Page 144 of Sinful Blaze

“Because I want to keep my job. I happen to like it.”

“Your pregnancy shouldn’t matter.”

“But it does!” I cry out. “It does matter and, had you spent one second paying attention to their reaction when you blew my cover, you’d have seen why! Now, thanks to you, I probably don’t even have a job. Hooray! I’ll be able to make all my appointments now!”

I’m literally shaking mad. So much that I have to grip my purse on my lap just to steady my fingers.

Pasha seems genuinely surprised.

For once, he doesn’t have a response.

54

DAPHNE

When we finally pull into the clinic parking lot, he sighs. “I’ll help you find a job that’s better than that. Somewhere where they respect you.”

“That’s not the fucking point.”

I didn’t mean to snap at him. Not really. But now that it’s out, I can’t feel a reason to stop.

“That may not have been an ideal job, but it was the first and only one that I chose for myself. That I won for myself, on my own terms and my own credit.” I sigh. “And then you had to barge in and take it all away. Just like how you took my home away from me. My ability to drive myself literally anywhere. Shit, I can’t remember the last time I even got to decide where we go out to eat. Newsflash, Pasha: this is the twenty-first century. I happen to have just as many rights as you.”

Something in the back of my mind whispers for me to give him a chance to explain himself.

The rest of me doesn’t have the time or patience to wait for some gaslit, testosterone-filled justification of his behavior.

I storm out of the car. At least he gives me a few paces of space ahead of him as we go into the clinic. We’re cordial enough to the receptionist on check-in, and we sit next to each other in the waiting area until my name is called.

But Pasha doesn’t say anything.

I’m left to handle the doctor’s questions and answers on my own, and when our daughter appears on the ultrasound screen, I’m the only one who sniffles with happiness at our growing baby.

We don’t drive through our usual smoothie place like we always do after each appointment. He doesn’t ask me if I want to go back to work—I don’t, actually, so that’s just peachy—and he doesn’t ask me how I’m feeling.

By the time we park in the penthouse garage, I’m choking back tears.

A few of them fall when Pasha leaves the car and beelines to the elevator, leaving me behind without a single glance.

He does wait for me. There’s that much. I wipe my tears away and do my best to pretend like I’m not internally ripping apart at the seams when I exit the car and stride to the elevator. He holds the door open for me, then stabs the floor button as the doors slide shut.

I want to say something. But I’m too afraid that if I try, I’ll only end up sobbing into his shirt.

I have to be strong.

I have to be resilient.

What I don’t have to do is hold it in for very long. The second we’re in the penthouse, Pasha heads to his “home office” and slams the door shut.

The sound echoes through every nerve in my body. I know that sound all too well. It was the soundtrack of life growing up in the Hamish household. Easier to slam a door than solve a problem.

This problem would be so easy for Pasha to solve, though, wouldn’t it? Albeit in his own way.

We’re not married. It would be easy for him to send me back to my old apartment—or maybe just straight to Siberia, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Two Hundred Dollars. He might decide it’s better to just mail a child support check each month rather than deal with my drama. Rather than raise a crying, screaming, snot-nosed kid in his perfect world of marble and mafia.

Or Bratva. Whatever. Call it any name, it’s no place for a sweet little girl.

I feel myself slowly sit down on the couch. I feel the tears streaming down my face.

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