Chapter 16 Sadie
SADIE
Six months later…
I tapped my fingers against the edge of the tabletop at a coffee shop halfway across the city from my old office.
My former workplace. Shaking my head at the concept that I was no longer an agent, I tamped down the anger, shock, and hurt that swirled any time I recalled my last days as an employee of the FBI.
Almost a month had passed since Special Agent Hufford called me into his office to speak with me.
In hindsight, I should’ve been quicker to react to the sight of security, members of human resources, and a lawyer in Hufford’s office.
Seeing all those others should’ve triggered me to be prepared for something serious going on.
But I hadn’t. All I could remember of that fateful day two months ago was walking through a haze of confusion and utter surprise.
Hufford summoned me to his office to fire me that day.
It was precisely one day, just one spin of the earth in twenty-four hours, since I’d taken a pregnancy test and realized I was pregnant.
Pregnant by the Mafia man I failed to arrest and bring in for questioning.
Knocked up by the lethal assassin who’d wanted to call me his good girl.
I hadn’t sobered from the earth-shattering news that I was carrying a baby by the time Hufford asked me to speak with him in his office. The identity shift that would force me from being just a single woman into becoming a mother hadn’t yet taken root and settled in my brain. In my psyche.
In the blink of the eye, after taking one test, my whole life had changed so drastically.
It was too much to accept, too much to rationalize my way through.
I was going to have a baby. Not just any child, but Emil Dubinin’s.
When Hufford asked me to talk, the day after that test, all I could do was numbly nod and try to look like I wasn’t internally freaking out.
I couldn’t let anyone see how secretly excited I wanted to be, either.
Hiding this chaos inside, I walked into Hufford’s office and snapped out of my mental and emotional lag to realize something was up.
Furrowing my brow as I waited at this small table, I tugged the edge of my hood lower, as if that would keep me warmer in this breezy fall weather carrying fallen leaves outside the window.
The most vivid thing I remembered from that fateful day was the pure confusion. Like I was waking from a dream after Hufford laid out his decision about my employment.
“I don’t understand,” I’d said that morning in his office, rubbing my forehead.
Headaches were already plaguing me one day after finding out I was pregnant.
I had no experience with what a pregnancy entailed, but my Google search provided mixed reviews about whether coffee was good or bad for a baby.
Going cold turkey on caffeine—just in case it could be bad for a developing baby—I was in the immediate throes of withdrawal.
“You’re fired,” he stated bluntly. “We don’t need traitors in this agency.”
I narrowed my eyes, snapping to attention and shaking off this fogginess in my head. “Traitor?” I shot back. Crossing my arms, I dared him to insult me like that again.
“You heard me.”
I shook my head, glancing at the representatives of the bureau’s legal team, one of the legal teams. The law-and-order parts of our work often overlapped and coincided with attorneys and prosecutors too.
Their presence wasn’t unusual around here, but seeing them at a meeting that discussed my employment was a huge red flag.
As if I’d fight the decision. Or if they’d go one step further and charge me with crimes.
“I heard a line of bullshit,” I replied, letting my fury escalate.
Ever since I’d flown home from the Cayman Islands after Emil tied me to the bed there, I’d faced countless scrutiny. The third-degree applied to me when I reported to Hufford and other agents in charge about where I was those two weeks when I failed to capture Emil.
He’d kidnapped me, instead. But I couldn’t bring myself to admit it.
It wasn’t only a matter of pride. Telling my superiors that I’d screwed up at that airport and put myself in the position to be captured was embarrassing in a professional manner.
As a woman, as a short, curvy woman, I didn’t want to endure the sexism and harassment about being caught like that.
As an agent who busted her ass to always do what was right, I didn’t welcome the idea of anyone accusing me of being weak for a sexy man, too easy, stupid enough to be compromised in the heat of the moment.
The main reason I hedged answering anything and avoided any mention of all those days and nights with Emil was because I wanted to spare him.
Even though it felt like I was sacrificing my mission to cover for him and not tell Hufford or anyone else that Emil kidnapped me, I debated it until I believed that I was merely excusing him for now.
He’d taken off, besting me at that cat-and-mouse game in the end, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t go after him again.
He’d left with full control of the situation, such that I got no intel from him, but that didn’t suggest I’d fail the next time I saw him.
The hunt, as far as I was concerned, was still on.
In those first couple of months since I’d returned, I fought back the criticism of being taken for two weeks.
Of being a failure at going after Emil Dubinin.
My story was that the Mexican Cartel in the area had taken me, and that lie was manageable to give them.
No jurisdiction in that area could accept or refute my story.
Emil had won this round and gotten away from me.
But I would get him next time.
That was what I’d told myself those first couple of months I was back. And when I saw him…
I sighed, letting go of the hurt and disappointment that lingered in my chest at the thought of seeing him again.
It stung for him to walk away from me after the torrid weeks we’d shared in the jungle, on the run.
It pissed me off that we could come together, like partners who wanted to survive, then step apart with that distance between us.
Missing him was a cruelty that distracted me those first couple of months.
The audacity of his just abandoning me sharpened my resolve to find him again, even though he seemed to hide even better now.
But with the episode of my being fired due to very vague accusations of selling intel to a crime lord—one they wouldn’t even identify, that was how vague and weak Hufford’s words were!—I had to shelve my search for Emil and figure out how to survive in the short-term.
I walked out of that meeting, telling Hufford to fuck off and to think twice about trying to fire me.
That prompted more interrogations and meetings with other superiors, who still couldn’t tell me what their grounds were to fire me.
Then when I contacted HR and lawyers, determined not to lose the job I’d wanted all my life, it was only a matter of prolonging my stay until they escorted me out of the building.
Coworkers laughed and judged. During my discussions with HR, one woman stared at my stomach and accused me of being pregnant.
That added to the sexism and judgment, providing another avenue for them to build a case against me.
Other agents further smeared my reputation for getting knocked up, getting close to that actual truth when they said I was carrying a mobster’s baby.
Some taunted me for being a liability now, not an asset on the workforce anyone would trust again.
The meanest remark I heard was when I hid in a bathroom stall, throwing up from the stress and belated morning sickness, when I overheard another woman say that I would never be a strong careerwoman who took down criminals ever again.
That, more than anything else, broke my heart.
All I’d ever wanted to do was make the world a safer place.
But now, as I waited for Aaron to meet with me here, I had to admit I had no safe place in this world at all.
He arrived, also wearing a hoodie. Spotting me quickly, he joined me at the table.
“Wow.”
I frowned.
“You really are pregnant,” he observed.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not showing that much.” I wasn’t. With my short height and curves, I figured I’d look like a whale at six months in, but I wasn’t at all. If I wore a loose enough sweatshirt, no one would know.
“I mean…” He shook his head and seemed apologetic. “I mean you’re really still pregnant.”
I pressed my lips together, annoyed. I had no desire at all to terminate this pregnancy.
I wouldn’t waste my time explaining my stance on that, either.
A family was all I’d ever dreamed of. After losing my parents like I had, then hopping around in the system, I spent my whole life yearning for a family to belong to.
The coworkers and colleagues at the agency never gave me that sense of belonging.
But this baby would. Even if Emil could discard me and leave me so easily without a look back, I would always have this child to love and support.
My life was a mess. I was fired, about to be homeless with my savings running out, and considered a traitor.
But I was so damn excited to meet this new life.
“Thanks,” I quipped dryly.
“No. No.” He winced. “Sorry. That sounded bad.”
“Yeah, it did.”
“Sorry. It’s just…” He glanced around, as if worried someone was listening in. “There’s so many rumors and all…”
“Yeah. I remember.” In those last couple of days when I tried to stay and fight for my job, when everyone realized I was pregnant due to that nosy HR woman making me take a test, I heard it all.
“So, it’s true? Romanoff is—was—the father?”
“No.” I scowled at him.
“That’s what everyone’s assuming. That you got close to him while spying for clues about the Obsidian Eye and that’s why the Cartel tried to take you out in the jungle.”