and instructed to give me a threat from one of Vasilev’s goons already. I had no issue with her seeing her mother, but that she had once again left without a bodyguard suggested something much worse. Lucas would know if she had been taken, so if she had left, it was of her own free will.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I needed a level head. “When did she leave?” I asked.
“I…I’m not sure. There hasn’t been any activity to suggest foul play.”
I doubted very much that Vasilev or his men would’ve made a move against my house. Not when I wasn’t there. Maybe it was innocent, and I was jumping to an erroneous conclusion. “Do you think she went to see her mother?”
“The last few times she’s visited, she brought me along with her,” Lucas stated. There was a hint of worry in his voice. There was something else to the story.
“What did she take with her?” I asked, dreading the answer. A migraine was beginning to pound.
“Some clothes. Her purse. Her phone and her phone charger.”
Did she plan on returning? I doubted it, and yet I hoped my doubts were unfounded. Kelly was smart. She would come to realize that staying with me was her only option. If I weren’t mistaken, I was starting to believe I meant as much to Kelly as she was beginning to mean to me. I never talked to another woman like I did with her. I never shared so much of my future hopes and dreams with another woman. The others had solely been about the sex, and while that had been the very reason why Kelly and I got together, it had changed and morphed and became so much more.
Not just for me…right?
“When did you first realize she was gone?” I growled out, putting the call on speaker so I could continue driving and floor it back to my house. I could have some of the men searching for Kelly while a few could start to set in motion a trap for Vasilev. Maybe we could set up a fake meeting between him and pose as Sanchez Trucking. But I couldn’t concentrate on my revenge. Not with Kelly gone. “How long ago?”
“About an hour ago. I tried looking for her everywhere—”
“Why didn’t you call me immediately?” I barked.
Where would she go?
Change of plans.
“Call me if she returns home,” I instructed.
“Are you sure? I can go and—”
“You lost her,” I snapped. “I’ll go find her.” I ended the call and dialed the hospital her mother frequented. A few lies and I was able to learn Kelly’s mother wasn’t there as a patient or for receiving treatment. Which had me making an illegal U-turn and racing along to Kelly’s house.
Let her be there. Let her be safe. Let her not be in trouble.
I had felt on top of the world when I left Sanchez Trucking, but now, my carefully made plans were falling apart at the seams. I had been so busy digging around for intel about Vasilev that I had been blinded to Kelly and her needs. I had thought our having sex was the first step to overcoming out disagreement, but I had been wrong. Now she had run off.
What if she hadn’t run off? Yes, her packing things meant she intended to, but what if while I had been making moves on Vasilev, Vasilev had been closing in on his own plans against me?
A sudden premonition that his men had captured her while I had been out gathering info made me break out in a cold sweat.
But this wouldn’t be on her. This was all on me. On my life. On my job. On my quest for revenge. On my desire to make Mikhail Vasilev pay for taking my family away from me. If I hadn’t played games, if I had just launched an all-out attack on him as soon as I learned he was back in town, none of this would’ve happened. I had been selfish by wanting revenge and by wanting to have an heir. I had endangered Kelly and our unborn child.
Driving like a mad man, I blazed past red lights and ignored honking cars, shouts of profanity, and raised middle fingers. What little luck I had enabled there to be no cop cars in the vicinity, and I pulled up to Kelly’s place in no time at all.
I didn’t even bother to turn off the car. I just threw open the door and jumped out. Without stopping to catch my breath, I raced to the door and pounded my fist onto it.
A woman who looked very much like Kelly if she were sickly opened the door. Her gaze settled on my face, and her lips pursed, her red-rimmed eyes filling with rage. “You…you’re that guy who paid my daughter to bear his heir, aren’t you?” she demanded.
I wasn’t used to being talked to in such a tone, but I let it pass. “Yes. Kelly. Where is she?”
Kelly’s mother glowered at me. She crossed her arms. Her leaning against the doorjamb didn’t impede her tough woman stance. She obviously needed it for support, but she was definitely a fighter. Too bad her body was warring with her. “Kelly went outside,” her mother finally said, heaving a sigh. “She told me all about you and…she went out and was taken. I was just about to call the police—”
“Don’t!” I shouted.
She took a step back, wide-eyed. “Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded.
“Just trust me. You don’t want the police involved.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You know who took her. She’s in danger because of you!”
I winced. “I’ll get her back. Don’t worry.”
“Of course I’m going to worry!”
“You should try to calm down,” a voice called from inside.
“Calm down,” Kelly’s mother scoffed. “Like I can, Claire!”
Claire came into view. “I know it’s not easy, but you can’t go out and find Kelly yourself. You have no idea where she is or—”
“The police—”
“Involving them might make things worse for Kelly. They also don’t know where she is.” Claire nodded toward me. “He knows. If he promises to get her back, he will.”
“What good are his promises?” Kelly’s mother grumbled.
“I understand why you’re upset,” I said as smoothly as I could — which honestly wasn’t that smoothly at all. I was ready to fall apart. “I will not rest until she is safe. I promise you.”
“And what good is your word? I don’t know you. Kelly doesn’t know you, does she?” She was back to crossing her arms, stern-faced.
“She knows enough,” I said.
“That’s why she wanted to leave you.” She lifted her nose into the air.
I winced again. “I don’t…” I took a deep breath. Fighting with her wouldn’t help either of us. “I have a vested interest in getting—”
“The baby. Or Kelly. Who are you going to save?”
“Both.” The answer came quickly and without thinking. And it was the truth.
Kelly’s mother stared at me long and hard. “Fine. You have one day. If you don’t make any progress on finding her, I’ll call the police the
n.”
“Don’t,” I warned her, almost begging.
“They headed north. Left maybe five minutes ago.”
I hadn’t seen a car peeling out of the lot when I arrived. I must’ve just missed them. I whirled around and marched away, fury building within me. I would burn Vasilev’s world to the ground to get Kelly back.
Chapter 27
Kelly
