Page 88 of Santa Daddy
When had I last had my period?
Time had turned slippery since Konstantin dragged me out of the tree lot. Days bled together—blood, snow, sex, more sex, arguments, more sex. But if I counted backward—shifts at the mall, rent due dates I wasn’t paying anymore, that last pack of tampons?—
Six weeks. Maybe seven.
My hands shook as I hauled myself up and faced the mirror.
Same face. Same dark hair. Same brows in permanent mutiny. But my breasts looked fuller under his shirt, nipples sore in a way I’d blamed on him being a little too enthusiastic with his mouth. The shower had been too hot yesterday, spray pricking my skin like needles.
Stress screws with your cycle,I told my pale reflection.So does trauma. You’ve been kidnapped, married, and fucked senseless by a man with a body count. Your uterus is just protesting.
Even as I tried to sell myself that, I knew.
Deep down, in the place women know these things long before plastic sticks confirm it, I knew.
I was pregnant.
With a killer’s baby.
Apparently the universe had looked at my life and gone,You know what this train wreck needs? A bonus level.
The bathroom drawer fought me when I yanked it open. A minor annoyance every morning this week. Today, it felt personal.
“Open, you smug bastard,” I hissed, hauling harder.
It groaned and gave way, contents spilling across the marble: tampons. Advil. An eye-wateringly expensive hand cream I’d never have splurged on myself.
And a pregnancy test.
“What the actual fuck,” I breathed.
It sat there in its box, white and calm, promising “early detection” in soothing fonts.
Not exactly standard mob bachelor bathroom equipment.
Someone had stocked it. Someone who’d looked at the way we couldn’t keep our hands off each other and done the math.
Natasha.
Of course.
Eyes like a security camera. Heart like reinforced concrete. She probably had an internal requisition system for “potential heir” supplies.
Efficient as always, you terrifying woman.
My hands shook opening the box. The instructions were insultingly simple. Pee on stick. Wait three minutes. Have your life rewritten.
I did what it said, then set the test on the counter like it was explosive and started pacing the small stretch of marble.
Three minutes.
One hundred eighty seconds to find out if I was carrying the child of a man who’d killed more people than I wanted to thinkabout. A man I’d fallen for in spite of myself and every red flag flapping in the blizzard.
Please be negative. Please be food poisoning. Please be some stress-induced horror show and not?—
I looked.
Two pink lines glared up at me. Clear. Unambiguous.
