Pregnant For the Mafia Boss

Chapter 7

VIKTOR--THREE DAYS LATER

"Boss, we have a problem."

I looked up from the financial reports I'd been staring at without really seeing. Alexei stood in my office doorway, his expression grim.

"What kind of problem?"

"Bella kind of problem." He crossed to my desk, pulled up something on his tablet, and turned it toward me. "She's not at university."

The security camera footage showed the main entrance to Bella's university in London. Students streamed in and out. But none of them were her.

"Maybe she's in class..."

"I checked her schedule. She should have been at this entrance forty-seven minutes ago for her International Economics lecture. She's missed three days of classes."

My chest tightened. "Where is she?"

"I don't know." Alexei swiped to another screen. "She bought a plane ticket three days ago...the same day she left here. One-way to Montenegro. Since then?" He shrugged. "Nothing. No credit card activity. No phone pings or even digital footprint at all."

"Montenegro." I stood up, my mind racing. "Why Montenegro?"

"It's where you don't have significant operations. Small town on the coast...Kotor. It is easy to disappear in. Also a tourist town, with lots of cash businesses." He paused. "Boss, she took your emergency cash. All fifty thousand euros."

I'd known. I'd checked the safe the day she left and found it empty. Hadn't said anything because part of me had been glad she had the resources to run, hide and build a new life far from me.

"You can track her through..."

"No." I sat back down, and forcibly relaxed my clenched fists. "She wants to disappear. Let her disappear."

"Viktor..."

"She's safer this way." I turned back to my computer, effectively dismissing him. "If she's in Montenegro under a new identity, no one will connect her to me. No one will use her against me. This is... this is good."

"Is it?" Alexei's voice is sharp. "Because from where I'm standing, you look like hell, you're drinking yourself to death, and you just let the woman you love vanish without a trace."

"I didn't let her do anything. I made her do it. There's a difference."

"Not much of one."

I looked up, ready to tear into him, but he was already walking out.

"Keep monitoring her," I called after him. "But do that discreetly. I want to know she's safe. But she should never know we're watching her."

"Of course, boss." He paused at the door. "For what it's worth? I hope you know what you're doing."

"I don't." The admission came easier than I expected. "But it's done now. She's gone. And that's how it has to stay."

The door closed.

I opened the bottom drawer of my desk where I'd hidden the red dress Bella had left behind in my study. Silk and lace and the faint scent of her perfume. Evidence of the best and worst night of my life.

I should burn it. Destroy every reminder of what I'd done, what I'd lost.

Instead, I pressed it to my face and breathed in the fading scent of vanilla and the scent of her arousal and release that stains the dress, letting myself feel the full weight of what I'd sacrificed.

I'm sorry, Bella, I thought, the same prayer I'd repeated every night since she left. I'm sorry for everything. But you're safer now. You're free.

Even if freedom meant hating me.

Even if it meant I'd spend the rest of my life wondering what we could have been.

I put the dress back in the drawer and locked it, then pulled out the bottle of vodka that had become my constant companion.

Alexei was right. I am drinking myself to death.

But some deaths were slower than others. And this one...this living death of knowing Bella was out there somewhere, safe but gone, alive but lost to me...was the punishment I deserved.

I poured a glass and toasted the empty room.

"To cowardice," I muttered. "And the love it destroys."

Then I drank until I couldn't remember the sound of her crying, the look in her eyes when I called her a child, the way she'd said I hope your fear keeps you warm at night like a curse.

But the vodka was never enough.

Nothing would ever be enough to make me forget Isabella Volkov.

Or forgive myself for being the one who broke her.

BELLA'S POV - THREE WEEKS LATER

I woke up with my face pressed against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl and absolutely no memory of how I'd gotten there.

Again.

This was the fourth morning in a row I'd woken up like this with my stomach churning, head pounding, and the acrid taste of bile in my mouth. At first, I'd blamed it on stress. Grief. The emotional devastation of having your heart ripped out and stomped on by the one person you'd trusted most in the world.

But four days of waking up on the bathroom floor suggested something else.

I pushed myself to sit up, my arms trembling with the effort. The small bathroom of my tiny Montenegro apartment spun lazily around me. I'd rented this place two weeks ago with Viktor's stolen money, it is a one-bedroom flat above a bakery in Kotor's old town, close enough to the tourist areas to blend in but far enough from the marina to avoid the wealthy Russians who might recognize me.

This is my haven but also my hiding place and prison.

The nausea rolled through me again, and I barely made it back to the toilet before I was retching with nothing left to come up but water and stomach acid, my body convulses with dry heaves that left me gasping.

"f**k," I whispered when it finally passed. "f**k, f**k, fuck."

I knew what this was. Had known for the past three days, really, even as I'd tried to convince myself it was food poisoning, or a stomach bug, or literally anything else.

But my period was ten days late.

I'd been nauseous every morning for four days straight.

My breasts are tender and swollen, and the bras I'd brought from Moscow suddenly too tight.

And three weeks ago, Viktor Konstantin had come inside me. Multiple times. Without protection.

"No." I shook my head, even though there was no one to see me. "No, no, no. This can't be happening."

But my body was already telling me the truth.

I was pregnant. With Viktor's baby.

The sob that tore from my throat was equal parts grief and terror. I pressed my hand to my still-flat stomach, feeling nothing but my own skin and the beginning of cold sweat.

There was a baby in there. A tiny cluster of cells that was half me and half the man who'd destroyed me. Half Roman Volkov's daughter and half the Pakhan who'd called me a mistake.

"You're a child playing dress-up. You are just a physical release. Nothing more."

"Shut up," I whispered to Viktor's ghost in my head. "Just shut up."

I needed to know for sure. I needed confirmation that my worst fear..,or was it my secret hope?...is real.

I pushed myself to standing on shaky legs and caught sight of my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I looked like hell. Dark circles under my eyes, my cheeks hollow from three weeks of barely eating. My hair tangled and unwashed. The girl who'd walked into Viktor's study in a red dress and sky-high heels is gone.

In her place is someone broken and lost and possibly pregnant.

I splashed cold water on my face, brushed my teeth to get rid of the vomit taste, and grabbed my purse. The pharmacy would be open by now. I could buy a test, come back here, and know for certain.

And then... what?

I pushed that thought away. One crisis at a time.