Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
After giving me a moment to take in the bland palate of my room, Ghost asks, “What do you remember before you fainted?”
“I fainted?”
After scrubbing the back of his hand over his scruff that looks much thicker today, tracing the tremor there, he jerks up his chin.
“I don’t remember fainting.” A tinge of pain stabs my chest when I scoot up the bed so I can rest my weary torso on the headboard. I’m lying on one of those plastic sheets I was dreading meeting when I went to my mother’s gynecologist appointment with her two weeks before I was snatched.
Dr. Leonard has rules about not assessing his patients until they’re eighteen. I thought my captives followed the same rules until I noticed the youngness of the women purchased and returned. Hardly any were over the age of seventeen.
The pain in my chest augments to a tightness when Ghost mutters, “You stopped bleeding yesterday. The doctor is confident you didn’t retain any product. An ultrasound backed up his claim.”
“Product?” I hold my hand out between us when his eyes lower to my stomach. His expression tells me everything. I’m no longer pregnant.
“What does that mean for me now? I’m tossed aside and disregarded like an unwanted toy.” Killed. I don’t voice my last concern because I don’t want to give him any ideas. I’m also not sure if I should be grieving a child I never had the chance to acknowledge or my livelihood.
I peer at Ghost with lowered brows when he replies, “For now, you are to rest.”
When he steps closer, I realize I’m not the only one showing signs of exhaustion. His clothes are crinkled, his eyes are circled by dark rings, and he looks gaunt like he hasn’t eaten in days. “Why didn’t you leave?” I ask when I realize the jacket tossed over the single couch in my room was the one he was wearing when I found out I was pregnant. It is hidden under two to three days’ worth of clothes. “How long was I out?”
“Three days,” he replies, answering the easier of my questions before moving onto the big hitter. “And I stayed because you asked me to.”
Huh?
“I asked you to stay?”
He nods. “Multiple times.”
I slice his smug expression in half by murmuring, “I don’t remember that. The last thing I remember is my husband—” I stop talking when my heart falls from my ribcage. Forgetting that my every move is being scrutinized, I raise the hem of my nightie and peer down at my stomach. My bruise has healed some, but it fills my heart with pain as rapidly as it doubles Ghost’s angry glare.
“He trod on me,” I murmur through a hiccup. I’m lost as to why he would do that. I’m here to have his children, but the instant he finds out I’m pregnant, he forces me to miscarry.
“Who?” Ghost asks, for once in the dark. “Did Kirill do this to you?”
I don’t know who Kirill is, so I shrug.
“Answer me, Katie. Did the man you married hurt you?”
It takes me a few seconds to get over my shock that he called me by my name, but eventually my bewilderment ends, and I bob my chin.
It dangles an inch above my chest for a nanosecond before Ghost curses a Russian curse word, yanks his gun out of his hip holster, then storms for the closest and only exit.
I don’t know if it is fear of being left alone after being stomped on or something far more sinister, but seconds after he stalks down the hall, leaving my door wide open, I yank out my IV, almost vomit in the process, then take off after him on foot.
Ghost knows the floor plan so intimately, we reach an office on the other side before an ounce of breathlessness hits me. I gasp like my lungs are desperate for air when I recognize the face behind the big, mannish desk. It is my husband.
“Why the fuck would you force her to have an abortion?” Ghost thrusts his hand to his left, proving he’s spiraled so deeply into his anger, he hasn’t noticed me on his right. “She’s here to give you an heir.”
“Exactly,” replies the man I now know as Kirill before he shifts his eyes to me. “An heir, not a whore.”
I’m lost to what he means, but Ghost isn’t. “You couldn’t tell if it was a girl. She wasn’t far enough along.”
“Medical professionals would disagree with you.”
When Kirill glares at me, daring me to go against his lie, I take a step back. I know my place, and right now, I’m not sure Ghost has the power to protect me. Don’t get me wrong. He is steaming mad, and his gun is directed at my husband’s head, but his focus is no longer on Kirill. It is to his left, to a small child and a woman I swear I’ve seen before. They’re being thrust into the room by a goon with a watermelon head. He has a gun butted at the woman’s temple, and he is cruelly clutching a child I’d guess to be three or four.