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I walk into the house, pretending as though I don’t hear her screams echoing down the corridors. If I can’t hear them, then they can’t bother me—or so I tell myself. I head to my office and shut the door.
In there, the heavy oak drowns out all traces of June. It’s a relief. Sometimes, pretending is exhausting. Sometimes, it takes more effort than I’m willing to give.
But it’s the hand I was dealt. It’s the hand Adrian ran from. Thus, here we are.
He’s six feet under…
And I’ve got his pregnant girlfriend under my roof.
7
JUNE
THREE DAYS LATER
“I just want to stretch my legs,” I insist to the new maid, projecting innocence as hard as I possibly can.
This one isn’t like the others, I can tell. She’s almost six feet tall and built like a lumberjack. Which only makes the powder blue maid’s uniform she’s wearing all the more ridiculous. Her hair is tied at the back of her head into a bun so tight it’s a miracle her forehead hasn’t split wide open at the seams. If the phrase “No Bullshit” had a mascot, she’d be it.
“No.”
“I’ve been allowed out of this room before, though.”
As prisons go, this has been a fairly pleasant one. My gilded cage is at least five hundred square feet, a space that includes a massive bathroom, a drool-worthy walk-in closet, a sitting area, and a glistening kitchenette.
I hate all of it.
“You have,” the maid agrees dourly. “And you tried to run. Therefore, you have lost the right to leave again.”
I swing my legs down off the sofa and grab a cushion. I desperately want to fling it at her, but something tells me that this maid will fling it right back and it will hurt way more than I bargained for. Even if I wasn’t pregnant, this wildebeest of a woman would eat me alive.
“Please?” I ask sweetly, attempting a different tack. “I’m feeling so nauseous up here. The air’s stale.”
She’s unmoved. “Your room was cleaned this morning. And you finished two trays of food. You can hardly be nauseous.”
My fingers tighten around the cushion. “Just one walk around the house?”
“I am not authorized to allow that.”
“Authorized by who?”
“The master of the house.”
“The master of the house,” I mutter darkly under my breath. “Can you give him a message from me?”
“Certainly.”
“Tell him to go fuck himself.”
If she’s surprised by the venom in my voice, the only sign of it is one slow, placid blink. Then she sighs. “Perhaps, madam, you would like to watch something? There’s a selection of—”
“I don’t want to watch anything. I want to go home.”
“If you want something to eat, I can—”
“No,” I snap. “I’m not hungry. As you just so politely pointed out, I had two trays of food this morning.”
Weirdly enough, despite the still-too-overwhelming-for-me-to-fully-process-it horror of my circumstances, my appetite has been healthier than it’s ever been. Apparently, I’m well and truly out of the first trimester morning sickness phase, because I’m starving from dawn ‘til dusk without fail.
