Page 146 of Cruel Demands

“Like what?” he asks, but he knows.

“Like—” I push past him, flinching at how much of my space he’s taking.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asks gently.

I gesture vaguely to the glass on the floor as I help his mother off the ground.

“You knew you were pregnant, and you were preparing to leave the country without telling me.”

“I was not preparing anything.”

“You were looking at flights.”

“I was scared. This is happening inside my body.”

“It is my child.”

“And I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“After you landed in America?”

“Maybe.”

“Mikhail,” Nikita warns.

He ignores her. “You are absolutely not going home now. You know that, right?” There it is. Not concern. Not a question. A sentence. A wall going up around me one brick at a time. His control is beginning to crack. I can see it in the tension of his jaw, in the way his hand opens and closes at his side.

The room seems to shrink. I stare at him. “I’m not your property now.”

“I did not say that.”

“You didn’t have to. You don’t get to use this baby like a leash to keep me here, Mikhail.”

His expression darkens. “A leash. You think that is what I am doing?”

“I think your first response was to tell me I’m not allowed to leave.”

“This baby makes you a target.”

“Your world made me a target before the baby existed.”

“I am trying to keep you alive.”

“And I am trying to keep my life.”

His face hardens. “You speak as if I have taken it.”

“Haven’t you?” I ask. Nikita says my name softly, but I cannot stop now. Not after the flights. Not after his first instinct was no. “You decide where I sleep, who drives me, when I need a doctor, whether I can work, whether I can leave the country.”

“I never kept you from working,” he says defensively.

“No. You just told me that they would know where I worked and you could not keep me safe there and made the idea terrifying for me,” I accuse, my heart rate spiking so hard now I think my heart might fly out of my chest.

“I am keeping you safe. I want you here with me, I want my baby—our baby—here with me, and I want you healthy. You have been vomiting.”