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“Oh, sweetie, it’s not Mikhail’s baby I’ll be having.” Mara smirks coldly, and her empty hand drops down to rest on my swollen belly. “That baby needs to belong to Aleksander, and well, this is good enough.”
“What?” I gasp out, chills racing across my body.
“Oh, Alena.” Her face twists into faux sweetness. “You think you’re alive because I like you? No, sweetie. You’re alive until you deliver my baby.”
29
ALENA
The days in captivity run together like a dream.
Upon landing back in America, I was taken straight back to the Orlova mansion, which had barely changed in the time I’d been away. As soon as I was free, I fought. I scratched guards, cursed names to high heaven, kicked and punched, and spat on anyone who came near me.
So Mara decided drugs to keep me docile were the way forward. I fought the first injection with all the strength I had, but it wasn’t enough.
The bars of my old, gilded cage turned to steel, and my future was set. I was Mara’s prisoner. A human incubator until it was safe to rip my baby from me. Then she was going to kill me.
Minutes turned to hours turned to days turned to… I lost track.
Stuck in a constant foggy state, the changes of time visible through the window of my old room told me nothing, only that time was slipping through my fingers like the trickle of rain. I’d close my eyes when it was dark, and when I opened them again, my belly would be bigger than before, and my heart broke for all the steps in pregnancy that I was missing.
In a constant cloud of drugs and fog, everything slips past like a dream.
Mara’s always there, and sometimes she’s never there. Maids come and go, escorting me to the bath to wash and the bathroom when needed. Each time the restraints come off, my mind surges with the determination to escape, but my body never obeys. Noodles for legs barely keep me upright, and the lack of strength in my arms has me barely able to hold the soap.
She drugs me because she knows as soon as I get a chance, I’ll be out of here.
That chance comes unexpectedly one day when I open my eyes and for the first time since I got here, the light streaming in my bedroom window doesn’t hurt my eyes. Flexing my hands, I have the strength to pull against the ropes keeping me bound spreadeagle on the bed, and I can curl my toes.
Something is different.
It’s too difficult to decipher what, but my thoughts are clear for the first time in a long time.
With that comes the crushing, painful realization that this is real and not some kind of twisted nightmare. It’s real. Kristof hasn’t come for me. Each day that ticks past gives truth to the pain that Mara may have been telling the truth.
Kristof is dead.
I am alive.
“I see no issue,” comes a voice suddenly, and I drag my attention south. My heart leaps into my mouth in horror as a strange man suddenly stands up past my bump and begins pulling off a pair of medical gloves. Then it hits me. Cool air brushes against my thighs and hips.
I’m naked?
“What the fuck?” I croak, twisting against my restraints. I’m able to pull myself somewhat to the right, and glancing down, my bare legs stare back at me. With a hammering heart, nausea churns and I start to thrash until a cool hand presses against my shoulder and forces me down.
“Calm now,” Mara hushes.
When did she get here?
“He’s just finishing your checkup, Alena. There’s no need to be so dramatic.”
“Dramatic?” I snap hoarsely. “Who the fuck is he?”
“He’s a doctor. Calm down.” Mara’s nails become needlepoints against my shoulder. “No need to be shy, he’s seen it all before.”
I can’t think. I can’t breathe.
Never in my life have I been so horrendously violated, and tears of despair flood my eyes. Captive, bound, and now examined without permission.
