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Unable to hold back the deluge of tears filling up my eyes, I begin to sob into my hands as my only means of comfort. I’ve never felt more alone in my entire life. Not after a lifetime with no friends, not after my mother was institutionalized. This moment, right now, is the deepest pit of despair I’ve ever been in.

While the confirmation of my pregnancy is bad enough, I’m worried about dealing with the immediate symptoms that I can’t cover up. I’d hardly eaten a damn thing this morning when Dominik forced me to eat, and I was hardly able to stop vomiting for twenty minutes.

If my father was worth anything as a parent, he would take me to a doctor to investigate such a thing. Knowing his track record, this is unlikely, but the possibility still lingers in the back of my head.

I stand up off the bathroom floor where I’ve collapsed into a heap. My legs are shaking, and I feel like I’ve done something absolutely unforgivable.

After shutting off the lights, I wander over to my bed in the dark, collapsing into the mattress and sobbing out loud into my blankets.

I don’t care if anyone hears me. I’m allowed to cry. Just because Remi Tambov wanted a mute robot for a daughter doesn’t mean he’s going to get one.

As soon as I’ve started crying, I hear Dominik’s signature knock on my bedroom door. He always sounds the way I imagine a cop would sound knocking on someone’s door before storming into their living room looking for drugs.

“Fuck off!” I shout, my voice hoarse and tight from the suppression of my anguish.

Predictably, he opens the door and stands in the doorway until I turn to look at him. “Mika, what’s going on?”

I don’t say a word. I don’t even know where I would begin. I search every peak and valley of my brain for something generic and vague that I can say to get him off my back, but nothing of substance materializes.

“Mika, you’ve been acting weird all day. Just tell me what’s going on.”

I can sense his frustration from the other side of the room. He gets impatient so quickly that nothing I say will make him happy if it doesn’t come at the pace he wants.

Still, I can’t find the words.

He sighs, his breath deep and fatigued as he relents. “Okay, fine. But I’m not going to let you get away with shit just because you’re going through whatever this is. Just be prepared for that.”

He closes the door just a bit harder than he usually would, as if to emphasize his point. I hate how aggressive he is about everything all the time. He has to be domineering and authoritarian about everything, even when there’s no perceived issue. Me crying in my bed has no tangible effect on him, but still he finds a reason to let it consume him.

I doubt I’ll be able to sleep at all tonight. My best bet is to cry so much for so long that my body just gives out and forces me to rest. It might not be the healthiest, but I’m about to commit the next nine months to extremely rigid standards in order to keep my baby safe.

A real baby.

I roll over onto my other side now that Dominik is gone, staring at the light coming in from under the door as his feet leave a shadow. Even after a lifetime of being isolated and put away, I’ve never felt lonelier than I do now. I would give anything to hug my mom, even if I didn’t tell her what was wrong. I just want to feel like there’s a bright side, but I pick through my brain looking for one and turn up empty.

20

DOMINIK

Ifeel like I’ve spent the last week and a half trying to get Mika to leave her bed for longer than four hours at a time. She doesn’t even seem that tired, but there’s something in her eyes that tells me that she’s living in a grey haze that she can’t break out of. The way she moves, walks, and speaks is so distant. She’s not here in the present, and I can’t figure out where else her mind could be.

The fact that she’s marrying Izet has to be a factor, and the way that her fate is impacting her worries me. She’s days away from the wedding, and I just know that Remi is going to be up my ass about Mika’s cloudy disposition, whether it’s my fault or not.

Being forced to marry someone under duress has to be tremendously stressful, but she had been much more resolute about it only weeks before. I don’t know what it is that would have caused such a dramatic change of heart for her, but it must be devastating.

Watching her slowly be stripped of her personhood to appeal to Remi’s greed has left a hole in me that I can’t quite locate. I don’t want her to leave me here, even though I would never admit that to her. She can’t know how I feel about her, especially not now. It would only prove to stress her out more, especially if she felt the same about me.

To be honest, I’ve really missed the subtle glances she would steal when she thought I wouldn’t notice. The bad-girl persona would dissolve for a moment, and she would stare at me curiously as she let her imagination run wild. Her thoughts were never hard to read – she might as well have had them on a projector screen on the wall.

The way she was looking at me before was charming, but I realize that it needed to end at some point in order to keep both of us from suffering. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone caught on to our silent exchanges, and I don’t trust anybody here to keep their mouths shut about it. Still, having to sever such a sweet connection in an otherwise unpredictably tragic life feels like such a waste.

Today, I’ve been tasked with taking Mika out of the house for a while to try to coax her out of her bedroom. Remi has been growing nervous about the way she’s acting, but only because it could impact his reputation with the Albanians.

I want to punch him in the fucking throat whenever he brings it up. He never shows any concern for her actual wellbeing – it’s always about the way that her behavior could reflect on him as a father. I find it hilarious that he’s suddenly so concerned with being a good parent when he never even let his daughter have friends growing up. He’s the most selfish man I’ve ever known.

When I walk up to Mika’s room, I listen carefully before I open the door. I even stop breathing for a moment to catch any noises that I might not hear otherwise. Will I find her crying? Will she be scrawling a manifesto in a notebook?

Will she even be alive?

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