Page 91 of Captive Promise

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about him.

I haven’t finished sorting through it.

What do I do? If I am pregnant, do I keep the baby?

When the thirty days are up and I choose to leave, does that mean Nico will stop watching me?

I already know the answer is no.

He would see my stomach changing and he would know the baby is his. He already knows everything else about me.

Then a thought slides in that makes my stomach drop straight through the floor.

What if he planned this?

What if the whole point of this was making sure I couldn’t just walk away when the thirty days ran out?

A camera in my apartment is one thing.

A baby doesn’t end.

A baby is eighteen years of him having a reason to know exactly where I am, what I’m doing, and exactly who I’m with, forever.

It’s eighteen years of him using the baby as a pawn to ensure I forever remain compliant.

Oh my god.

I press both hands over my face, feeling the start of a panic attack.

No. Stop it. He didn’t do that. He couldn’t have.

Except I don’t actually know that. I don’t know anything about this man that he hasn’t chosen to let me know.

And the horror of that thought—that I might be carrying something he engineered, on purpose, the same way he’s engineered everything else that’s happened to me since that phone call—makes me feel nauseous.

The timer goes off.

I look down, breaths coming faster.

Two pink lines.

14

NICO

The rain lashes against the windows, an angry staccato that matches my mood. It’s early, the rest of the house just beginning to rise, but sleep eluded me hours ago.

Now I sit at my desk, staring at the neat stacks of paperwork without really seeing them.

Contracts, shipping manifests, memorandums—the legitimate veneer on the face of a criminal enterprise.

I reach for my coffee, take a sip, and grimace.

It’s gone cold, the mug half-full and forgotten in the tumult of my thoughts.

With a sigh, I set it back on the desk, nudging aside the latest shipping contract.

The words blur together, all those carefully worded clauses and addendums, a language I know like breathing but can’t focus on. Not today.