Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
It didn’t make it out of the carnage that day, but I did.
Alek’s face tells the story, but I silently ask for details anyway.
“It was positive. Bright too.” He sits across from me before tugging a cigarette out of the pack, placing it between his quirked lips, then lighting it. “You sure she bled last month?” He talks around the smoke lingering out of his nostrils before screwing up his face. “They’re as stale as fuck.”
“As is your taste in women.” I’m making light of the situation so he won’t notice my ticking jaw and clenched teeth. This is the reason Katie is here, to give Kirill the heir he craves, but I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t piss me the fuck off to know she’s carrying another man’s child.
He hasn’t touched her—he won’t—but it doesn’t weaken my anger in the slightest.
I’m as jealous as fuck—just like Katie was in the bathroom this morning—and it is becoming increasingly hard to ignore that fact.
When Alek arches a brow, announcing I failed to answer his question, I slouch low in my chair and say, “Her bleed was light, but it was there.”
“Do you think it could have been implantation bleeding?”
“I don’t fucking know.”
I’m a liar, and Alek knows that. “You’ve been his babymaker for years. You know everything there is to know about the female reproductive system.”
I stare at him, silently goading him to speak to me in such a manner again. He won’t make it out of the dining room alive if he dares to adhere to my spur.
Like a man with a brain, he huffs before stabbing his cigarette out into one of the ashtrays provided, then he scans the room slowly filling with the Bobrov men. “Isn’t she?” He leans in closer like he needs his vision checked before finalizing his question with a shit-eating grin. “When was the last time you turned down a whore and actually meant it?”
As I drink in the redhead I gifted to the kitchen staff, I murmur, “She’s a sheep.”
“Exactly,” Alek replies with roaring laughter. “So you make her part of your flock.” He locks his eyes with mine. They’re brimming with silent mischievousness. “Unless you don’t want a flock anymore. You’re more a one-sheep man now.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I snarl at him in Russian, my scold interrupted by a ruckus at the end of the dining room.
Kirill wishes for such silence, but he isn’t respected enough for that. There’s only one person who can quiet a room of rowdy men like this. A virgin in white, ripe, and ready for the taking. Except this time, the appealing lines of Katie’s cunt isn’t on display for the world to see. It’s hidden by a vibrant red splotch of blood and a pair of wobbly thighs dotted with sweat.
“What the fuck?” Alek murmurs at the same time my eyes shoot to Kirill.
When he fails to make a move for Katie as she sways in the breeze like a dead leaf on a hot fall day, I shoot out of my chair so fast, the wooden trim smacks into the drywall behind me.
“Gh-Ghost,” Katie faintly murmurs before she falls forward at a rate almost too quick for me to reach her.
I swoop down low with only a second to spare, catching her before her head connects with the rigid marble floor. When I lift her to my chest, her arms and head flop back. She looks like she’s dead. The only reason I don’t believe my intuition is because of the fast rise and fall of her chest.
Her body is in shock and fighting not to shut down.
“Come with me,” I order one of the doctors when he enters the room where the blood dripping from between Katie’s legs has caused a puddle of red on the floor. “Now!” I bark out when he peers over my shoulder to get permission to follow my demand.
He either follows me or dies, and I won’t even remove Katie from my arms to do it.
As I weave through the many hallways of the Bobrov compound, my stomps echo in the silence. Every man has left his station, leaving only the doctor and me to assess Katie once we reach her room.
“Her blood pressure is eighty-two over fifty-one, and her heart rate is 113 beats per minute.” He wheels over the gurney her room should now be without since the insemination was successful. “We will administer saline bolus before commencing laboratory tests.” My guns feel heavy on my hips when he pushes down on Katie’s stomach, and she whimpers. She is in obvious pain. “Her abdomen is gravid—”
“What does that mean?” I interrupt his the medical talk.
He swings his eyes to me. “It means she is pregnant.” When Katie groans through the pain of him pushing down low on her stomach, he murmurs, “Or at least she was.” I shrug when he asks, “How much time has passed since her miscarriage started?”