Page 112 of Release Me

“Do you remember any of the guys?” My stomach turns, and I take another sip of my water, hoping it will settle. “Do you remember any of the guys I was with that night?”

“No.” She twirls her fork around in the bowl, picking up a spiral of angel hair pasta covered in a white sauce. I stare at her with tears of frustration threatening to fall from my eyes, but then she continues. “There weren’t any guys, Nyla. You were so out of it, you couldn’t stand. The guy who paid Beau to bring us as entertainment refused to let you in, so I stayed with you in the car while you slept it off.”

The moment my brain processes those words, every doubt, every worry, every shame, every fear about not being worthy of this new life I’ve created for myself, dissolve into a puddle of nothingness at my feet, leaving me ready and open to walk into a bright and loving future with Sebastian.

The one he’s been hinting at since we first kissed.

The one I dream about every night when I fall asleep in his arms.

The one the ring I found in his sock drawer this morning tells me is going to be made a reality sooner rather than later.

After I leave Bianca, I don’t feel like going home, so I have Jared and Russ take me to the nearest mall where I spend a good bit of Sebastian’s money on baby clothes and random items I’m not sure we’ll need. Now that we’re closing in on week twelve of pregnancy, and inching further and further away from the threat of miscarriage, I’m starting to get excited.

To feel more hopeful and less afraid.

Somewhere between buying onesies and purchasing a stroller the sales lady kept referring to as the Rolls Royce of infant transportation, I decide that tonight is the night Sebastian and I make the pending arrival of a new Adler known to the world. Once I have the thought in my mind, I run with it, grabbing all kinds of stuff that can be used to make a pregnancy announcement, and hoping that when Sebastian gets home, he’ll be able to help me sort through them all to find the best one.

When it’s all said and done, I leave the mall with enough bags to take up the trunk and cover half of the backseat. I end up needing all four of my security guards to get everything into the penthouse.

“You can leave it all right here,” I say, gesturing to the large dining table in the center of the living area. “Sebastian and I will wade through it all when he gets home.”

“Sounds good,” Russ replies as he rolls the stroller through the door and parks it by the table. Just seeing it in our space makes flutters of excitement roll through me.

“Thanks for your help, guys.” I split an appreciative smile between the four of them. “Why don’t you guys take off? I’m in for the rest of the night, so I don’t need you.”

Tyler glances at Russ, and I see the silent plea in his eyes. “What do you think, boss?”

Russ rubs at the back of his neck with one hand. “I don’t know, Nadia, we’re not supposed to?—”

“Leave me alone in my own home?” I ask, a teasing smile tilting my lips. “You know as well as I do that there’s no where safer for me than inside these walls, so take your men and go. You guys deserve a night off.”

Before any of them can protest again, I start shooing them out of the door. They leave me in a mixed cloud of reluctance and excitement, and when I close the door after them, soaking up the first true silence I’ve experienced in a while, I breathe a sigh of relief and head over to the table to start unpacking things.

I’m halfway through the first bag when my energy starts to wane, and my brain starts flirting with the idea of a bubble bath. Never one to pass up an opportunity to spend time in the giant soaker tub, I drop a onesie that says ‘First grandchild coming soon’ onto the table and head for the bathroom.

The moment I enter our bedroom, something feels off, and I pause just inside the threshold and look around the room, finding, to my great relief, that there’s nothing out of place.

“You’re just being paranoid, Nadia,” I murmur to myself as I move into the bathroom. Even though I’m sure that’s true, I still check behind the door before I close it and turn the faucet on. When the water starts to steam, I shed my clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor that I’m trying to muster up the energy to bend over and pick up when the bathroom door creaks open.

“Hey, you’re home early.” I turn, expecting to see Sebastian, to fall head first into those familiar twin pools of champagne. What I see instead, shocks me to my core, sends tremors of fear down my spine and forces my heart into a free fall that ends in my stomach.

“What are you doing here?” I ask Vince, shrinking under the sickening weight of his gaze as it runs over my naked frame. The instinct to cover myself is strong, but I find that I can’t move, that I can’t do anything except stare at him, taking in the hate in his eyes, noting how it’s etched itself into his features.

“I brought you a present,” he says. His eyes are wild and unfocused as they run greedy passes over my body. Over my breasts and nipples, skating down my belly to the apex of my thighs and lingering on a scar he lied about having seen in person. It doesn’t seem to matter now, knowing that he lied before, because the conversation I had with Bianca feels like it happened in another life, and in this life, in this ugly reality, I’m alone with a man who hates me, with a man who has already decided that he’s going to hurt me.

“You need to leave, Vince. Sebastian will kill you if he finds you here. You need to go. Now.”

To my surprise, he does start moving. And for a second, I think the stumble to the right he does is voluntary. The beginning of him doing the smart thing for once and running for his life. But then I realize that the stumble wasn’t intentional on Vince’s part, that it was caused by a rough hand on his shoulder, shoving him out of the way to make room for a more terrifying figure in the door frame.

When Vince was standing in front of me, I was too scared to move, but now that Beau is standing in front of me, I’m terrified by what will happen to me and my baby if I stay still. I stumble backwards, tripping over my clothes and landing on the floor with a strangled gasp. Beau’s razor thin lips pull into a tight, triumphant smile as he stands over me. I gaze up the long line of his body, at his clenched fist and the gold signet ring with an M in the center, and eyes that sparkle with delight and destruction, and I know.

I know that he’s come to make good on his promise to kill me.

40

SEBASTIAN

The first thing I notice when I walk through the door is how quiet it is. Nadia usually always has some form of noise going, whether it’s Desiree on speaker phone while she prepares a snack in the kitchen, music playing while she’s folding clothes or the TV on while she lays on the couch, there’s always something happening, so it strikes me as odd that when I come home, I’m greeted by nothing but silence.

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