Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“Fine,” I reply before stepping back, unpinning her from the wall. “Fucking starve. See if I care.”
She slides down the wall and huddles her knees into her chest, playing the part well for whoever is watching on the camera they hid in the vent.
41
KATIE
I have been so confused of late, four weeks pass in a blur.
I’ve been given regular inseminations by Ghost, fed like clockwork, and asked a range of questions by both Ghost and Alek, but today is the first interaction I have had with Ghost where he’s back to acting like he hates me.
The way he raced out of here last month when I told him Kirill said I should fight him if I want Lera to eat more than porridge with glass splinters in it had me convinced he would loathe me—they’re trying to force him to pick between Lera and me—but today is the only day he has treated me differently.
He hasn’t looked me in the eye since he arrived. Not even when my shocked gaze shoots to him on confirmation that I’m pregnant.
Ghost squeezes the vials into the mattress, so there’s no way I can be pregnant.
Unless that one insemination he missed was successful.
Oh God.
“Now what?” Ghost asks the doctor, still ignoring me.
He packs away the positive test into his bag before shifting on his feet to face Ghost. “We will conduct an ultrasound in a couple of weeks. If the results are positive, we will have to wait for further instructions. We’ve not moved past that stage previously.”
“There’s always a first time,” Ghost replies, dropping my stomach further. For the first time in weeks, he strays his eyes to me. “Pack your things. Someone will be here to collect you within the hour.”
“Where am I going?”
He usually appreciates the inquisitiveness years of abuse couldn’t snuff.
Not today.
“I said to pack your things.”
When he marches me into my room, I notice Alek suspiciously mingling around. He wouldn’t look so suspicious if he didn’t cover the vent I pointed out to Ghost weeks ago with his thigh the instant he spots us.
“Pack everything you need. You won’t be coming back to this room.” After waiting for me to nod, Ghost shifts his focus to Alek. “Do you know where she’s going?”
He jerks up his chin. “Same wing. Different suite.”
“How many men are en route?”
Alek traces a tick in his jaw. “Four, but he’s got a dozen here, though.”
When I stare at them, hopeful something on their faces will explain what the hell is going on, Ghost inconspicuously drops his eyes to the photographs I stuffed between my mattress and the bedside table.
Certain I heard his silent disclosure for me to collect them, he returns to the bathroom where the doctor is located. “I think you should test again. I told her to get midstream urine, but you know what some of these Marys are like. They’ll do anything to get a windowed room.”
He isn’t lying. My heart rate kicked up a beat just at the assumption I may end up in a room with a window.
With Ghost keeping the doctor occupied and Alek’s thick thigh covering the camera no one’s touched since my husband placed it in there, I carefully pluck Hailey’s photographs from their hiding spot and shove them down the front of my nightie.
My already stuttering heart gets another surge of blood when I notice one of the photographs has a torn edge. I’ve always been super careful with them. I’d never manhandled them like a man with no clue of their sentimental value.
Alek’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down when I slant my head in his direction. He knows why I’m pissed, so it discloses that he is the culprit of my ruined images. The only thing I can’t work out is why he would touch them. They mean nothing to him.
The cloak of danger slips when I flip over the damaged photograph. Something is scratched on the back, but since it appears to have been done with an inkless pen, I have to shimmer it in the light to see what it says.
Play along. This is the only way I can guarantee your safety. G.
This handwriting can’t be Ghost’s. It is the same cursive style that was on the envelopes slipped under my door that housed the photographs he was shocked to learn came into my possession.
Unless he was the person gifting them to me all along, and he didn’t want me to know because he would hate for me to believe our teams are equally stacked?
I don’t get the chance to work through my bewilderment. Minutes after a second positive test is recorded, I’m walked out the door by a steaming mad Ghost and guided outside the compound.
I might have believed his anger more if his grip on my arm was a little firmer. He’s barely touching me, but to every man we walk by, he looks like he’s clutching me for near death.