21. Maya
MAYA
“Was that Anton?” I demand.
Artem shoves me down a corridor, barely giving me a chance to catch my balance. “I was speaking to my brother, yes,” he says, his voice ice-cold.
My head is still spinning. One minute I was stepping outside for air, the next I was thrown into a van. Now, I’m locked in an abandoned open-plan office, surrounded by dusty desks and the lingering threat of the gun Artem flashed the second we arrived.
“Just let me go,” I plead, forcing down my anger. I’d try playing the innocent, terrified girl, but Artem knows me too well for that act to work.
“Don’t worry, beautiful. You won’t be here for long.”
His gratingly sweet tone makes the hairs on my neck stand up. He’s always been a monster disguised as a savior, preying on desperate girls. I hate myself for ever falling for his lies in the past, but right now, regret won’t save me.
“What does that mean?” I ask, as he guides me towards an office, which he opens and pushes me inside.
He pulls the door shut behind him, and locks it, dropping the key into his pocket.
He grins, letting his gaze slowly work its way up and down my body.
I shudder, drawing my eyes away from him, wishing I could tear my skin off just so I wouldn’t feel his eyes on me.
“A pretty little thing like you, it was never going to be hard to find another buyer,” he explains, as he slowly begins to walk around me. I’m frozen to the spot, my arms wrapped around myself, so tense I feel like I might shatter if he tries to lay a hand on me.
“What do you mean...?”
“My brother might have paid a million for you, but this man is tripling it,” he explains. “And he has... quite a reputation with the girls he buys from me.”
I feel like I’m going to throw up, the skin on my neck growing cold and clammy.
“They don’t all make it back,” he explains, dropping his tone as he leans in close, close enough that I can feel his breath on my skin. “At least, all in one piece.”
My knees are threatening to give out underneath me as he continues to taunt me, clearly enjoying how petrified I’m right now.
And the feel of his breath on my skin, it takes me back to those awful times when he fucked me, rutting on top of me like the sweaty old creep that he was.
I wish that I could scrub that from my memory, but it will always be stuck there, and I suspect there is a part of him that takes great pleasure in knowing that.
“And he’s especially interested in you,” he goes on, as he comes to a halt in front of me once more. “Given that you’re pregnant.”
My eyes widen as I stare back at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply. “I’m not pregnant. Certainly not by you.”
He smirks slightly. “Oh, I know it’s not by me,” he agrees. “But my brother, that’s a different story. What, were you whoring yourself out to both of us at the same time? I didn’t take you for the type, Maya.”
I almost want to slap him then, for suggesting that anything I have shared with Anton has even come close to what he did to me.
When he touched me, it felt like some sort of slimy reptile on my skin, and I just closed my eyes and got through it as best I could.
With Anton... even the few times we have been together, they have been electric, each and every moment burned into my memory.
I never want to forget them. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
“The doctor on Anton’s payroll, he’s worked for the family for a long time,” he goes on. “Didn’t take much to get him drunk and talking about what he had done for the two of you. Said that you saw the baby for the first time together. Sweet, really.”
My mouth is dry as I try to keep my gaze fixed on him, my knees still trembling dangerously beneath me. I stumble back towards the desk behind me, needing something, anything, to provide me with a little support.
“And I put the pieces together after that, that he must have paid so much for you because he knew you were pregnant,” he goes on.
“When I heard that he was at one of the clubs I keep an eye on tonight, I decided to swing by, and there you were, standing in the street. Almost like you wanted someone to swoop in and get you out of there...”
“I wasn’t waiting for you,” I spit back, loathing the very idea that he might believe that. He shrugs.
“I don’t care,” he replies calmly. “I just care that I make the money I deserve off you.”
“Don’t you care about your... about your brother’s child?” I demand, clamping my hands to my belly, changing my approach in the hopes of engendering some sympathy. “You can’t seriously hate me so much that you would be willing to put your own flesh and blood at risk for—”
“I don’t think you understand, Maya,” he replies, tone laced with condescension. “That family, it’s never been mine. Anton and I might share a father, but everything that he had handed to him, it was denied from me.”
His voice drops into bitterness now, his eyes darkening. This wound obviously runs deep within him, even if I had no idea that I had opened it again.
“And so I’m going to deny him his future,” he finishes up, glancing down to my belly. “He’ll never have a chance to meet that child of his.”
I can’t take this. It’s so cruel, beyond anything I imagined Artem to be capable of.
But I’m desperate.
I lunge towards him, grabbing his arm, willing to try anything to implore him.
“If you let me go, I’ll leave,” I tell him.
“You can tell Anton that you killed me or sold me or whatever, I don’t care.
I’ll leave, I’ll move states, I’ll leave the country if you want.
I’ll have the baby and he’ll never even know about it.
I’ll never try to get in touch with him again, neither of you will ever here from me. ”
He looks down at my hand, and then draws it back, tugging it out of my grasp like he can hardly believe I would bother with such a thing.
“You know, Maya,” he replies, his tone almost mild. “I don’t believe you could.”
And, with that, he takes the key in his hand, unlocks the door, and leaves, making sure to bar it tight before he goes. I stand there for a second, still staring at the spot he was standing, trying to make sense of what he just said to me.
And I realize that he’s right. There’s no way I could ever just walk away from Anton, especially not now I’m carrying his child.
The connection the two of us share already feels intense in ways I have never experienced before, and I would not be able to live with myself if I just turned my back on it like it was nothing.
Besides... I know what it’s like to grow up with an absent father. Even when my own dad was technically around, his mind was always on his next bet, never with me.
And it killed me growing up, to have that gap in my life, to see other children with their happy families and to know that I would never have it for myself. It was the reason I stuck by him till the end, the reason I was close enough for his debts to be transferred to me.
And even despite that, I don’t want my child to go through the same thing, with a father who is never around, a question mark that they never truly get an answer to.
Anton’s world might be dark and dangerous, but he is a light in the midst of it—fiercely protective, willing to do just about whatever it takes to make sure that the people he cares about don’t come to any harm.
I know he’ll extend that same attitude to our child, if not an even more intense version.
If I can just get out of here, I know that he’s the man I want to do this with, no matter what danger might come with it.
But the question is whether I can survive whatever Artem has planned for me.
And it’s one I still don’t yet know the answer to.