Page 53 of Kept By the Bratva

I sighed, not wanting to speak with her, but instead, the mother of my children. I looked down at her, stuck in this fugue of shock yet.

“You said someone from the Cartel raped you,” Mila said as Alek joined her. He wrapped his arm around her and shook his head. Tipping his head toward the nurse wiping off the gel from the ultrasound on Amy’s abdomen, he indicated for his wife to mind her words.

“We’ll be out in the hall, preparing to store the equipment. I’ll wrap up my notes.” Dr. Francis stood, seeming to understand when she should excuse herself. “Should I plan to forward this information to another doctor or practice for her continuing prenatal care?”

I shook my head.

“No. Amy isn’t a temporary guest,” Alek said as he saw the doctor out.

Lodged in this numbness of having my world altered in the blink of an eye, I sat there on the edge of the bed, staring absently at the wall.

I was going to be a father. I would have not one, but two babies to welcome into this cruel world with Amy. I’d never be able to explain how I knew that she was the one for me, but this seemed to cement that assumption as total, utter proof.

“Amy…” Mila said, shaking her head once it was just the four of us in here. “I don’t understand.” A trace of hurt hung in her words, and I realized how much Mila might have already welcomed and cherished having another woman in the house.

“Nik and I met at a bar.” Amy removed her hand from my grip as my fingers went lax. I was too stunned to move and recapture her.

“We slept together that night. I’d just gotten off the pill, and I assumed with my history, a pregnancy wouldn’t be likely. And…”

“You were never raped?” Alek asked.

Amy shook her head, and that motion, that answer, jerked me out of my trance of surprise.

She’d lied. She’d held not only the fact that she was pregnant from me for so long, but she’d also tried to deflect and fabricate how she’d gotten pregnant.

Her teary, sincere words came back to me.

“I’m sorry, Nik. For… for all the lies that stand and have stood between us.”

She meantallof the lies, including the one she’d made up and told Mila about a Cartel member raping her a while back before they’d kidnapped her.

“Why?” I stood, needing to be on my feet and pace. I didn’t move away from the bed, though, stuck on needing to be close with this earth-shattering revelation.

Elation claimed me. I was overwhelmed by the news that I would be a father, but the confusion and inherent lack of trust in her words warned me not to get too happy yet.

“I’m so sorry.” She said it to me but glanced at Mila, then Alek. “I was just… so… overwhelmed,” she admitted anxiously, parroting the exact feeling I had.

“Why? Why would you lie about that?” I demanded.

“I didn’tknowI was pregnant when Mila talked with me that morning. I strongly suspected that I could be pregnant, but I dismissed it all because I’d been sick. I had a stomach bug, and I assumed it was just that because I’ve always known I would struggle with fertility.” She placed her hand on her stomach, lifting her brows in something like amusement, like she realized the irony of just how fertile she actually was, with twins.

“Talking with you helped me understand that I had to be in denial, that I had to be pregnant. I hadn’t taken a test or anything, but I knew if I was, you were the father.”

She captured me with her gaze, trapping me in a spell of hearing her out.

“I hadn’t slept with anyone since the previous summer, the last year before I saw you,” she explained. “And I didn’t have sex with anyone after you.”

Why?It hardly mattered, but I was dying to know why because I wanted to believe I’d made the same impression on her that she had on me.

“Then why lie about someone raping you?” Mila asked.

“Because when you were talking to me, explaining that this is a Bratva home, that you’re all leaders and spies and… men in this crime world, I got more scared. I’ve been thrust into this life, and I don’t know who to trust or what to think. And that wasbeforeI learned that somederanged man is paying millions to have me as his possession. This isn’t… I’m not…” She shook her head, getting more agitated. “I’m struggling to adapt, and I’m doing the best I can. But when you emphasized that Nik’s brothers would look after him, when I was worried why Nik hadn’t come back yet, I understood how much family means to you. You said the Bratva wants to keep their bloodlines intact and how you look after your own.”

“But…” Mila sighed. “Why would that make you say the Cartel raped you?”

“Because I was worried that if you knew my baby—or babies—were Nik’s, you’d take them from me!” She furrowed her brow, looking among all of us. “I’m not one of you. I’m no one, a stranger. I’m not one of your Bratva. But my child would be, and I got stuck on the worry that you’d take my baby from me.”

“Oh, Amy.” Mila shook her head. “No.”