Page 11 of Nine Months to Bear

My fingers twitch, the way they always do before a kill. The urge to grab, to keep, toown herradiates through me.

I should probably worry about that impulse. But I don’t have time for that.

I glance at my watch. Oliva has sixty seconds before she’s late, but I’m not worried. She’ll be prompt. I know her. Control recognizes control.

As the seconds tick down—five, four, three, two…—there’s a knock at the door. A member of my household staff, too scared to barge in the way each of my seconds just did, pokes his nose through the door.

“Mr. Safonov? Dr. Aster is here.”

I nod and rack the gun slide. “Send her in.”

6

OLIVIA

You could spike a head on those turrets.

That’s my first thought as I drive through the gates of Stefan Safonov’s estate.

Estate. That’s how it’s labeled on Google Maps. It’s like I’m in a Jane Austen novel, except my Mr. Darcy is a sociopathic billionaire with my fragile future clenched in his bloody, tattooed hands.

I slow down, practically hanging out my window to see all the way to the peaked roofline. This place is a gothic villain’s wet dream: ivy-choked limestone, gables refined to a razor’s edge, and a driveway lined with imported birch trees thatArchitecture Digestcalled “otherworldly.”

The birch branches reach like skeletal fingers toward the gray Boston sky. Each luxurious detail is a reminder of what I’m here for:money.

I need it like I need air, and Stefan Safonov has more than enough to go around.

The vulnerability makes my stomach clench as I ease my seven-year-old Prius into park between a Bentley and a Maserati. My car looks every bit as out of place as I feel in my too-tight blazer and the same heels I wore to the gala.

Nothing says desperate like an outfit repeater. My mother would be horrified. Then again, she already is, so what do I really have to lose?

A stone-faced guard in a dark suit approaches my car. I roll down the window with a smile he doesn’t return.

“Dr. Aster?”

It’s technically a question, but I get the idea he already knows exactly who I am. The number of cameras on me right now has to be astronomical. There’s probably an X-ray machine running over my car as we speak, scanning the contents of my purse to decide if my nearly-empty bottle of Tums is an explosive device.

I swallow back the anxiety crawling up my throat. “That’s me.”

“Turn off your car,” he orders. “Follow me.”

I scramble out of my car to follow the man, tugging my skirt down and straightening my already straight posture. I may not have lived up to all of my mother’s expectations, but I felt her knee in my back enough times to know never to slouch.

Each step into Safonov’s fortress feels like sinking deeper into quicksand. The foyer ceiling soars three stories high, a crystal chandelier that could double as a weapon hanging from the ceiling. Beautifulandlethal.

There’s a spiral staircase that wraps around the foyer, but I’m taken to a separate door and led down, not up.

Below the opulence.

Below the facade.

Down stairs that spiral into what can only be described as a billionaire’s murder basement.

My heels rap against the marble.Tick. Tick. Tick.It’s like a timer, but I don’t know what it’s counting down to and I really don’t want to find out.

A door booms open, and there he stands. Stefan Safonov is backlit against a bullet-riddled cement wall, assembling a handgun. His sleeves are rolled to expose forearms mapped with more tattoos I didn’t see at the gala. I have no business trying to decode them, but my eyes trace the black swirls anyway, helpless against curiosity.

He doesn’t turn as I enter. He doesn’t even turn when he speaks.