I don’t even want to think about what they would do if one of Vigo’s broken dolls had become pregnant.
The same thing they would do to me if Nikolai hadn’t made me a Mikhailov.
Oh, God.
Don’t think about it.
Doctor Lombardi pulls me back to reality as he squirts a gel on my bare stomach—I hardly remember lifting my shirt. I watch the screen carefully, though I don’t really understand what I’m seeing. I don’t understand until…
I see the outline of the baby.
I see the outline of my baby.
“There it is,” Doctor Lombardi says. “You see? Moving a lot.”
I blink at the screen. It wasn’t real until this moment. It was just two pink lines on a stick until just now. Now…now it’s real…so, so real.
Doctor Lombardi tries to measure the baby, but the tiny squirming thing is moving around so much that he has to wait until he’s still. Until then, it’s just quiet, and we watch. Tiny limbs that look like arms wave and his legs kick as his body wriggles.
God, it looks like he’s dancing.
My baby’s dancing inside me.
Doctor Lombardi is clicking buttons on his machine with one hand as he performs the ultrasound with the other. “Heartbeat is strong. Good. Baby is measuring about twelve weeks and five days. You were right, just about three months. A few more days and it will be your second trimester.”
“Is it a boy?” I’m eager as I ask.
“It is a little too early to say with imaging alone. But I will do a blood test to find out. Signora Vittori would like an early gender result, as well. I don’t know whether she’ll share that information with you.”
“It’s my baby.”
“Yes,” he nods, “I understand. But I am…limited.” He gives a sympathetic smile.
I understand what he means by limited, and though it makes me feel indignant, I can’t fault him for those limitations. What I know for now is enough—the baby growing inside me is healthy and strong.
And apparently, a dancer.
He finishes his exam and starts talking to me about nutrition and exercise during the pregnancy, but I don’t hear a word of it. The image of my baby dancing keeps swirling through my thoughts and the feeling it gives me is indescribably perfect.
A perfect image to chase away all the bad ones.
But even that perfect image can’t keep them away forever because I know there’s so much bad yet to come.
I’m not safe.
Ezra’s not safe.
Our baby is not safe.
Even if they kill us and keep him, he will never be safe with them. This is not the life I want for my baby.
I’ll lay down my own to make him free.
Chapter 10
Ezra
I’m caged like a fucking animal and all I want to do is claw the life out of my jailer.
I’m out of my mind with worry over Anya and whether she’s okay. They said she’d be treated like a Mikhailov wife, which I guess sounds okay in theory, but these fuckers think in such warped ways that it’s impossible to know for sure.
Luca—Renata’s current boy toy—told me that this is the same cell they kept Anya in when she belonged to Vigo. It makes my insides boil with rage, heartache, and guilt.
So much goddamn guilt.
I can’t help but blame myself for the fact that she was ever sold to that creep in the first place. I’d been the one to suggest we have sex for the first time in her room at Mikhailov Manor after our performance together as talent slaves—it was the reason we’d been caught by Nikolai.
We could’ve done it in any room in that mansion. Or at the least, I could have gone right back to my room after the first time we did it in her bed. But I’d been selfish, refusing to leave until we were both fully satisfied and beyond aching for rest. Because of that, we fell asleep and got caught.
That’s my fault.
It’s my fault she was sold and my fault she was kept in this stupid transparent box.
I’m agitated, exhausted, frustrated, driving myself insane with worry. Not to mention the way adrenaline pulses through my veins with a steady thrum, insistent that I keep moving, keep fighting, fighting to get out of this small space. I fight and pace and fight and before long, I’m fighting just to stay awake...just to stay upright.
Eventually, I let myself sit on the mattress that rests on the floor. I realize that Anya slept here, night after night, trapped in this cage, only to be taken out and tortured in ways I can’t even let myself imagine.
I’d witnessed her last horrific torture with my own eyes, and I consider us lucky that I was able to pull her out of that tub in time. It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever experienced. Vigo had tied the mirror so tightly to the top of the tub that I honestly thought I might not get it off in time. There was a moment where I thought she would drown and I wouldn’t be able to save her, a moment where I feared pulling her lifeless body from the water.
I’d been so overwhelmed with fear and the chemical rush to keep fighting that it hadn’t even occurred to me to drain the fucking tub until the moment the mirror started to budge. If she’d died because of my stupidity, I would never have forgiven myself.
Fuck.
I would’ve killed myself because nothing matters without her.
Nikolai told me once that my impulsivity would destroy me. Well, if impulsivity made me that fucking stupid, then I guess he was right.
If anything happens to Anya, it will destroy me.
The girl in the box next to mine has fallen asleep and suddenly, I’m desperate to sleep, too. I let myself lay down, reasoning that it’s okay for me to sleep, good for me to sleep. If I get the sleep I need and take care of myself, then I’ll have the strength to keep fighting for her.
When I finally lay down, I swear I can smell her.
She always smells like fresh-cut roses.
Floral, fragrant, sweet, but heady.
Undeniably her.
The scent of my blue-eyed girl is all over this mattress and I revel in it.
It smells like home.
And because it smells like my home, I can feel her with me. We’re apart, but at least we’re in the same home…in the same country. At least I know she’s not here, trapped in a box like me.
At least she’s okay for now.
I close my eyes and fall asleep thinking about her blue eyes, her warm smile, and the electric touch of her skin.