“You don’t have to tell me everything, just tell me something, sometimes. Deal?”
“I will think about it.”
“You do that.”
“We are here.”
The car pulls up. We climb out and head into the restaurant. I should notice something different but I’m too lost in thought. The instincts I’ve honed over the years have become dulled while I obsessed over getting Mila pregnant. I don’t notice that we’re the only guests. I don’t see the way the waiting staff watch us as we take our regular seats.
“Be right back,” Mila says, heading for the ladies’ bathroom. I sit down, looking at the menu in front of me. I feel something.A tingle at the back of my neck. I look up and it dawns on me. I should have been paying more attention.
Trouble.
“Mila,” I say, shoving my seat back and marching over to the bathroom door. I shove it open in time to see the window at the back swinging in the breeze. I lean through it but I’m too big to get out.
She’s gone.
I don’t have time to get back down before I hear a gun being cocked behind me. Then everything goes to hell.
11
Mila
I’m looking down at the positive pregnancy test when Terry grabs me. “Good to see you,” he says, kicking the stall door open.
“Terry? What the fuck are you doing”
He shoves a gun in my face. “Not a word. You fucking slut. Wouldn’t put out for me but would for the dirty fucking Russian? Out the window or I shoot you in the face. Your choice.”
He grabs me, pulling me out of the stall and over to the window. “No funny business,” he says, pushing me up and out into the alleyway behind the restaurant.
Before he’s even out, I’m running, sprinting for the front and back inside to safety. I bounce off a wall of Italian men in suits. They grin at me. “Not that way, Toots,” one of them says.
I know that voice. “Pietro? What are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass. You go with Terry. We kill Alexsei. Your father gets control of the empire. Everyone wins.”
“Except Alexsei.”
Pietro frowns. “Funny, you almost sound like you give a shit about the potato drinking piece of shit.”
Terry grabs me from behind, the gun pressing in the small of my back. “Shot like this would take out the baby before it gets a chance to grow,” he hisses in my ear. “Into the car and not a peep out of you.”
“Don’t worry, Toots,” Pietro calls after me. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”
Terry slams the door on me, climbing into the driver’s seat, glancing my way. “Your father was amenable to a deal with me,” he says with a leer down at my chest. “Once he found out who you were married to, he couldn’t wait to get you out of there. I offered to help and here we are.”
He snorts with laughter.
“Going to an Italian restaurant and thinking he wouldn’t hear about it? About who you were with. You really are dumb. Sick too. Can’t imagine the shame of bearing a Volkov brat to term.”
“What would you know about it?”
“I learned a lot since I got chatting to your father. Turns out he’s a man willing to take on a decent employee like me. Offered me a lot of money to bring you to him.”
I roll my eyes. “You know he’s going to kill you as soon as you hand me over, right?”
“Yeah, sure he is.”