Traded to His Enemy, Pregnant With His Heir novel · Chapter 38 of 48

Chapter 38: A Boy

I didn't turn around.

I gave him my back all the way to the car, and I didn't let my hands shake until the door was shut.

Ilya came home from Everett at noon with smoke in his hair and a burn on his wrist.

I was waiting for him at the kitchen island.

"Where were you the last week of February?" I said.

He stopped with his coat half off.

"Who's asking?"

"Seamus Conlon. In front of his whole bar. He said to ask you what you promised him."

I watched it go into him.

I'd seen his face do a lot of things this winter.

I'd never seen it frightened.

"I don't know," he said.

"You met him."

"I don't know."

He walked out of the kitchen and down the hall to his office.

I followed him through the door he'd told me never to walk through.

He didn't stop me.

He took a black notebook off the shelf behind his desk, one of a long row of them, all the same.

"I write down every day," he said. "Every meeting, every number, every man. Since I was nineteen."

He opened it to February.

His handwriting ran down every page, small and square, in Russian.

The wedding was there, the date and one line I could read: the church, two o'clock, Galina.

Then the next week.

Then a page with nothing on it at all.

The twenty-fourth of February.

He turned it toward the window.

It was empty.

"It's the only blank page in the year," he said.

"Why would you leave it blank?"

"Because I didn't want anyone to read it." His voice was very quiet. "Not my men. Not you. Not me."

He closed the book.

His hand stayed flat on the cover.

"I don't know what I did, Shona. I don't know what I gave a man who shot me."

I knew that night.

I hadn't known I knew it until he said the date.

"You came home at two in the morning," I said. "That week. You woke me up."

He looked at me.

"You didn't say anything. You just put your hand on my belly and kept it there until I fell asleep again."

"I thought it was the wedding. I thought you were happy."

"Was I?"

"I don't know," I said. "I never asked."

I took the black book out from under his hand and put it back on the shelf in its place.

"He wants me to ask you," I said. "So I'll stop asking. He doesn't get to live in this house."

← Chapter 37 · All chapters · Chapter 39 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend