Page 175 of Nine Months to Bear

Yesterday.

Meaning that yesterday, when he was inside me, when his mouth was sealed to mine…

He was already planning to take everything.

I keep reading, even though each word feels like swallowing glass. There are financial projections showing how my clinic would fit into his “portfolio.” Notes about using it for money laundering—carefully cloaked, obscured, but I’m not stupid; I know now what he wants.

And then, at the very bottom of the stack, a single sheet of paper with one line:

If emotional manipulation fails, proceed with hostile takeover.

The journal slips from my numb fingers and lands with an ugly thump on the floor.

This whole time, every kiss, every touch, every whispered promise—all of it was pre-planned. I wasn’t falling in love. I was falling into a trap.

The office that seemed so impressive twenty minutes ago now feels like a cage. The windows aren’t showing me a world ripe for us to explore; they’re showing me how small I am from up here. How insignificant.

He said “we” this morning. Like we had a future.

What kind of future is this?

I stand on unsteady legs, leaving the drawers open. Let him know I was here. Let him know I found out.

The leather chair squeaks as I push it back. Such a sad, ordinary sound amidst this extraordinary betrayal.

I make it almost all of the way to the door before my legs give out. I lean against it, trying to breathe through the pain that’s not physical but feels like it might actually kill me.

Desperate enough to accept terms.That’s all I ever was to him. A desperate woman he could manipulate into giving him what he wanted. A clinic. A veneer of respectability. A ready, willing womb.

The baby.Oh, God, the baby.

I press my hand to my stomach. There’s life growing there, but now, it feels like another trap. Another bar in the cage Stefan built around me without me even noticing.

I straighten up, forcing my legs to work. Mikayla looks at me through the window, and I see it now: the hint of satisfaction in her eyes.

She knew. They all knew.

Everyone understood my place in Stefan’s empire except me.

Now, I know, too.

63

STEFAN

I pull into the parking lot of The Bandyleg, a diner that looks like it got stuck in 1975 and nobody bothered to unstick it. Orange vinyl booths, wood paneling, a neon sign missing half its letters. The kind of place nobody in my world would ever think to look.

Which is exactly why Taras picked it.

He’s already inside, hunched in a corner booth next to a jukebox that’s playing some disco bullshit. The whole scene is wrong: Taras drinking a chocolate milkshake through a red-striped straw, bobbing his head to the music.

“You pick the weirdest fucking places,” I say, sliding into the booth across from him.

“Weird places don’t have ears.” He doesn’t look up from his milkshake. His fingers tap against the glass—index, middle, ring, pinky, repeat. Yet another new nervous habit. I don’t like that.

“Talk.”

“Devon wasn’t working alone.”