Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Genevieve
“Don’t wait up for me; it’s employee game night tonight,” Anna called from the door.
“Have fun!” I called back from the kitchen.
“You know I will.”
I shook my head, a smile playing on my lips as the soft click signaled her exit.
Picking up my breakfast of orange juice and toast, I made my way to the dining room to finish up my evaluations and conclude Kazimir’s bookings for his next trip.
Something I found incredibly funny about being pregnant was how you couldn’t take a shot or indulge habits that made you feel better or forget in the past.
Wanted or not, you had to be sober through the entire process, and I wasn’t sure it was something I was ready for.
It took days and different results from different hospitals for me to finally come to terms with my fate, and even longer for me to decide what to do.
Anna was right, I had to tell him, but I didn’t know how to. I’d practiced in front of my mirror and tried sending a text multiple times, but I always quit last minute.
In the past week, Kazimir had become a landmine of some sort. I avoided him mostly because I didn’t trust myself not to blurt it out at the most random time, and partly because I was ashamed to admit to forgetting to replace my implant.
There was also the simmering fear slithering beneath all of this, one I had ultimately refused to admit to even though I revisited it every night.
I lowered my breakfast onto the table and proceeded to massage my barely visible bump. It was incredible how you could go days, even weeks, without noticing something, but the moment it’s been pointed out, you could hardly ignore it.
A knock interrupted my chain of thoughts, pulling me to the door.
I dropped my toast, walking to the door to give Anna an earful on how she should be more organized.
I threw the door open and began my speech before looking at her.
“You know it’s not proper—”
“Good morning, Genevieve.”
The voice snatched the rest of my speech and pulled up my head.
Svetlana stood at the entrance in stilettos high enough to break my ankles, a tailored pantsuit, and the tightest ponytail I’d ever seen.
“You casting for a James Blond movie?”
It was probably the worst opening line for an uninvited and very much unwanted guest in your house at dawn, but my brain was still dealing with shock.
She smiled, a gesture that barely touched her eyes. “Can I come in?”
“How do you even know where I live?”
“I know a great many things.” She stepped past me before I could answer, heels clicking against my hardwood floor like she owned it. “You should really get better security in this building. Anyone could walk right up.”
I glanced at the security lock on the door, realizing I should indeed be more security conscious. Anna wouldn’t knock.
“What do you want, Svetlana?”
She turned, taking in my small living room with an expression that made it clear exactly how she felt about it. “I think it’s time we had an honest conversation. Woman to woman.”
“There’s nothing for us to talk about.”
“Isn’t there?” She sat down on my couch, crossing her legs like she was settling in for a while. “You’ve been sleeping with my fiancé for months now. I’d say that gives us plenty to discuss.”
The word landed like a slap. “Fiancé.”
“He didn’t tell you.” She smiled, this time, satisfaction rolling off her in waves like she got the effect she desired. “Of course he didn’t. Kazimir has never been one for inconvenient details.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m a busy woman, Genevieve, and while that might be a strange concept for you to grasp given…” she looked me up and down, her gaze dragging to my open laptop on the dining table and back to me, “the nature of your job, I wouldn’t take the pain of coming to this side of town to bluff.”
“Then you wouldn’t be offended if I asked you to return to your very busy schedule.” I tried to steady my voice, but I couldn’t hold back the slight tremble.
Fiancé? What was she talking about?
“So innocent.” She tsked. “I tried to warn you, but like the rest of them, you were so in over your head over the attention. At least the rest were wise enough to get their pockets filled. You, on the other hand…”
I squared my shoulders, swallowing the nausea climbing my throat. It was one thing to accost me in a mall, it was another to insult me in my home regardless of the situation.
“Thanks for your visit, Svetlana, but everything I have, I worked for, and I do not take things that are not for me. I suggest you direct your speech to the appropriate parties since you’re well-versed in the topic of Kazimir’s love interests.”
Her eyes flashed like I’d visibly struck her. Then she let out a chuckle that sounded nothing like the polished woman in front of me. “Kazimir, quite the way to refer to your boss, eh?”
“Svetlana—”
“Still think I’m lying?” She reached into her bag and pulled out her phone, tapping the screen a few times before turning it toward me. “Perhaps you’d like to hear it from him directly.”
I didn’t want to listen. Every instinct told me to throw her out of my apartment before she said another word, but my legs wouldn’t move and my hand had already reached for the phone before I could stop it.
Kazimir’s voice came through the speaker, low and clipped, the way it sounded when he was annoyed and trying not to show it.
“She’s my assistant, Svetlana. That’s all this is.”
“Is that so? I’ve been led to believe otherwise.”
“She’s just a warm pussy, fun. Nothing more. You know where my priorities lie.”
The recording clicked off, but I hit replay, needing to hear the words again.
Svetlana waited for me to take it in before she retrieved her phone and slid it back into her bag like she hadn’t just detonated something in the middle of my living room.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she almost sounded like she meant it, which was somehow worse.
“But I thought you deserved to know the truth before you got in any deeper. We’ve been promised to each other since we were children.
It’s not something either of us can walk away from, however entertaining his little distractions are. ”
“Get out.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.
“Genevieve—”
“Get out of my apartment.”
She stood, smoothing down her coat, entirely unbothered. “I’ll leave you to think it over. I do hope you make the sensible choice.” She paused at the door. “For what it’s worth, I don’t blame you. Men like Kazimir are very good at making a girl feel special right up until she isn’t useful anymore.”
The door clicked shut behind her and I stood frozen in the middle of my own living room, one hand pressed flat against my stomach like I could somehow shield what was growing there from what I’d just heard.
The nausea I’d been holding back won, rocking my gut like a tornado and sending me straight to the kitchen sink.
I emptied my gut and then some. Then I kept retching till my throat hurt and tears seeped through the corners of my eyes.
Even when my stomach cramped and I felt a little movement inside me, I couldn’t stop. I continued till the only thing coming out of me was saliva and my throat was too raw for another gag.
I don’t know how long I sat in the kitchen, but when I got back on my feet, the cold breeze outside had changed to warm sunrays.
I managed to drag my wobbly feet up, supporting myself on the island till the wave of dizziness wore off before trudging to the living room.
I called in sick to work. I couldn’t sit across from him in that office and pretend I hadn’t heard his voice calling me nothing.
Anna found me an hour later still sitting on the floor where I’d sunk down after Svetlana left, my phone in my lap, unopened messages from Kazimir stacking up on the screen.
“Gen?” She rushed to my side. “I got your text. What happened?”
I opened my mouth, but the only sounds that came out were sobs so guttural every sound bruised my heart further.
“Oh God.” Anna’s arms wrapped around me, cradling me while I wailed like a new widow.
“He… he…”
“It’s okay,” she shushed. “You don’t have to speak now.”
“I’m so stupid, Ann. She was right. I’m so naive and stupid and—”
“Wait, who was right?”
“Svet…”
hiccup.
“Svetlana.”
Anna pulled back, her eyes narrowed at me. “What has Svetlana got to do with anything?”
I breathed in, preparing myself to utter the words I’d been replaying in my head for the past hours.
“She’s his fiancée.”
Anna’s jaw dropped. She blinked multiple times, seemingly struggling to find words. “What?”
“He said I was a warm pussy.”
Her eyes flashed. “That bastard. Tell me everything.”
I told her. From the visit to the revelation. The recording. The word fun echoing through my head like it had taken up permanent residence there. She listened without interrupting, her jaw tightening more with every sentence.
“I’ll kill him,” she said finally.
“Don’t.” I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters plenty.”
“What matters is I need to plan my exit.” I stood, already pulling my laptop toward me. “He might’ve won at this, but I won’t sit around in the office and watch like a good assistant while he acts like we never happened.”
“Genevieve, maybe you should slow down a little. There could be—”
The final bit of restraint I was clinging onto snapped.
“There could be what, Anna? A good reason he hid the fact that he was not only married but engaged? A good reason why he fucked me repeatedly and acted like he cared?” My voice rose with every sentence.
“A good reason he took me on a date and pretended this was more than it was? He followed me around this week acting like my silence was physically destroying him and I almost convinced myself he wasn’t as bad as I thought?
A good reason he fucking got me pregnant and called me nothing to the woman he’s marrying? ”
My hands were shaking as I opened my email. “I’m not doing this. I’m not going to be someone’s fun little secret while he plans a wedding.”
“Gen,” Anna started. “I understand this is—”
“You don’t understand, Anna. I love him.
” The confession tore out of me like my heart was ripped out of my chest. “I didn’t want to believe it at first, but these past few weeks made me…
” I swallowed a hiccup. “It made me feel we could finally be something, and when he came looking for me at the office, the way he looked at me, I almost told him everything and now?” I bit my bottom lip to stifle a sob.
“I feel so stupid admitting I fell for his deception, but I did and it hurts. He said I was fun. Anna, he said…” the rest of my statement got swallowed by a new wave of sobs.
Anna’s expression softened in a way I’d never seen and she tried to give me a hug, but I couldn’t let myself melt away in her comfort.
I’d never felt more humiliated and exposed, not even when I was almost kicked out for not making rent while everyone watched.
I wiped my tears, pulling my laptop over. I typed my resignation in four sentences, short and final, and sent it.
Then I turned my phone off completely, watching the screen go black on his name still sitting unanswered at the top of my messages.
“What now?” Anna asked quietly.
“Nothing.” I wiped a stray tear from my cheek. “I’ll go away.”
“You’re making too many decisions too quickly.”
“I thought I was going to die, Ann.” I attempted a laugh that came out as a cough.
“I sold everything I had, packed up and returned home to die only to discover my baby brother was in debt. I got caught in some bullshit, found out I wasn’t going to die and somehow made it out alive.
Kazimir won’t break me. And I definitely won’t sit around for his pity. ”
“And the baby?”
I stopped, my throat tightening around an answer I didn’t fully have yet. I had completely forgotten about that detail in my outrage.
“The baby is mine,” I said finally. “Whatever happened between us might’ve been a sham, but this part is true. I’ll figure out the rest on my own.”
Anna’s hand clasped around mine. “You don’t have to do this on your own, you know. It’s us against the world. Us, not you.”
For the first time in the past hours, something that resembled a smile touched my lips. “What would I do without you?”
She flashed me a cheeky smile. “You’re lucky you don’t get to find out. Now let’s get you rehydrated. You sound like a frog.”
My smile widened a little even though the ache in my chest worsened.
There were things I never thought were on my bingo card and things I could negotiate onto the bingo card.
Getting pregnant by another woman’s fiancé was not in the top one thousand list.
Kazimir had exposed me to a situation I had no idea how to navigate, and even worse, I couldn’t shake the notion that it was more my fault than it was his.
As though she could read my mind, Anna spoke. “It’s not your fault, Gen. He’s a cheap, cheating liar and you couldn’t have known better.”
I nodded even though the voice in my head thought otherwise.
“And I’m going to kill him.”
I risked a painful laugh. “I hope you succeed.”