Other times, he’d send me for simple handovers, or to get ahold of information that could be wheedled from some security guard with the right kind of smile. He taught me how to turn bumping into someone into planting a tracker. Taught me how to dismantle and reassemble a handgun in under ninety seconds. How to carry a knife. How to use it. And, more importantly, how to disarm someone else who had one, before they could stab me.
He taught me things that boxing didn’t. How to fight dirty and efficiently, how to cause the most amount of pain in a way that left you in control rather than royally pissing your opponent off.
And then I found myself crouched over the toilet bowl, heaving up my breakfast two mornings in a row.
The first time, Maxim had been out getting coffee. I assumed something about dinner the night before hadn’t agreed with me.
The second time I only just made it to the bathroom, and he sat next to me on the tiles, holding my hair out of my face, entirely unnecessarily given it was too short to cause a problem. Then he scooped me up and put me straight to bed, setting me up with bottles and bottles of electrolytes and just about anything else I could have wanted before he headed out of the door, full of profuse apologies that he couldn’t call off the job.
I knew he couldn’t. The approach was meant to be today and we needed to time it right so he agreed.
I was glad Maxim left me to it, because just like it had the day before, the sickness faded once I’d drunk enough water and eaten a slice of dry toast.
I called Cassie, feeling a little panic rise in me as she picked up the phone.
“Hello Stranger,” she greeted me with a smile in her voice.
“Hi Cass. I’ve missed you.”
“I bloody hope not. We’ve been getting on fine without you. How are you doing, pet?”
“Good. Really good. It’s great.”
Cassie let the silence hang between us for a long beat that I didn’t know how to fill. “…But?”
I drew a breath in. She’d always known how to read me. Just like Maxim, thought maybe not as well as he did. “I think I need to take a pregnancy test.”
Saying it out loud brought out a jumble of emotions, and before I knew it, tears had crested and were rolling down my cheeks.
“Oh, honey. Don’t cry. It’s okay. You don’t know anything yet.”
But I did. I knew bone deep that I had Maxim’s child growing inside me. It made perfect sense. We’d been going at it like rabbits since we met and he probably thought I was on the pill or something, but I wasn’t and I hadn’t cared because I wanted him so badly. And I wanted to be his forever.
But what was I going to do with a baby? We were supposed to go off into the sunset and be hitmen together, to carry on working for the Bratva as a unified pair. There wasn’t room in that for playing house.
I couldn’t stay in the country after my stunt with the mopeds firmly put me in the frame for involvement with Sutherland’s disappearance. And Maxim would have never wanted that anyway. He’d already told me he went wherever he was needed, at the drop of a hat.
With his baby in me, I couldn’t be the woman he wanted. But his child was something I hadn’t realised I’d needed so badly until just now. I sniffed hard, trying to pull myself together, trying not to beat myself up for being so stupid.
“Can you bring me a test?”
“Of course I can. You stay there. Give me the address, I’ll come and find you.”
*****
Good to her word, Cassie turned up on the doorstep less than forty minutes later, clutching a white paper bag with a green cross on the outside of it.
She looked around with undisguised awe as she stepped into the hall. “This place is alright, isn’t it? Who robbed what bank?”
I shrugged a little awkwardly. “I don’t think it was a bank.”
“Christ, Elizabeth. Who is this guy?”
“You don’t want to know, Cass. He’s very good to me, that’s all that matters.”
Her lips pinched together, thin, and she didn’t look altogether convinced. “You’re calling me in tears because you think he’s knocked you up.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that. I love him. He loves me. I just – I don’t think a baby was in the plans. Not yet.”
She let out another heavy sigh. “You don’t have to keep it.”
I shook my head. “Yes I do. It’s ours. And I want that so much. I just… don’t know how to make it work.”
Cassie’s eyes softened and she handed the bag over to me. “If you have to, you’ll find a way. You’re good at doing that.” Suddenly the last thing in the world I needed to do was pee. “Go on then.”