Chapter 26 Sofia
SOFIA
He was going to ask. He was going to ask if I was pregnant.
I saw the silent question in his eyes when he found me sick in the bathroom.
As I lay there and squeezed my eyes shut after a short nap that surprisingly did help settle my nerves and my stomach, I replayed how he’d discovered me.
I knew better than to have an empty stomach while pregnant. I’d learned about it from the nursing courses I’d taken, the majority of them done before Esmeralda’s condition progressed quickly and she worsened to the point I had to stay home to help her around my uncle’s household chores for me.
I should’ve eaten something. Maybe the nausea wouldn’t have gotten the best of me again so soon after getting up.
Now, Andre was doubly suspicious of me. He had looked worried, if I wanted to be a hopeless romantic about it. But his concern might not have been for me and how I was doing versus a concern about what could be going on.
He was already catching on to the fact that I had been sent here as a spy—and I was curious how he could’ve picked up on that when I wasn’t actually spying!
There was nothing to give in terms of intel, and I’d stopped looking for anything.
Sending Uncle Roberto outdated receipts for dinnerware at one of the Orlov restaurants or clubs was hardly scandalous or top-secret news.
As I woke up and yawned from this nap I hadn’t realized I’d need so early in the morning, I registered the fact that I was alone in the bedroom. He hadn’t stayed to watch over me and harass me.
I suppose it was nice of him to offer to get Claire for me.
That was the last thing I needed to happen. She’d see me and suspect I was pregnant. And that wasn’t what I wanted when I was scheming to extract myself from this situation.
Heaving out a deep breath, I reached for my phone and checked it. This old smart phone was going to die soon, but for now, it was still working. Mostly.
The burner phone buzzed, though, and I realized belatedly that it was in here, in Andre’s room and no longer hidden in the closet in the maid’s room.
Oh, shit.
I reached over the pillow I was hugging and saw the duffle bag on the floor. No wonder the buzzing was so loud. It was a miracle that Andre hadn’t lingered and noticed it to snoop through it.
Gingerly sitting up, I rolled over and grabbed the ringing phone from the pocket of the bag. It was usually kept on silent—for all obvious reasons—but I must have pressed the buttons when I locked it and turned the ringer on.
I wasn’t shocked to see that Uncle Roberto was calling me.
I answered, glancing over my shoulder to check that Andre wasn’t in here. That the door was closed.
“Hello?” I answered, speaking in Italian just in case. I bet Andre knew enough Italian to get around anyway, but I had to be as careful as I could until I was out of this tricky situation completely.
“You stupid, stupid bitch.”
I exhaled a harsh breath through my nose at his greeting. He’d talked to me like this so often, the words ceased to sting as much.
“You’re fucking pregnant?”
I sat up so quickly that I grew dizzy.
What?
The shock of what he’d just asked me might have more to do with this lightheaded sensation.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. I send you there to fucking spy on him. To get copies of paperwork about his deals. And you let him fuck you? And knock you up? How fucking stupid are you?”
My mouth hung open. He wasn’t bluffing. He was speaking like he knew this, like he could verify it. But my God, how? I’d only realized it myself this morning! I’d only just taken the test to see the positive results hours ago. How in the hell could he know?
“I… I…”
“What? Huh? What? What excuse are you going to stammer and give me this time? What moronic reason are you going to give me to explain how you’re pregnant? You were supposed to remain a virgin. You knew that. You were supposed to keep your goddamn legs closed so I could sell you off.”
You fucking bastard.
Tears threatened to spill.
“You weren’t supposed to go there like it was some vacation, you damn slut. I didn’t send you there to be a whore and have fun taking his cock!”
“I…”
Speechless and furious, I felt like I was choking on my words. “How do you know? How can you—” I spluttered, so lost and mad and stuck.
“I was spying on you, bitch. When you slacked off and kept giving me stupid little shit I didn’t care about, I wondered what the fuck you were doing. I had the florist slip a bug into one of those bouquets that fucking Orlov ordered to be delivered to you.”
Oh, my God!
“I heard you say that you were pregnant.”
I rubbed my face, scrambling to understand. I’d only just found out this morning. I got up and retrieved the bag. Then Oleg saw me and acted weird. I came back here and—
No, wait. The flowers stunk. I took them out to pitch them and when I lifted the lid, I smelled the other bouquet I’d thrown out yesterday.
He’d had a listening device in there. He’d bugged the flowers. He had to have because I remembered talking to myself out there about how surprised I was to be pregnant.
Oh, fuck.
He’d been listening in on me. On me and Andre. On him and Oleg. Everything since that particular bouquet had arrived. With that hidden mic, he must have heard Andre and Oleg talking about that Rossi meeting.
He did set them up to be ambushed!
It’s all his fault.
And he could’ve gotten Andre killed!
“Nothing to say now, eh?” He grunted. “You’re nothing but a slut who turned traitor. Sleeping with the fucking enemy. With an Orlov. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
I shook my head, crying at how twisted this was all getting. How everything was crashing down and spiraling out of control.
“You are a traitor,” he accused.
On that note, I had to agree with him. I was a traitor.
I wasn’t loyal to him. But it wasn’t because I dared to go for something good, to live for myself and accept this desire that linked me with Andre.
I was a traitor to him, to the good man who’d treated me so well. Not my uncle who I wished dead.
“And for your sin,” he continued in a deep, threatening growl, “you will repent by poisoning him.”
My jaw dropped. I stared unseeing at the wall across from me and choked on my next inhale.
“You heard me. If you want to get back in my good graces. If you want to have a home to return to. If you don’t want me to make your cousin suffer any further than necessary. You will poison him, you damn slut.”
Shaking my head wasn’t loud enough. He couldn’t hear it at all, but the atrocity of what he proposed was so ridiculous, so out there, and so terrible to process that I lagged to speak again.
“Do you hear me? You will poison him. He deserves nothing more. I expect you to poison him with whatever you can find. Once you pass that test and I hear about him being poisoned, you will have begun to prove your loyalty to me.”
“Fuck you.” I bit it out with all the hot rage I could muster out of my mouth. “Fuck you. How about that instead?”
“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” he roared. “You treat me with respect. You will do as I say!”
“I will tell you to rot in hell,” I seethed. I’d had it. I couldn’t bottle in this anger any longer. I just couldn’t take it.
“I will not prove any loyalty to you because you’ve never earned it.
You never deserved it. You’ve never treated me well and I am sick of the idea that you can be living on this earth and breathing the same air as me.
Fuck you, and fuck your loyalty. I’ve stopped doing ‘as you say’ for a while now, and it’s been the best decision I’ve ever made! ”
My voice was shrill. I wasn’t being careful and quiet. I couldn’t. This anger seeped through me, oozing out with every word I spewed at him.
“I will not do anything to hurt him. I will not even try to harm a single one of them who has treated me better than you ever have.”
Only the sound of his heavy, furious exhales came over the line. Hot, rapid pants. Like he was working up a storm to bellow at me again.
“Do you understand what you are saying?” he growled.
“Yes.” I tipped my chin up. Determined to stand by what I said, to do what I felt was just, I hated how my lower lip trembled. How I wasn’t only defying him with what I said. I was ensuring that he’d kill my cousin or mistreat her, too.
Scalding tears streamed down my cheeks, but I refused to sniffle or let him hear how this was destroying me from the inside out.
“Do you?” he screamed. “Do you understand what you are doing? You are calling for war, you little bitch.”
I shook my head, refusing to accept that.
I was leaving. I would run. I had my diversion in place and I believed that I’d figured out how to pay off a few EMTs to transport Esmeralda to the facility, if he didn’t kill her first.
No war would be fought over me. Not if I got away and started a new life somewhere else.
“You’ll regret this,” he warned again. “You don’t understand what you’re choosing.”
“I do understand. And I’ll never choose to be your pawn again.”
He disconnected the call. The tone clicked.
A dam broke. Crying louder, I let the burner phone drop to my lap as I hunched over and sobbed for my cousin. For the man I wanted the freedom to love. For all the years of abuse and neglect I’d suffered through as his niece.
“What have you done?”
My breath stayed lodged in my chest at Andre’s voice.
I whirled around, facing him as he stood at the open door and glowered at me.
“What the hell have you done to me?” he demanded.
I swallowed hard, realizing he’d come and overheard my conversation. And with him demanding me to tell him what was going on—in Italian—I realized he’d picked up on more than I ever wanted him to.
Oh, fuck.