Of course, she’s been crying.
You killed her brother.
You’re a murderer!
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
I can’t let myself feel anything for her, for what I did to her brother. Because he wasn’t just her brother; he was a demon spawned from hellfire—a monster in its truest form. He was a man who’d been born with the power, wealth, and privilege to do so much in this world, but he chose to burn it with his hate, his filth, his plague of darkness.
He deserved to die.
He deserved it and so did Nikolai.
Nikolai.
He’s dead, too.
I look down at my hands to see myself unconsciously twist the diamond rings on my finger. The jewelry feels as heavy as the chain he used to clasp around my ankle. I hate Nikolai for these rings—these symbols of oppression and stolen freedom.
Yet, there’s also a twinge of grief. It’s an unwanted grief, like another fist squeezing my heart, though it doesn’t hold on for too long. It lets go before I sink into another panic episode, as I recall that I made a promise to wear these rings for Ezra. The recognition of my choice to belong to Ezra calms my nerves.
Doctor Lombardi leads me into a nearby bedroom on the first floor. He stops at the door and turns to Renata. “Go eat, Renata. I will bring Anya directly to you after the exam.”
Her eyes narrow at me, raking over my form as if I’m a dog who has pissed on her luxurious carpet. I don’t feel badly about it—I feel the same way about her. She doesn’t give me the benefit of speaking English in her response, but the way she jabs a finger in my direction as she talks to Doctor Lombardi gives me a good sense that she’s told him to watch out for any bad behavior from me.
Good.
I want her to feel threatened by me.
The doctor closes the door behind her as she leaves. He turns to face me but stays where he stands, sensing my discomfort in being with an unknown person behind a closed door.
“I’m going to give you a physical. Is that okay, Anya?” His eyebrows lift in question and he waits for me to respond.
Wait…He’s asking me?
Surprised, I nod, though I’m sure it’s hardly perceptible, so I add, “Yes,” with a quiet voice.
He holds his hand out toward the queen-sized bed behind me. “Please have a seat. I promise you, this will be very professional. I have no interest in harming you.”
I swallow, skeptical by nature, though I still feel okay in his presence. Nothing is setting off any alarm bells in my mind, and I suppose I feel a bit calmer now that Renata is gone. I think I will always be skeptical of any man’s intentions with me, except for Ezra. Ezra is my one great exception, my soul mate.
“Okay,” I reply carefully, slowly lowering and perching on the very edge of the bed.
“Renata tells me you believe you’re pregnant?”
“I am pregnant. I took two tests, and they were both positive.”
He nods. “Good. Well, if you feel certain, then I’ll give you an ultrasound so we can see how things are going.”
“How will you do that? You have an ultrasound machine here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He clears his throat. “It’s not my place to discuss. The equipment is here, so let us just feel fortunate for that.”
He picks up a black laptop and pulls up an armchair from the corner to face me at a comfortable distance. He sits, then opens the laptop and starts typing as I sit in silence, waiting, twisting the rings around my finger.
“Just a few questions, Anya. When was your last period?”
My heads snaps toward him. “What?”
“Your last period.”
My brow furrows and I glance down at the floor as I try to recall. But honestly, I don’t know how he expects me to remember something like that. It’s certainly been months, but I don’t know how many. Vigo was practically starving me, so who knows if a skipped period was because of pregnancy or malnutrition. My body has gone through forced and brutal changes because of Vigo.
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “Months.”
He nods, though his eyes remain fixed on his computer screen and whatever it is he’s typing. “Mm-hmm. Do you have any sense of when you conceived?”
I chuckle unintentionally. “I don’t know. I’ve been raped with intense frequency over the past several years, doctor. My understanding is that my last owner stopped my birth control without my knowledge. I could’ve fallen pregnant anytime over the last six months.”
“Mm-hmm. And do you think you are six months pregnant?” His eyes dip down over the laptop screen, scanning my relatively flat stomach.
Naturally, one of my hands float to rest over my belly button and I look down, too. I feel stupid now to think about it. I had noticed a slight difference in my shape before, but I wrote it off as being a result of my malnourishment and the fact that I couldn’t care for myself properly.
“No,” I finally respond to Doctor Lombardi’s question.
“So, can you give me a guess as to when you might have become pregnant? It will help me to judge healthy development when we do your ultrasound.”
I start to shake my head because I truthfully don’t know when I conceived. But I know when I hope I conceived, so I tell him, “Three months.”
We were at the Leblancs’ three months ago. Three months ago, I had sex with Ezra and Nikolai on the same night. Three months is an estimate that gives me the hope that this baby might not belong to Vigo—even having Nikolai’s baby feels somehow better than that.
I think I know the truth in my heart, or at least, I hope I do. I saw what I want to be the truth so vividly in my dream. That truth is that this baby belongs to Ezra by some absolute miracle, because the odds of that being true are poor at best.
Doctor Lombardi goes through an exhaustive list of health questions, only stopping when we both hear my stomach growl. I need to eat and I’m glad this man at least seems to have the understanding that we need to move this along.
He asks me to lay on the bed as he rolls a cart around with the ultrasound machine. I can’t imagine that the Vittoris just happen to have an ultrasound machine sitting around. The doctor must have brought it here for some reason.
Perhaps she called him and he arrived with it last night. If not, someone else in this mansion must be pregnant, too.
Heaven forbid Renata should ever reproduce, though I wonder if that’s even possible for her in her early forties. The only other women who live in this house are the elderly Vittori mother who I never did meet, children of Vittori cousins, and…the slaves.