Page 191 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

“I’m not making an excuse,” I tell him. “Seriously. You’re cute. It’s not you.”

He raises one eyebrow. “I’ll pretend to believe that. For my ego’s sake, if nothing else.”

“Really, I promise. I’m… I’m pregnant,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

He stops short and sets down the glass he’s holding. “Well, shit. Guess it is complicated. Is the father in the picture?”

I shake my head. I don’t trust myself to do any more than that.

He winces. “I’m sorry. It’s cowardly when men pull that shit.”

“Well, he doesn’t know,” I hear myself say.

I don’t know why I’m telling anyone this, let alone a stranger. I don’t even know for sure if I’m pregnant yet.

But somehow, it feels cathartic to say all these things out loud. To play with the possibility that, in a few months, I’ll have a baby in my arms and that baby will be mine.

Not Aleks’s.

Mine.

“Oh,” he says. “Hm. The mystery deepens. Are you gonna tell him?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“Bad relationship?”

I bite my lip and fall back on the only word that makes sense to me right now: “Complicated.”

He chuckles again, though his eyes flash once more with sympathy. I hear the bell over the door ring and I turn to see a tall, broad-shouldered figure. My heartbeat quickens for a moment—Can he really have tracked me down already…?

But it’s not Aleks.

It’s Rob.

I do my best to ignore the bitter tang of disappointment as I weave between the tables and throw myself into his arms.

“Rob!” I cry out. I bury my face in his shoulder.

He pulls away almost immediately. “Let’s go. Get in the car.”

He steers me towards the door with a painfully tight grip on my upper arm. I have only time for a backhanded glance at the bartender before I’m rushed back into daylight.

“Rob…?”

“Get in the car,” he growls again. “It’s not safe to be out in the open like this.”

Rob has always been calm, cool, collected. A picture of perfect control at all times—though not without his fair share of anger bubbling beneath the surface, especially since Isabella vanished.

But now? Now, that anger is raging for all to see. Along with paranoia and a kind of panicked franticness that sets my own heartbeat thumping along with it.

Something has changed for the worse.

He pushes me into the car and looks furtively up and down the street.

“I wasn’t followed,” I hiss at him.

“That you know of,” he corrects without looking down. “What about the blue sedan right over there? Could be Bratva.”

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