Chapter Nineteen - Annie
The car ride is silent. Dimitri’s men don’t look at me, don’t speak. They sit like shadows in the front seat, eyes fixed ahead, hands steady on the wheel and the weapon holstered beside it. I don’t ask where we’re going. I already know.
When the car slows, my stomach turns. We’re in the city, a side street damp with rain, bins overflowing, graffiti scrawled across crumbling brick. The door opens, a hand gripping my arm, shoving me out into the night. My feet stumble on the uneven pavement, palms scraping the wall to steady myself.
The door slams. Tires screech. The car is gone before I’ve even turned around.
The street is empty. The night air is freezing, biting straight through the thin blouse I clutch tighter around me. I shiver, but it isn’t the cold that hits hardest. It’s the silence. The absence. Dimitri didn’t even come himself. No final words. No last look. He’s truly finished with me.
I stand there, breathing in shallow bursts, waiting for something—anger, tears, anything. Nothing comes. Instead, there’s a numbness that spreads until it feels like my chest is hollowed out.
Streetlights flicker in the distance, pale and unreliable. I force myself to walk. One step, then another. Mechanical, like my body’s moving without my mind. I don’t remember how long it takes, only the rhythm of my shoes striking wet concrete and the ache building in my legs.
By the time I reach my apartment, the adrenaline that kept me upright is gone. I unlock the door with fingers that barely feel real and step inside. The space is small, suffocating in its familiarity. The walls close in around me, pressing tight, too quiet. Too empty.
I’ve been gone two months, but it’s like I never left. Apparently, Dimitri’s been paying my bills, because the lights turn on like I never left.
It isn’t like the estate. Dimitri’s house was never silent—guards shifting in the halls, doors opening and closing, the low hum of life, of danger, of him. His presence filled every room, even when he wasn’t in it. Here there is nothing. Just the sound of my own breath.
I drop onto the bed without undressing. My coat stays wrapped around me, damp and heavy.
I stare at the ceiling until my eyes ache.
Tears never come. Hours pass, or maybe minutes—it blurs.
When dawn finally creeps pale across the window, I’m still awake, frozen in the same position, my body aching from stillness.
Days bleed together after that. I go through the motions: work, eat, sleep, repeat. But my appetite dwindles. Food turns to ash on my tongue. Sleep comes in restless snatches, broken by shadows that press close and the phantom weight of his voice in my ear.
The adrenaline that once burned in my blood—the thrill of defiance, the fear, the tension—fades into something duller. A hollow ache that never leaves, an emptiness lodged deep in my chest.
Still, I move. One step, then another. If I stop, I’m afraid I’ll collapse completely.
I throw myself into work with a desperation that borders on madness.
The more exhausted I am, the less I think about him.
I volunteer for late shifts, take on projects no one else wants, let my calendar fill until there’s barely room to breathe.
If I keep moving, keep working, maybe I won’t hear his voice in my head or see his eyes when I close mine.
The city isn’t free of him. It never was. His shadow stretches over everything. In bars after work, I catch his name in hushed conversations, whispered over glasses of whiskey.
On the news, the ticker scrolls past with reports of unexplained violence, coded enough that most people won’t notice, but I do. Every mention is a blade twisting deep, a reminder that while he’s erased me from his life, he still owns this city.
Part of me still belongs to him.
Mia notices before anyone else. She always does. One evening, she sets down takeout on my desk and studies me too long. “You’re not eating,” she says quietly. “You’ve lost weight. Your cheeks are hollow. I don’t know why you vanished when you did, but it’s killing you.”
I laugh it off, brittle, the sound scraping my throat. “It’s stress. Deadlines. You know how it is.”
She doesn’t push, though her eyes linger, worried. I keep my smile plastered on until she looks away, and then it crumbles, leaving me empty.
Because I know the truth. The ache won’t fade because Dimitri carved himself into me.
His presence filled every breath, every thought, until there wasn’t space for anything else.
And now he’s gone, I am a hollow thing, scraped out and left unfinished.
I tell myself I’m angry, that I hate him for what he did—for casting me out like I meant nothing.
When the nights stretch long and the silence grows unbearable, I know it isn’t the whole truth.
One night I scroll through my phone, thumb hovering over his number. My chest aches, my body remembering him in ways I don’t want it to. I could call. Just one word from him and everything might shift.
I lock the screen before I can do something stupid. He made his decision. He chose exile. Calling him isn’t an option. I have to live with it.
Weeks drag on. I become more adept at hiding it. I mask grief behind sarcasm, behind rolled eyes and long workdays. To most, I look busy, capable, too focused to fall apart. But mirrors don’t lie.
Each time I catch my reflection—tired skin, pale lips, eyes shadowed and too old for my years—I hardly recognize myself.
The woman staring back isn’t the one who walked into that gallery months ago. She isn’t even the woman who defied a Bratva enforcer and lived to tell it.
She’s someone emptied. Someone waiting for something she can’t name.
***
It starts small. At first, I tell myself it’s nothing—too many late nights, too many hours worked back-to-back, exhaustion finally catching up to me.
I silence my alarm three mornings in a row, dragging myself out of bed later than I should.
At work, I yawn through entire shifts, my head heavy, limbs sluggish.
When the nausea comes, sharp and sudden, I brush it off as flu. Stress. Bad food. Anything but what it really might be.
The sickness doesn’t stop. Days later, it’s still there—coiled in my stomach when I wake, striking without warning halfway through my day. A quiet dread takes root in my chest. I don’t want to name it. I don’t want to give it shape.
One morning, with trembling hands, I drag myself to the pharmacy. I keep my eyes low as I pluck the test from the shelf, as though the act brands me guilty.
At the register I can’t meet the cashier’s gaze. The box disappears into my bag, hidden under receipts and gum wrappers like contraband. My pulse doesn’t steady until I’m back home, the door bolted behind me.
In the cramped bathroom, I set it down on the counter. The box stares at me, small and ordinary, but it feels heavier than any weight I’ve carried. I pace. I tell myself I’ll wait. But waiting won’t change the answer.
When the two pink lines bloom across the test, my heart stops.
I sit on the edge of the tub, staring, unable to look away. My hands shake. My throat tightens. But my eyes remain dry. I don’t cry. Deep down, I already knew. The nausea, the exhaustion, the way my body felt… different. I’ve just been avoiding the truth.
Dimitri’s face flashes in my mind—his eyes burning into mine, the way his touch claimed me, the way his body pressed into mine like nothing in the world could stop him. This is his. Undeniably his.
Panic rises sharp in my throat. What does it mean? What will happen if he ever finds out? The thought threatens to unravel me. I clamp it down hard, force my breathing steady.
I shove the test into the bin, burying it under tissues until it’s hidden from sight. I scrub my hands under scalding water until the skin is red and raw, as if I can erase the truth clinging to me.
In the mirror, a pale, shaking stranger stares back. My lips are bloodless, my eyes hollow, but I whisper anyway, forcing the words out past the lump in my throat.
“This changes nothing.”
I don’t need him. I can’t. I’ll handle it on my own.
I have no other choice.
Mia notices almost immediately. She always does. I skip meals, push plates around until she gives up, take more sick days than I can justify. Conversations slide past me, her words bouncing off the wall I’ve built. When she finally presses, concern lacing her voice, I smile, brittle and thin.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. The lie is flimsy, transparent, but I hold her gaze until she lets it go. She knows I won’t open up. Not about this.
At home, the secret coils tighter around me. I avoid mirrors, avoid catching the faintest glimpse of the changes in my body. The way my jeans strain at the waist. The way my breasts ache in ways they never did before.
I can’t bring myself to say the word aloud—pregnant. It feels too dangerous, too final. If I speak it, it will be real.
At night, I lie awake, the silence pressing in. Without meaning to, my hand drifts to my stomach. Protective. Tender. The touch makes my throat tighten. I try to fight it, but the pull is stronger than me. A connection I swore I’d bury stretches across the miles and walls between us. Dimitri.
He doesn’t deserve to know. I repeat it in my head like prayer. He cast me out without hesitation, without mercy, as though I was nothing more than a nuisance. Why should I give him this piece of me, the one thing that still ties us together?
Yet…
Some nights my chest aches with the thought of him. I picture his face if he knew. Would it be anger first, sharp and cold? Or shock, disbelief? Would something softer flicker through, even for a moment, before he buried it like he always does?
The thought burns. I bury my face in the pillow, forcing myself not to imagine. I swore I was done with him. I swore I would never let him near me again.