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I slammed on the brakes, and he forced his way inside. When he tried to turn around, I grabbed the steering wheel, screaming at him.
That’s when the car flipped over. The sounds of screeching tires and scraping metal still ring loudly in my ears.
“Seriously, sweetie. Just ballpark it.” The EMT checks my blood pressure. “Considering what that car looks like, it’s a miracle you’re sitting here with just a cut on your forehead.”
“I… I don’t know how far along I am.” I didn’t know I was pregnant at first and haven’t been to a doctor.
After weeks without my period, which I thought was from all the stress, a pee-stick showed two pink lines. I was still in denial until my belly started to swell.
Cormac felt because he was a doctor, he could care for me, and didn’t let me get checked out. The only heartfelt thing he did was not push me to keep doing the drugs he’d gotten me hooked on.
Since learning I was pregnant, I’ve been living with the fear that I hurt my baby.
I’ve also been dealing with these past horrific months sober and straight, while Cormac continued to live in his fantastical haze of booze and crack.
He peers at me with hooded eyes from several feet away. They’re bright green like many of his brothers, although right now, they’re bloodshot. They find me and wreck me.
He’s terrified I’ll call his brother, Kieran, the Irish mob boss, back in Astoria.
I’m terrified he’ll call my father, who will send his henchmen to abduct me.
We’re caught in this co-dependent bond of fearing our families.
“Last chance, Miss Michaels. Whose drugs are these?” A cop in a suit waves a bag of white powder, glowering at my pregnant stomach.
I said they were Cormac’s. He said they were mine. Now, we’re both under arrest.
A jail cell might be the safest place for us.
God, what am I thinking? I’d rather be in jail than go home to my father. My brain is so messed up, I can’t think straight anymore.
I’ve been living in complete hell for almost two years.
“We’ll let your lawyers and the prosecutor straighten this out.” The detective pockets my fake ID.
I breathe in relief when he doesn’t even bat an eye at the bogus California driver’s license that reads Ana Michaels.
The Italians were good for one thing. I wonder how Dante Caruso is getting along, but thinking of anyone from home leads me to worry about Katya. And I can’t do that. It’s too stressful.
The EMTs huddle, looking from Cormac to me. They eventually convince the detective to send us right to Clark County Jail. They can process us there, take care of Cormac’s ankle, and run those tests on my baby.
Baby…
I haven’t even bonded with this little thing growing inside me. I’ve been too busy living a nightmare.
Still, I feel terrible.
Cormac doesn’t care about this child. He never even once touched my stomach, or cared for me when I had morning sickness.
His Irish-Catholic upbringing couldn’t push the words ‘terminate the pregnancy’ out of his mouth, but he looks at me with such disdain, like getting knocked up was my fault.
I’d been holding on day after day, hoping something would change. I had a roof over my head, food to eat, and a bed to sleep in. Cormac started selling drugs so we had money to live. It kept us in a seedy motel and gave him enough to gamble. His incessant chasing down a big score that never came drowned us further into poverty.
Every night he came back late and usually passed out on the sofa, shitfaced on cheap booze.
I look down at my very swollen stomach. I tried to pinpoint when I got pregnant. I couldn’t look at gestation timetables and other signs because Cormac sold my burner phone and kept his phone locked inside that car.
“Bratva,” I whisper, taking a chance that someone will hear me.
