Forced Mafia Bride (Yezhov Bratva #2)

Chapter 15 – Rosalyn

Two Days Later

We chose this place for one reason: It was the last place anyone would look for us.

The air was thick with the scent of mildew and decay and the distant sound of raised voices and blaring music from the neighboring apartments. This was the kind of place people kept their heads down, where no one asked questions—old apartments in dilapidating suburban areas.

I moved over to the grimy window, pushing aside the tattered curtain to gaze out at the bleak landscape. It was nothing like the view back at Father’s house or Nikolai’s, but it would have to do. The streets were lined with crumbling buildings, and the sidewalks were cracked and uneven. It was a place where hope came to die.

Hannah joined me at the window, her shoulder brushing against mine. I didn’t think I’d taken the time to thank her for being here. Almost everywhere I was, if I was being honest.

I sighed, my voice barely above a whisper when I asked. “This is it, huh? Our new home.”

She nodded, pulling on the strings of her hoodie. It was the first time I had seen her in something other than a suit, and it fitted her in an odd feminine way.

“For now. It’s safe. No one will think to look for us here.”

I turned to her, my eyes searching as I tried to shake off the feeling of unease that had been growing inside me. After that day with Nikolai, I knew I couldn’t continue to stay around him. It was toxic enough to hate someone and have sex with the same person. I needed r eal freedom. Away from Ronan and the torture I’d grown with over the past years. Away from him, too—the man who managed to stir ice and fire in me at the same time.

“But what’s the real plan? How long do we have to stay here?”

She took a deep breath, her eyes still glued to the world beyond the window. “Laying low for a few more days until things blow over. Then we can start thinking about our next move: to leave the city. That’s the plan. We can do this, okay? I just need you to be strong.”

And that was the one word that broke me because there was something else that rammed against my chest like a sledgehammer. Something that crushed the weight of my shoulder with each breath I took.

How long was I supposed to stay strong?

“Hey…hey, what’s wrong?” She gathered me by the shoulders, rubbing my back as the tears slipped from my eyes. “I promise, we’re not going to stay here for long, okay? It’s just temporary.”

I shook my head. That isn’t it. “That’s not it.” How am I going to tell her? “Oh, Hannah….”

A fresh roll of waterworks started down my cheeks, and she could only offer back rubs, supporting the best way she knew how. Although I knew, before starting this new life, I was going to have to come clean.

I pulled away from her, rubbed my hands on my jeans, and stared hard at the floor before speaking. “It’s just….”

She encouraged softly, patting my arm. “It’s just what, Rosalyn?”

“I….” I swallowed, coughing back a chokehold of tears. “I really don’t know how it happened. I…I swear we…. I made sure we used protection….”

Her hands stilled, and the sadness in her eyes morphed into something unreadable.

“You had sex? With a Yezhov ?”

Her tone was neither judgmental nor exciting, just plain curious and maybe a pinch hurt, but my shoulders felt heavy, like they bore the weight of the world on them.

I licked my dry lips and fiddled with my fingers. “I swear, it wasn’t planned.”

“It was that night, wasn’t it? The night of the Bercyna, at your house?”

“Yes.” I swallowed, refusing to look her in the eye, scared of what I might have seen.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

It was there now, more pronounced—the hurt that I kept such a big thing from her.

My lips wobbled.

I didn’t want to cry. I was tired of the tears.

“Hannah….”

Rapidly, she blinked, wiping her glassy eyes before resuming her familiar stiff posture, but when she spoke, I had never heard such an amount of emotion laced in her voice like now. She flicked her lashes and folded her arms across her chest.

“This is not about me. Let’s not make it about me. I’m just…I wish you’d told me.”

I wished so, too, that I had been bold enough to tell her then, but would it really have changed anything?

When I didn’t speak anymore, she nudged my shoulder with a raised brow.

“So what happened?”

That insane pressure returned. The one that made me feel like I’d been stabbed in the heart and left to bleed to my death in a cold alley.

“I just noticed—for two months…two months, Hannah. No flow. No period. Nothing. I panicked but didn’t want to think much about it because, like I said, we used a condom, but I got worried and got one of his maids to bring a pregnancy test kit. I’m sorry. I lied to her that you were too shy to request it yourself so she wouldn’t get too suspicious and rattle to her boss. But I…I peed on the stick and….”

I produced the stick from my back pocket and busted into more tears when the shock on her face translated to a gasp.

“It’s positive, Hannah,” I wailed, choking on tears and crumpling into her arms yet again. “The condom…it must have been a fake. It must have broken!” It must have fucking broken.

Now, I was pregnant with his child.

I blamed him, my inexperience, my recklessness.

“So, he doesn’t know?”

I shook my head, trembling. This secret was mine, and now Hannah’s. Just two of us against the harsh reality of life.

Hannah hushed me, patting my back like a crying baby. She kept a poker face, and it didn’t betray her with any emotion. She just swept my hair behind my ear and comforted me with silence.

After a rather long, devastating moment of weeping, she pulled back with a suggestion that thrust the stake in my heart even deeper.

“You don’t have to keep it.”

It wasn’t the most absurd option. The thought had crossed my mind: I didn’t have to keep it. There was no law anywhere that mandated otherwise. I could get rid of it and be free of the burden once and for all.

But….

“What do you mean I don’t have to keep it? It is already two months old. It is practically a human being.”

“ It is not yet born. Consider an abortion.”

“Hannah….”

“Rosalyn, look around. We’re hiding in this shit hole like fugitives on the run from two dangerous men. One who happens to be your brother, and the other….” She shuddered. “I’ve heard things about that man, Lyn. Horrible, despicable things. Sometimes, I’m not sure who to be more scared of: your brother or him. He is not the kind of man you mess with, and he is one of the two men on our tail. We can’t introduce a child into this picture. That’s a lot to bear.”

“And you think I don’t know that?” The tears found their way up again, and I clutched my chest. “It’s a lot to bear, but the child is already here. It’s a living, breathing thing, and I can’t decide to… unalive it at this moment.”

She was quiet for a while before speaking up again, her eyes holding back more words than her mouth spoke. “You know what’s going to happen when he finds out you’re pregnant, and his blood flows through that child’s veins, right?”

I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t because I knew what was going to happen: He would never let me go.

Her fingers slid through her short hair, and the heavy silence hovering between us meant she was as clueless as I was. My decision to keep the baby was only going to further complicate our situation, making our lives more miserable.