Page 188 of Nine Months to Love
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asks.
“No. I’m fine.”
She pulls out vegetables and starts chopping. “So what do you need to talk to Iakov about?”
“Business.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t press. Just keeps chopping.
I walk to the living room and sit on the couch. There are photos on the wall. Iakov and Arielle at the beach. Iakov and Arielle at a restaurant. Iakov and Arielle smiling.
They look happy. Truly happy.
I feel a pang of something I can’t name. Envy, maybe. Or regret.
Arielle brings me a glass of water anyway. “You look tired,” she says. “Is everything okay?”
“No. But it will be.” Then I pull out my gun and point it at her. “I’m sorry to involve you in this. But I no longer have a choice. Sit down, Arielle. You and I are going to wait for Iakov to get home.”
53
OLIVIA
The jeep hits a pothole and I lurch forward, catching myself on the seat in front of me. My hands haven’t stopped quivering since I left the manor.
What have I done?
The right thing,I tell myself silently in answer to my own question.You’re doing the right thing.
Mikayla sits beside me. She’s quiet for once, peering out of the window as the city gives way to suburbs, then to countryside, wide-eyed and wondrous as if she never expected to see the outside world again.
The armed men in the front seat don’t speak a word, either. They just drive.
I pull out my phone. It’s still off. I should turn it on. I should call Stefan. I should tell him this was all a mistake, that I panicked, that I didn’t mean to?—
“Don’t.”
I look up. Mikayla is watching me.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t call him. Not yet.”
“I need to explain?—”
“You need to think. That’s what you need to do. Really, truly think long and hard about what you’re doing.”
After a moment of hesitation, I pocket the phone. She’s right. I don’t know what I’d even say to him.Sorry I broke you out of prison and ran away with the woman who betrayed you? Oopsie-daisy?
The only thing I need to do is remember that recording. That’s what locks me back into place. He doesn’t care about me—only the baby. Only his heir.
The jeep turns onto a dirt road. Trees close in on either side. We drive for another ten minutes, bumping uncomfortably down the unpaved path, before pulling up to a farmhouse.
It’s old and half-renovated. There are tarps draped over parts of the roof and scaffolding sagging against one wall, like whoever was working on it simply left one day a long time ago and never came back. But the windows are intact and smoke curls from the chimney.
The driver kills the engine. “We’re here.” It’s the first thing he’s said since he picked us up.
Mikayla gets out first. I follow on shaky legs. The air smells like pine and wet earth. It’s quiet out here. Eerily still in every direction.
