“You’d separate a child—my child—from its mother?”
“I’ll do whatever I see fit,” he said.
The midwife stepped closer to me, then knelt next to me. She reached to grab my wrist, and I jerked it away from her.
“No,” I said.
“No?” she repeated back.
“You’re not touching me,” I told her.
“I told you guys she was feisty,” Quinnlyn said.
“You’re not fucking touching me,” I repeated, narrowing my eyes at Daxyn’s father.
“You act like you have a choice, girl. Either you do it willingly, or the three of us will hold you down,” Daxyn’s father said.
“Ravik, we can’t harm the girl,” the midwife said.
“She will do as we say, or we will,”he said.
She stared at me with eyes that told me she felt pity for me, her mouth in a frown. She let out a loud breath. She closed her eyes and stood up, then turned around to face them.
“Out! All three of you!” she said.
“What?” Ravik exclaimed.
“You heard me, get out. You want me to check her out? You want her to participate? Then all three of you leave this cell,” she said.
The taller guy who had been quietly standing there furrowed his brows at her and studied her for a second before looking at Ravik. Ravik nodded, then all three of them made their way out of the cell, closing the door behind them. She knelt next to me again.
“Listen, I know you don’t want to be here, and you don’t want to let me examine you, but I’m asking you to please let me. They will hurt you at whatever cost, and not lose an ounce of sleep over it,” she said, pleading with me.
“I want to go home,” I begged.
“I’m sure you do, and I wish that you could,” she whispered.
“You can let someone know and help me get out of here,” I whispered to her.
She pulled her head back a little, eyes wide. “You don’t know, do you? Ravik runs this town. He owns everyone in it. They will do nothing against him,” she said.
“Why are you helping him?”
“I was born into this family, born into this blind loyalty, and I don’t want to be on his bad side,” she said low.
“What do you want from me?” I asked her.
“I don’t want anything from you, except your cooperation.”
“What does that mean?”
“I just want to examine you,” she said.
“Okay.”
She grabbed my wrist and flipped it over, placing her index and middle fingers on the inside of my wrist. She looked down at her other hand, where her watch ticked the seconds by. Afterward, she placed a blood pressure cuff on my arm and a stethoscope at the crook of my elbow. She inflated and then slowly let it go. She then moved to listen to my chest, first my heart and then my lungs.
“How far along do you think you are?” she asked.
