Page 112 of Scarlet Thorns

My baby.

I make it to the parking garage before the full weight of it hits me. I sink into the driver’s seat of the Jaguar— the car that someone tried to turn into my coffin just hours ago— and let the reality wash over me.

I’m pregnant.

After convincing myself it might never happen, after all the medications and treatments and desperate hope, it’s happened. And if I’m already nearly four weeks along, that must mean I conceived practically the first time we… did it.

There’s a flutter of pure joy in my chest, bright and fierce and unexpected. A tiny cluster of cells that’s somehow already the most important thing in my world. I press my hand to my still-flat stomach and feel something shift inside me— not physically, but emotionally. Protectively.

This baby is mine. Whatever the contract says, whatever arrangements have been made, this life growing inside me belongs to me.

And then reality hits.

Surrogate mother.

That’s what I am. That’s what I signed up for. This baby— my baby— isn’t really mine at all. He or she belongs to Osip Sidorov, to fulfill some need I don’t fully understand, part ofa business arrangement I entered into out of desperation. This isn’t some great love affair. We are not going to be a family.

Forget about romance, Ilona.

It’s just business.

But the flutter in my chest says otherwise. The way my hand instinctively curves protectively over my stomach says otherwise. The sudden, fierce need to keep this baby safe says otherwise, too.

I sit in the parking garage, surrounded by concrete and the echoes of car engines, and try to figure out how to reconcile the contract I signed with the love that’s already blooming inside me.

How do you give away a piece of your soul? How do you carry a life for nine months and then hand it over like a business transaction?

And what happens if you realize you can’t?

Chapter Forty-Four

Osip

The mechanic’s words have been gnawing at me since his call an hour ago.

“Someone loosened the wheel nuts, boss. All four. Another few miles and they would’ve come clean off.”

Suka pizdets!

Someone tried to kill my woman.

Not your woman, mudak.

It’s business.

But business transaction or not, the fury builds in my chest, white-hot and razor-sharp. Whoever did this wanted Ilona dead— or wanted to send me a message written in her blood. Either way, they picked the wrong fucking target.

“Professional job,” the mechanic had said. “Knew exactly how to make it look like normal wear until the right moment. Your lady’s lucky she wasn’t on the highway when…”

He didn’t need to finish.

I can picture it now— Ilona’s car rolling at high speed, wheels separating, metal screaming as it flips across asphalt. Blood and glass and twisted wreckage. Another woman destroyed because someone wanted to hurt me.

Nyet.

Not happening.

Not ever fucking again.