Page 107 of Merciless Desires

He hates me, too.

Cormac stares at me from the second ambulance parked across from mine. He’s also cuffed, his ankle messed up from rolling and totaling his car. I stole it to escape him, even though I don’t know how to drive. I left with the clothes on my back, rushing out of the motel when I had the chance. Cormac caught up to me and jumped on the hood. I slammed on the brakes, and he forced his way inside. When he tried to turn around, I grabbed the steering wheel, screaming at him.

That’s when the car flipped over, the sounds of screeching tires and scraping metal ringing in my ears.

“Seriously, sweetie. Just ballpark it.” The EMT checks my blood pressure. “Considering what that car looks like, it’s a miracle you’re sitting here with just a cut on your forehead.”

“I… I don’t know how far along I am.” I didn’t know I was pregnant for months and haven’t been to a doctor. After weeks without my period, which I thought was from all the stress, a pee-stick showed two pink lines. I was still in denial until my belly started to swell.

Cormac felt because he was a doctor, he could care for me, and didn’t let me get checked out. The only heartfelt thing he did was not push me to keep doing the drugs he got me hooked on.

Since learning I was pregnant, I’ve been living with the fear that I hurt my baby.

I’ve also been dealing with these last horrific months, sober and straight, while Cormac continued to live in his fantastical haze of booze and crack.

He peers at me with hooded eyes from several feet away. They’re bright green like many of his brothers, although right now, they’re bloodshot. They find me and wreck me. He’s terrified I’ll call his brother, Kieran, the Irish mob boss, back in Astoria. I’m terrified he’ll call my father, who will send his henchmen to abduct me.

We’re caught in this co-dependent bond of fearing our families.

“Last chance, Miss Michaels. Whose drugs are these?” A cop in a suit waves a bag of white powder, glowering at my pregnant stomach.

I said they were Cormac’s. He said they were mine. Now we’re both under arrest. A jail cell might be the safest place for us.

God, what am I thinking? I’d rather be in jail than go home to my father. My brain is so messed up, I can’t think straight anymore. I’ve been living in complete hell for almost two years.

“We’ll let your lawyers and the prosecutor straighten this out.” The detective pockets my ID.

I breathe in relief when he doesn’t even bat an eye at the fake California driver’s license that reads Ana Michaels. The Italians were good for one thing. I wonder how Dante Caruso is, but thinking of anyone from home leads me to worry about Katya. And I can’t do that. It’s too stressful.

The EMTs huddle, looking from Cormac to me, and convince the detective to send us right to Clark County Jail. They can process us there, take care of Cormac’s ankle, and run those tests on my baby.

Baby…

I haven’t even bonded with this little thing growing inside me. I’ve been too busy living a nightmare. Still, I feel terrible. Cormac doesn’t care about this child. Never touches me. His Irish-Catholic upbringing couldn’t push the words ‘terminate the pregnancy’ out of his mouth, but he looks at me with such disdain, like getting knocked up was my fault.

After six months together, I lost all interest in Cormac. The sex continued because I had nowhere else to go. With my pregnancy came my imprisonment. I’d been holding on day after day, hoping something would change. I had a roof over my head, food to eat, a bed to sleep in. Cormac started selling drugs so we had money to live. It kept us in a seedy motel and gave him enough to gamble. His incessant chasing down a big score that never came drowned us further into poverty. He came back late and usually passed out on the sofa, shitfaced on cheap booze.

I look down at my very swollen stomach. I tried to pinpoint when I got pregnant. I couldn’t look at gestation timetables and other signs because Cormac sold my burner phone and kept his phone locked in that car.

“Bratva,” I whisper, taking a chance that someone will hear me. I am Bratva, my baby is Bratva. There are Russian brotherhood cells all over the world.

My heart calms down, realizing that may be the only way out of this situation. Even in prison. Especially in prison, someone will get word to the closest brotherhood leader. I’m carrying a Koslov baby.

One look at Cormac reminds me I’m also carrying an O’Rourke. They’ll fight for my child, too. To the death, which might mean me, if Kieran, that evil king of theirs, has his way. He’d gut me to get the baby out. Leave me to bleed out and die. I doubt Cormac would stop him. They stick together, that family.

My stomach flips as they put me in the back of a police car, and I vomit on the seat, getting some of it on my T-shirt and sweatpants.

“Oh shit, honey,” the female officer cries out.

“I’m sorry. I’m pregnant.”

“I know, honey. We’ll get you an ultrasound as soon as we get to the infirmary.” She shows incredible sympathy considering my sad state.

It’s clear, I’ve had every advantage in this world and threw it all away. We drive away, and when Cormac isn’t within five feet of me, I slump in utter relief. Holding back tears, I’m brought to a gray cinderblock three-story complex, complete with metal fencing and barbed wire twisted along the top. Several guard towers dot the perimeter with flashing, revolving lights.

The whole processing routine passes quickly, and after an ultrasound shows my baby is fine, they tell me I’m due in a month. I take this news with both terror and relief.

“When can I talk to a lawyer?” I ask the guard, who hands me a prison jumpsuit to wear since my clothes are ruined, and I don’t fit into anything else they have.

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