Chapter 35 #2
She pushed back against the headboard, straining to get as far away from him as possible and hoping he didn’t hit her again.
He seemed content to watch her dissolve emotionally, yet his eyes frightened her more than his words.
The loud, crazed predictability she was accustomed to had been replaced by something even more alarming––a cold, calculated evil.
She breathed a sigh of relief when he left the room but tensed when he returned a few seconds later with a chair.
He sat down and propped his legs on the mattress. “I miss you, Vika. You have to know that. I can teach you how to be a proper wife again. It is like riding a bicycle.” He smiled grotesquely, clearly pleased with himself. “It will all come back to you.”
Go back to the way things were? Never! He must be out of his mind. He probably always had been.
What kind of life would her baby have at the hands of this madman?
And what would he do when he discovered she was pregnant?
He would rightly assume the baby was Kyle’s, which would put him or her in even more danger.
If Yuri didn’t kill them outright, she and her baby would be relegated to a life of misery.
Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed. She would never go back to the way things were. Not in this lifetime.
The floor creaked as he pulled the chair closer to the bed. “Your affair with Kyle Gates is over,” he spat.
“I swear to you, I wasn’t having an affair with anyone when you and I were married, and I’m not having one now.” She could actually say the words with sincerity in her eyes, since she truly believed things between her and Kyle were permanently null and void.
“Don’t lie to me!” He stood so quickly the chair fell backward. Pure malevolence burned in his eyes. The calm restraint she’d glimpsed moments ago was quickly dissolving before her eyes.
For a full minute, he towered over her, his chest heaving as he sucked in deep breaths. “Things will go back to the way they should be. You and me, together. The way we used to be. We will go back to Chicago and collect my money, then we’ll move somewhere no one will ever find us.”
Inwardly, she cringed. Leading him to believe she was still the same old, scarred Vika he once knew might be the only way to get out of this. If it meant keeping her baby safe, she’d do it. But what would happen when he discovered the money was gone? He might kill her on the spot.
Stalling for time until an avenue of escape presented itself was critical, because no way was she going to stay with him. Soon she’d begin to show. How would she explain her pregnancy when Yuri wasn’t capable of siring a child? Miraculous conception?
Again, she nearly vomited. The idea of being with him nauseated her more than the worst morning sickness in history.
“You will never try to escape from me. Do you want to know how I know that?” His lips upturned in a triumphant sneer. “You are carrying Gates’s brat. You little whore.”
Her blood turned to ice.
He must have seen the pregnancy test in her bathroom. Did he really want to keep her alive, knowing that, in less than nine months, she’d be giving birth to Kyle’s baby? That didn’t sound like the Yuri she knew and detested with every fiber of her being.
Rather than flying into another fit of rage, as she’d expected, he chuckled.
“You have two choices, my beautiful Vika. Come with me willingly, and I will let you live to give birth to the little brat. After that, if you want to live and be his mother, you will continue to be my wife. Willingly.” The grin now splitting his face was filled with a mixture of evil and sick joy.
He dipped his gaze to her belly. “I have Gates’s woman, and soon I will have his child. I will raise him as my own.”
Victoria could only stare into the face of the violent man she’d once mistakenly married.
Now wasn’t the time to tell him the baby might not be a boy.
The psychologist in her could easily diagnose the source of his unjustified assumption.
As a teenager, he’d been abandoned by his parents.
Ironically, family was important to him.
That, combined with egocentric patriarchal pride, he wanted a son to carry on his bloodline. Begging the question…
What will he do to my baby if it’s a girl?
Regardless of the sex, if Yuri tried hurting her child, she’d tear him apart with her bare hands.
He hauled her off the bed, shoving her to the floor.
“That’s where you belong—on your knees at my feet.
” He leaned in and got in her face. “Don’t you see?
Everything is the way it’s supposed to be.
Fate has provided me with a beautiful gift.
I will exact vengeance for all Gates and the FBI took from me. ”
This time, she didn’t have to fake the tears streaming down her face. They were as real as her dire situation.
The door slammed shut, the twisting of the key reverberating in her ears, incarcerating her as surely as if a judge had just given her a life sentence. Death would be preferable to a life with Yuri, but she could never take life away from her baby, and he knew it.
Nearly choking on sobs, she climbed onto the bed and curled into a ball, hugging her arms around her legs and gripping the chain in her closed fists.
Her spirits sank lower than she thought possible. She would have done anything to reverse time and play things out differently. To tell Kyle about the money. To tell him how much she loved him. How much she had always loved him.
Now she would never have that opportunity.