shoulders are too wide for that.
“And what about Audrey? Have you seen her today?” The jealousy in my voice can’t be helped. Audrey is a beautiful woman, she is also the mother of Dimitri’s child, so I have a lot to be jealous about. Dimitri spent the night with me, in my bed, but he snuck out in the wee hours of this morning like he didn’t want anyone to know where he was.
That stings. Not a lot, but enough to make me feel a little sick to the stomach.
I can’t tell if his murmur is a yes or a no this time around. It appeared more a growl than a hum like he’s more frustrated than pleased his wife was resurrected from the dead.
With his moods a little hard for me to read, this is the last thing I should say. “If you have time today, I’d like to sit down and discuss what happened at Dr. Bates’s office… T-t-the pregnancy test.” I bite the inside of my cheek, loathing the stutter of my words.
I wish I could keep our conversation on the back burner for months, but that would be wrong for me to do. He has a right to know what happened to our child as much as he has the right to mourn the loss with me.
A tangy copper taste fills my mouth when Dimitri replies, “We can do that now.”
“Oh… okay.” I follow him into a room at the end of the hallway, grateful our talk will be in private.
I barely make it two steps into the dimly lit space when I’m tempted to walk right back out of it. We’re not alone as first thought. Smith and Rocco are here as is Audrey’s best friend, India. Then there’s a man in a white doctor’s coat standing next to an identical lot of equipment that soared me too great heights four nights ago before it all came crashing down.
“What’s going on?” I choke out, almost stuttering.
When my question falls on deaf ears, I shift on my feet to face Dimitri. His expression is as cold as his icy blue eyes. He knows I’m keeping something from him, but instead of asking me what it is, he’s gone down his usual route.
He wants to torture the truth from me one painful memory at a time.
Although my anger is brewing, I try to keep things amicable. “Can I please speak with you alone? This is a conversation that needs to occur between us.”
My neck cranks to my left when India mumbles under her breath, “So you can fill his head with more lies?”
Even having no reason to defend myself to her, I snap out, “I haven’t lied.”
“So, you told him you’re not pregnant?” India asks with a raised brow and a stern glare. “He knows you’re no longer carrying his child?”
“No.” For one word, it shouldn’t crack my voice the way it did. It was almost as fragile as my heart feels. This isn’t a conversation I wanted to have with spectators. It could only be more uncomfortable if it were happening while I was naked. “But that’s because I haven’t had the chance.” I spin back around to face Dimitri. My fast movements cause a rush of dizziness to bombard my head, but I continue on, preferring to face an interrogation head-on than cower like a coward. “I lost our baby the first night I was taken. Maestro did an ultrasound on a machine just like that—”
“Puh-leaze. Like a hired goon would know how to turn on a sonograph machine, much less use it.”
I continue talking as if India never interrupted me, “After discovering I was around six to eight weeks along, he hit me in the stomach, then kicked me over and over again.” Tears spring in my eyes just recalling what happened. “When he couldn’t kill our baby with brutality, he tried another way.” Big salty blobs roll down my cheeks when Dimitri cups my jaw. His hands are so large, they take up almost all my face, and the callouses on his fingers scratch my cheek when he wipes away my tears. “They had hospital-like rooms on the lower level of the ranch. There was medical equipment, pads, and a whole heap of other things I don’t want to remember.”
India huffs again, but I don’t care. Dimitri seems to believe me, and that’s all that matters.
“He was going to…” I make a hand gesture that shouldn’t speak on my behalf, but it somehow