Page 71 of Scorned Beauty

My hand lost its grip on the phone.

Sloane had been pregnant.

The news slowly registered in my head, but my body was already processing the sweeping devastation liquefying my insides, draining the blood from my head, and threatening to suck me in its undertow.

My knees crashed on the wooden floors, and even then, I couldn’t keep the rest of me upright. Piercing pain in my gut and chest hunched me over and I crawled on all fours. Crawled across the floor to a dark corner and wept. Wept for the baby—our baby—who never had a chance to live.

Chapter

Eighteen

Seven weekslater

Sloane

Breathe in.Breathe out.

That was the mantra I repeated every morning. I’d wake up from troubled sleep and struggle to leave the bed. Almost two months ago, I grabbed a chance for a new life. I left Harriet behind, knowing I couldn’t take her with me in my fragile condition. My mind and body were in a state of numbness; even taking care of myself was a chore. The woman who cut me a deal assured me that Harriet would be cared for. I didn’t feel guilt. I was too numb to feel anything. Her deal seemed the easiest, and that was to stay away from the upper East Coast for two months. Specifically, no contact with the De Luccis and, by extension, the Rossis. I was never to step foot in Manhattan again.

I didn’t even ask her why.

Get up, sis, Billy said.

“Easy for you to say. You’re dead.”

I wasn’t actually hearing Billy’s voice, nor did I see him. The isolation in this beach town at the Outer Banks fueled imaginary conversations. I remembered little about the time I was taken, but I remembered in vivid detail my brother’s dying moments in that dungeon.

“Wake up.”

My brother’s voice was like an annoying mosquito in my ear. It was like I was eight again, and Billy was eleven. He and Harriet took turns getting me ready for school and feeding me breakfast, especially when Mom had been working late, exhausted, and fast asleep. As usual, Dad was drunk on the couch or hadn’t come home from a night of gambling.

But it was the painful cramping in my stomach that finally roused me to my dark and dank surroundings. I had difficulty opening my eyes, as if someone glued my lids shut. I pulled my knees against my chest and wished I was eight again. When nothing mattered but sleep and school and playing and eating the buttered biscuits Harriet used to make. “Ahh…that hurts.”

“She’s bleeding between her legs.” Grigori's voice. “What did you guys do?”

“We didn’t do anything!” That was Anton.

Their arguing sounded far away, sometimes muffled, my comprehension of their words going in and out of my hearing like a poorly tuned radio.

“Sis, wake up,” Billy said again.

This time I pried my eyelids open with whatever willpower I had and stared at him. He was sitting against the wall. Hands tied behind his back, but he was looking pale, his mouth almost bloodless. Eyes sunken.

“Am I dreaming?”

He chuckled painfully. “‘Fraid not.” He scanned my body. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

That was when I realized I was on the floor and the ice-cold concrete against my cheek felt soothing. I tried to push up, but the stabbing in my belly restricted my movements. Warm blobs of blood gushed out of me like the heaviest of menstrual flow.

“Maybe I am.” Dom’s baby. My heart clenched. I was losing his baby, and he didn’t know. But my mind focused on my brother.

“You’re dying,” I croaked.

“It’s okay, sis,” he said.

“What?” I tried to push up again but failed.

“I’m tired,” he said.