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Oh, God. Does he know? How did he find out?
“What are you talking about?” My voice sounds strangely distant. Detached. My ears begin to ring.
Disgrace.
Whore.
I’m hot and cold all at once. I’m frozen in this horror-stricken moment in time, disgusted with myself for ever thinking I couldfall for him. Disgusted with him for pretending he cared. A strange, low buzzing fills my ears, like the swarm of a hundred bees, as he continues his tirade, verbally lashing me.
“This is why you ran, isn’t it? You ran because you were hiding from everyone.”
What? He’s in my space, so close to me I could reach out and touch him. There’s nowhere for me to go.
“Aleks,” I say, my voice raspy and shaky. I hate myself for it. “I didn’t— you can’t?—”
“You had ababyand didn’t tell me.”
Whore.
Disgrace.
Slut.
I move so instinctively, I don’t realize until it’s too late. Fury and injustice well in my chest. Anger bubbles beneath the surface of my skin, clawing at me, only momentarily relieved when I push him, hard.
He stumbles, looking as shocked as I feel.
“I fucking hate you,” I say, emotions blooming into words that make the tears finally fall.
When he reaches for me, I flinch instinctively, but he only pins my arms. With his iron-like grip, he lifts me in the air and binds me in his arms. I open my mouth to tell him everything. To vindicate myself. But I can’t. I’m too angry, too distraught.
I don’t know where he’s taking me or where we’re going, but I was raised in the mafia, and if his family’s any indication, I just committed a cardinal sin.
I want to tell him everything, but that would mean putting myself at his mercy. I want to scream and rage and hurt him, but that would only make my own pain worse.
He’s lifted me straight up in the air, my arms pinned to my sides, and when he gets to the bed, he tosses me on it. I bounce and quickly scramble to the head of the bed away from him.
“You will never raise a hand to me,” he says, shaking with the effort of keeping his temper in check.
“Then stop accusing me,” I snap. “Go ahead. Hit me. A big man like you twice my size with more power in your little finger than I have in my whole body. I’m impressed.”
Anger glimmers in his eyes.
“I told you the truth. I told you what happened to me. And I was going to tell you about my daughter when the time was right. WhenIwas ready. Because no one knows about her, Aleksandr, and if that keeps her safe, I aim to keep it that way. We hardly know each other.”
“The truth?” he spits back at me, marching around the bed to a sideboard. He twists off the lid to a decanter and drinks the liquor straight from the bottle. “Let’s hear it, Princess.”
I clench the bedspread. “I told you I was assaulted. One time. I don’t know who it was. I was drugged. I woke up bruised and hurting with only vague memories of screamingno. I had nowhere to go. No one I could tell.” My voice cracks. “Weeks later, I realized my period was late. I was young and naive anddidn’t know what to do. I had no friends and didn’t trust my family. I hid the pregnancy until I couldn’t anymore.”
He sits in a chair across from me, the bottle still in his hand, but he doesn’t speak.
I clear my throat and continue. “I told you, my father blamedmefor the assault. If I told him I was pregnant, he’d have killed me. I left. Managed to spend the summer in Italy with friends of my mother’s. I don’t think she knows anything, but I’m not completely sure. I came back to America to have the baby. I had her here in New York, in a county hospital.” My voice shakes. “That was two years ago. She’s with a foster family in the northwest corner of The Cove.”
I look away and swipe at my eyes. “The only time I ever left home was to see her. To bring her money when I could.”
He slumps back into his chair. “Fuck.”
That could mean a lot of different things. I exhale. “Yeah.”
