Page 16 of Forbidden Pregnancy (The Buffalo Italian Mob Family #2)

Chapter Twelve

Myra

The Secret Location

I learned for the first time in my life that tumbleweed is not something made up for television.

I think we’re somewhere like New Jersey or Ohio, maybe, but Michael won’t let me leave the house and he won’t give me the slightest clue where we are.

He must have left CC behind or she escaped all on her own, because she’s not out in the middle of nowhere with us.

Michael barely says a word to me. With nearly two months of no normal human communication, I can feel myself growing crazy. I only have one “person” to talk to, but I barely want to believe that “person” is real.

I haven’t taken a pregnancy test, but I had the strangest feeling last week after waking up with a violent vomiting session instead of a seeping sense of dread.

I’m pregnant. The thought was clear and powerful in my head, like it really did come from the big wide universe.

I know it’s not biologically likely because of the misfortune with my eggs and my “maternal age”, according to social media, but I sense that it’s true.

I also haven’t had my period, but ever since the egg harvesting, my period became wildly irregular, so that’s not proof all on its own that I’m pregnant.

So I have no real evidence that I’m going to have Michael Corsini’s baby except a deep, terrifying sense that our baby is a real person and that person is my only company while I fight for my existence underneath Michael’s strict rules.

Michael knocks on my door promptly like he does every morning at 7:00 a.m.

He doesn’t sleep in my bed – which doesn’t mean he stays away from taking his pleasure – it just means he doesn’t sleep in my bed. I can’t explain it.

When he knocks at 7, I don’t bother responding.

He has a key to the door and I’m a prisoner, so what’s the point of pretending that I’m “letting” him into the room that he’ll saunter into anyways like a brutish minotaur unencumbered by a labyrinth.

The comparison feels cruel because of his missing eye, but today the absence of the eye looks more terrifying than normal.

“I think you should take a pregnancy test.”

“Or ‘good morning’ as they say in more civilized cultures,” I respond to Michael, picking a point on his face to stare at to avoid analyzing the details for all the ways he’s changed over the years.

Even with one eye, Michael delivers a pretty intimidating scowl. All those years and he still hasn’t learned how to stop acting like an uncouth beast. He might actually have become meaner as he’s grown older.

“I have one. Come here and take it.”

“Shouldn’t we have a conversation?”

“We are having a conversation. Come here.”

“I’ve been here almost two months. We need to talk to each other. I’m going crazy cooped up here alone.”

I give him the most guilt inducing expression I can muster up.

Yelling at him and complaining hasn’t worked so far.

Outright manipulation might be my only option for garnering this man’s sympathy.

My sadness only seems to annoy Michael. He shifts in the door frame like I just asked him to strip into his underwear at the grocery store.

“I give you plenty,” he says. He might give me plenty of food and I might have plenty of reading material, but aside from that, Michael hasn’t even given me an explanation about why we’re out here and what happened to his sister.

“It’s not enough that I spend every night in your bed catering to you?”

“No, it’s not enough. This is… crazy.”

For a moment, I think he’s going to follow up with another rude and disrespectful statement. Michael surprises me, although I don’t want to give him too much credit.

“Yes, it’s crazy. But I’m sacrificing everything in my life right now to protect you.”

“From what? We had sex, Michael. It’s not a big deal. We can tell Cosima we aren’t going to be together and put it all behind us.”

Seven weeks with my own thoughts has given me plenty of time to think.

Michael doesn’t care about me. He cares about satisfying his sexual appetite, but that’s a lot different from caring about me as a person.

If he really loved or cared about me, I don’t think Michael could have spent almost two months giving me the cold shoulder.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

He doesn’t want me here, so there must be some other explanation for dragging me across the country to the middle of nowhere to keep me in captivity with no way to contact the outside world. If Michael didn’t want me here, he would have put me out.

But what does he want?

“Your life is in danger,” he says. “Your life was in danger when I kissed you twelve years ago outside the guest house.”

My body shudders from the memory of what happened at the guesthouse twelve years ago.

We didn’t just kiss – and I remember because every minute of that night remains burned in my mind forever.

I never thought I would encounter Michael Corsini in person again, but I always knew that I couldn’t forget how this man made me feel or what we got up to whenever we tangled together in the bedroom.

“I can’t stay on the run forever.”

“You’re right,” he says. “You can’t. Which is why we can’t get attached to each other.”

“Right.”

I’m not surprised that’s his main concern.

He never wanted an attachment to me in the first place.

That’s why we fell apart. I had a foolish young woman’s dream about getting swept off my feet by Michael Corsini.

Reality set in when I realized he would only ever end up with a rich Italian woman or at the very least, a woman who would “fit in” with his family’s plan for him.

At his core, Michael is deeply traditional in his values, and despite all the ways he acts like an alpha-hole, he envisions a future with an Italian family.

It hurts to think that what separates us is something that I can’t ever change about myself, but it brings me peace of mind to know that at least it’s his problem, not mine.

I’m not ashamed of who I am, and I would never carry any shame about my racial background. If Michael wants to keep me at a distance because of my skin color, I can’t change him. I don’t think I would even want to try.

“Your life is the most important thing to me for the next thirty-nine weeks. I have a friend out here named Hunter Sinclair who’s going to help me get you medical care throughout your pregnancy.

Once it’s all done… you’ll take the child away to Montreal and I will provide financial support and visit twice a year. Birthday. Christmas.”

He’s serious. Whenever I think Michael can’t stun me with how fucking crazy he is, this man pushes me over the edge. I’m not the naive young tutor I was twelve years ago. I might not have slept with every man who paid me a compliment, but I grew older and wiser all the same.

“There is no way in hell you’re getting me to agree to that.”

“I’m willing to go through hell to find a way,” Michael says.

It’s hard to stop the flutter in my chest when I look Michael directly in his single, icy eye.

His hair is long and messy now, falling in fluffy tufts around his high cheek-bones and masculine face.

I still think he’s handsome, even with the large scar cutting through his brow bone and across Michael’s face.

Why does he have this hold on me? I don’t get it. He represents the darkest parts of my life and my biggest fears – that opening myself up to a man will lead to consistent abandonment. Even this arrangement means submitting to my fears of Michael’s eventual abandonment.

He’s crazy for every last part of this.

“I keep asking you to take me back to Buffalo.”

I stopped asking when he responded with food deprivation for eighteen hours straight once.

“You learned not to ask,” Michael says rudely, like he didn’t subject me to torture that violents my human rights by depriving me of food, not to mention kidnapping me in the first place.

“I can’t,” he says. “Enough of this. I need you to pee on a stick.”

I guess there’s no better way he can phrase that either. I fold my arms to keep them away from Michael, but he’s done messing around. His meaty hand wraps around my wrist and Michael drags me out of the bedroom towards the private bathroom in his suite.

He gave himself the fanciest room in this two-bedroom ranch-style house, so he has an en-suite bathroom that I have to take showers in under his strict supervision. He wants me to pee on the stick with similar levels of surveillance. Michael unboxes the pregnancy test on the bathroom counter.

“Drop your pants,” he directs me while he uncaps the plastic white stick, shaped sort of like a thermometer.

“You don’t need to supervise me.”

“I know. Drop your pants.”

His tone grows firm and dangerous. I drop my pants to avoid this part of our encounter turning into a full-blown fight. I avoid giving Michael the satisfaction of humiliating me by acting all embarrassed, but I don’t appreciate having my lips out to the wind in front of him.

Michael guides me over to the toilet bowl and seats me down over it. I reach for the stick. How much more control over this situation does he need? He drops to his knees in front of me, confirming my worst fears about this man’s intentions.

“Spread your legs.”

“I’ll be too nervous to pee with you down there.”

“No,” he says, tapping my knee so I spread my legs open.

Heat flashes through me, spreading from my cheeks to my legs, to the spot right in the center of my spread legs. It’s downright embarrassing for him to have me in this position right now.

“Look at those lips,” he murmurs. “Nice and wet…”

Michael puts the stick between my legs. “Now piss.”

I glare down at him, but this time he avoids eye contact.

I close my eyes and inhale slowly, trying to force a stream of urine out.

Michael seems impatient. It takes me a full minute to work up a stream and the silence is painful.

After I coat the pregnancy test with my urine, Michael sits back and caps it before rising to his feet and walking over to the sink.

I finish emptying my bladder.

“Three minutes,” he says without turning around to face me. “Then I’ll know if I knocked you up.”

“I already told you, Michael. I can’t get pregnant.”

But I can’t be sure of that. I just assumed I couldn’t get pregnant. Maybe I’m wrong.