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“I’m going to get cleaned up,” Gavril was saying as I wrapped my arms around my waist. “And we can have dinner in the dining room tonight if that suits you.”
I nodded, thinking that he hadn’t ever asked me what I wanted before. “That sounds nice.”
I heard him walk away and when I was certain he had left, I turned toward the empty doorway, biting my lower lip. It wasn’t like I had any other option but to stay here right now. Once he learned about the baby, he was likely to put me on complete lockdown. After all, the child was part of his plans.
Not me, though.
I was just the vessel to make it all happen.
Walking over to the wardrobe, I opened it and pulled out some clothes for tonight, including a sheer black top and comfortable satin pants that reminded me of something out of Aladdin. Under the top, I put on a cami and pulled my hair up into a messy bun on top of my head. The diamonds at my ears and throat twinkled in the light of the bedroom, and I thought about removing them just for spite. Wearing his diamonds now felt like shackles on me, like a sign that he owned me.
But in a way, he did.
Becoming pregnant had irrevocably linked us for life. I couldn’t get Gavril Kirilenko out of my system. I could push him out of my life, but it wouldn’t work.
Not if I wanted to see my child in the future. A child that we had created together. And nothing, no matter how much I hated or feared him, would change that.
I took one last long look in the mirror, seeing the tightness around my eyes and the strain in them. I was going to have to confront him sooner or later. I couldn’t just sweep this under the rug and move on like another wife might do. It was wrong on so many levels, and he needed to know at least how I felt about it.
“Don’t worry,” I murmured, placing my hand over my stomach. “You will be safe. I swear it.” I didn’t think that Gavril would have any intentions of harming our child. Secretly, I hoped she was a girl. Would Gavril see the correlation between what he was doing and what could happen if she had been born to another family?
How could he not see his sisters or me out there among those women?
Tears threatened my eyes and I forced them back, straightening my shoulders as I did so. I was stronger than this. If Ilsa had been here, she would have told me to keep my chin up and my eyes wide open. I had gotten myself into this mess by not fighting back, and I had known who Gavril was when I had fallen in love with him. I could place the blame on him, but there was a measure of guilt that I shared with him.
He hadn’t forced me to have the feelings I had about him. Those had come along, and I had fostered them instead of fighting back.
Because the ugly truth was, I did love him.
I’d wanted to believe that he was a good guy, even though everything else had pointed me in a different direction.
I’d wanted to believe that I could draw out what made him the man I had fallen in love with, to banish the other evil side and mold him into what I knew he could become. I had seen it with my own two eyes. There was a clear other side of the coin.
But I couldn’t have one without the other. It was foolish to think that I could banish one of them. They made up Gavril Kirilenko, the good and the bad.
I wasn’t going to condone the trafficking. And soon, I would get up enough courage to ask him about it. I had to.
But it wasn’t going to be tonight. I didn’t have the energy to do so. I was already struggling with the fact that I was pregnant. And that was going to be another thing I had to tell him before anyone else could. I wouldn’t put it past Vera, even though she had been supportive throughout this revelation.
I wanted him to hear it from me.
If there was any shred of power I was going to take, this would be where I start.
Gavril was going to get everything he ever wanted, and with the announcement of my pregnancy, the security for his Bratva that he had wished for all along.
What was I going to get? That I still didn’t know. I didn’t know what Gavril’s plans were for me after this child was born or if he had already dug my grave, ready to dump me in it when I no longer served a purpose to him.
I had roughly seven and a half months to think about it, or to maybe change his mind during that time. The thought had crossed my mind more than once, but after what I had seen, I wasn’t sure if that was true anymore.
I wasn’t sure if there were pieces of his soul still capable of saving.
Still, I applied the last bit of my makeup and built the invisible shield around my shattered heart. I could get through this and would get through this.
