Page 27 of Claimed By my Ex’s Uncle

"What are you doing here?" Becky demands as she watches me, looking utterly baffled as to why I have dropped in like this out of the blue.

"Where... where is everything?” I whisper, gesturing to the empty space ahead of us.

She runs a hand through her hair, looking almost annoyed by how little I seem to know. "You really don't have a clue?"

"I really don't," I reply, though there is a creeping dread up the back of my spine that tells me Ilya has something to do with it. How could he not? He's just the kind of guy that would pull something like this, make it so that my home was ripped right out from underneath me. Adding insult to injury after all he’s done to me already.

"Jesus, Rose," she sighs, stepping towards me and resting a hand on my shoulder. "Uh... a lot has changed in the last few weeks, let's just say that."

"No, say more," I insist. "What... what happened here? You moved out when I left, or...?"

"I didn't have a choice," she sighs, planting her hands on her hips as though she can barely believe it herself. "He bought the business, sure, and he shut up shop for a few days, so I was just at home... and then I got a call from the landlord, telling me that he needed to speak to me. So I went down to see what it was all about, and he told me that someone had bought the apartment building from him, and this buyer was setting up all the residents with new homes so that he could rent the place out himself."

My stomach drops. Ilya. There's no way it could have been anyone else. Nobody else I had ever come across would have had the cash to throw around to pull off something like this, let alone the willingness to go to such lengths.

He’s purchased my fucking apartment right out from under me—I could hardly believe it. Or at least I wished I couldn't. Because I’m finally starting to understand just the lengths he’ll go to get whatever he wants, and I don’t know where that ends.

Or, frankly, if it ends at all.

"Yeah, I'm only back here to pick up some stuff," she replies, her brows knitting together. "I need to move some books over to my new place. It's a few blocks away. Pretty nice, I've got to say. Whoever bought it really⁠—"

"Ilya," I whisper. "It was Ilya who bought it."

She frowns. "He told you that?"

I shake my head. "No, but he doesn't have to," I reply, rubbing a hand over my face as it all starts to sink in. "He wants to make it so that I have nothing in my life to rely on but him. And taking my home from me was just another part of that."

"Hey, he hasn't taken your home," she protests. "I moved a bunch of your stuff to my new apartment. You're welcome to live there if you ever need a place to stay."

"What, me and the baby?" I ask her half-jokingly. "Not sure that's going to work."

And even if it did, I know that I would have to be constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure this asshole doesn’t upend another part of my life without my knowledge. I just don't get it, how far Ilya is willing to go to force me under his control. Does he trust me that little? Or is this his way of making sure I know that there’s nothing I can do that he will not have a hand in?

Does he know where I am right now? Did he let me come back here to see for myself exactly how far he went?

I walk around the apartment for a moment, taking it in, how empty it looks, stripped of all the little details that Becky and I poured into it over the years. The paint stripped from the walls, the pictures and magnets removed from the beat-up old fridge, the ancient couch that was drooping in the middle vanished into thin air. All of my old life, gone, like I never lived it at all. I suppose there must be a few of my things left in my room, if Becky is back here collecting some of her stuff, but that doesn’t come close to making up for the amount of shit that has slipped through my fingers, thanks to Ilya.

"I didn't think you were coming back," Becky tells me, her voice laced with apology, like she wishes more than anything she could undo the harm. "If I had, I would have told them no. I would have stopped them from taking this place."

"He doesn't want me coming back," I say, my voice oddly hollow, even to my own ears. "He doesn’t even know I’m here."

"He doesn't?"

She sounds a little panicked. Shit, she's got reason to be. She’s seen for herself how powerful Ilya is, and she hasn't even seen the depths of control that I have. I don’t want anything to happen to her, but it looks like Ilya has gone out of his way to make sure that my life as I knew it has been entirely stripped and sold for parts.

"Do you think he'll be pissed when he realizes you came?" she asks, her eyes sliding left and right as though he might be hiding, lurking in the shadows like a predator ready to strike.

"Yeah. Probably."

"You don't sound worried."

"He won't do anything to me," I reply, gesturing to my belly. "Not until the baby is born, at least."

"You don't even sound scared, Rose," Becky says, her brows knitting together with concern. "You must be able to hear how crazy this sounds, right? This guy bought your work and practically stole your apartment out from underneath you."

"Yeah, I know how it sounds," I concede. "I just... I just..."

The words don't come to me as easily as they did before, a strange sense of calm washing through me. No, not calm, exactly. Acceptance. The clear-headed realization that he has planned for every possibility. That there are escape routes that haven't even crossed my mind yet that he has already shut the fuck down, and there's nothing I can do about it. My home is gone; my work, nonexistent. Everything in my world has spiraled down to this man, and I don't see any way to change it.