Page 188 of Nine Months to Bear

My stomach drops. I sit up straighter as the satisfaction of walking away from Stefan evaporates. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere quiet. Somewhere we can have a real conversation.”

The driver takes a turn I don’t recognize. We’re heading away from downtown, away from any police station or federal building I know of.

“I want my lawyer.”

“Sure, yeah. You’ll get one. Maybe. Eventually.” Medina finally looks at me, and his eyes aren’t cop eyes anymore. They’re something else. Something that makes my skin crawl. “First, we need to discuss your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my?—”

“Please.” He holds up a hand. “Let’s not insult each other’s intelligence. We know exactly what Stefan Safonov is to you. What you are to him. We know all about you two.”

The SUV merges onto the highway heading north. Definitely not going to any station.

“You’re not FBI, are you?”

Medina laughs. “Not really, no.” He leans forward. “See, your boyfriend has been a thorn in our side for years. Untouchable. Always one step ahead. But then you came along.”

My mouth goes dry. “I don’t know anything about his business.”

“No? Nothing about the warehouses? The shipments? The money flowing through that pretty little clinic of yours?”

“There’s no money flowing through my clinic except legitimate medical payments.”

“You sure about that?” He pulls out a tablet, shows me bank records. My clinic’s accounts, every transaction highlighted and annotated. “That’s conspiracy right there. Got you dead to rights. Money laundering, too. Five to ten years, easy. Do you know what life is like for a pretty girl in federal prison, hon?”

“That’s not— I didn’t know where it came from.”

“Bullshit. You knew exactly where it came from.Whoit came from, more specifically.” He swipes to another screen. Photos of me and Stefan. At the gala. Outside my clinic. In his car. “You’ve been fucking him for weeks. You’re carrying his baby. You really wanna pretend you didn’t know what kind of guy was bankrolling you?”

The driver takes an exit I don’t recognize. We’re in bland suburbia now, empty homes and weed-covered lots, all of them vacant and foreboding.

“Where are we going?”

“I told you. Somewhere quiet.”

Fear starts to uncurl in my chest. Real fear. The kind that makes your hands shake and your breath come short. “This is kidnapping.”

“Now, now, don’t throw around nasty words like that.” He puts the tablet away. “We can make this easy or hard. Your choice.”

“What do you want?”

“Stefan Safonov. Gift-wrapped with a bow.”

“I can’t give you what I don’t have.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?” He studies me. “You were in his house. In his bed. You telling me you didn’t see anything? Hear anything?”

I think about the conversation I overheard between Stefan and Taras. About Mikayla. About Walsh. About business interests I didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand.

“I’m a fertility doctor. That’s all.”

He snorts. “Who just happened to get knocked up by Boston’s biggest crime boss.”

“I didn’t know?—”

“Stop.” His voice turns hard. “Stop playing innocent. You knew what he was. Maybe not the gory details, but you knew. And you spread your legs anyway.”