Chapter 40

Kimberly

I t’s been two weeks and five days of hell.

Two weeks and five days of being kept prisoner in this dirty basement with only a stained mattress on the floor and a bucket in the corner. There are no windows, and the heavy metal door locked from the outside is impossible to break down. There’s no escape.

Two weeks and five days of not knowing if Yaroslav is alive or dead.

Two weeks and five days of fear for the life growing inside me, of not knowing if my baby will survive this. If I will survive.

The first three days I thought I would die here. I was left alone in the dark with no food or water. Left to agonize over the events at the factory, to replay the explosion in my head over and over. There’s no way Marta could have survived. Poor Marta only wanted to help, to be in her brothers’ lives. She didn’t deserve to die like that. I held onto the hope that Yaroslav must still be alive, that they wouldn’t have taken me if not. But as the days wore on, I started to doubt that. I thought that he hadn’t survived, that I was going to be left here to rot. Part of me wanted to die too. It was only thoughts of my unborn child, mine and Yaroslav’s child, that kept me going.

I had to pray that Yaroslav was okay, that he would rescue me again.

On the third day, the person I least expected to see strolled into my prison.

Amelia.

Amelia, the woman who I thought was my best friend. My friend since we were kids in school. We lost touch when she moved to Atlanta when we were sixteen and we’d only recently reconnected. It seems that, in those five years a lot changed. Amelia is no longer the girl I thought I knew. There were a lot of things she hid from me, most notably that she was married to Bogdan Sharkozi, the son of a Russian Bratva boss, Roman Sharkozi, who just so happens to be Yaroslav’s sworn nemesis.

Of course, when she walked into my cell over two weeks ago, I knew none of this.

My initial reaction to her presence was confusion. How did she find me? Then relief and joy that I was saved, my best friend had come for me! Then, finally, horror as it slowly dawned on me that Amelia wasn’t there to save me, she was there to gloat. Amelia, holding the keys to my salvation and making no moves to help me, was smiling with glee as she looked at how weak, filthy, and frightened I was.

“Well, well, well, it seems little Miss Perfect isn’t so perfect after all, your shit stinks just like everyone else’s,” she sneered pinching her nose in disgust.

My cheeks burned with shame, after three days of confinement and having to go to the bathroom in a bucket the room smelled horrendous. My survival instincts kicked in and I begged for water before asking the many questions racing through my mind.

To my immense relief, Amelia conceded to my request, sending for someone to come clear out my bucket and bring me water and food. The warm tap water seemed like the sweetest, most refreshing glass of water I’d ever had in my life and the stale, dry sandwich was a five-star meal to my starved mind.

Amelia silently studied me the whole time, like a cat toying with a mouse before it pounces.

When I was finally satiated, feeling sick from finally having food on my empty stomach, I asked her, “Amelia what’s going on? Why aren’t you helping me? Why am I here? I don’t understand…”

Amelia pouts, “Aw poor Kimmy, no, of course you wouldn’t, you’re so naive and trusting, no wonder Yaroslav likes you, his perfect pretty, dumb, and obedient plaything,” she says condescendingly. “You’re here because of me.”

“But why?” I asked, confused.

She rolls her eyes, looking at me as though I’m stupid. “Because you’re pregnant with the heir to the Volkov empire of course! If Yaroslav wakes up from his coma, we’ve got something to use against him, and if he doesn’t, we can take over his empire using his child as leverage to subdue his men and raise his child to be one of ours.”

My initial joy to hear that Yaroslav was alive was overwhelmed by my concern knowing he was in a coma.

Amelia then explained to me how she married Bogdan Sharkozi, an arrangement made by her father, who was keen to expand his influence. She readily agreed, knowing that being married into a Bratva family would mean unimaginable wealth and power. Amelia was always very materialistic. She explained how, when she first realized I had met Yaroslav and became involved with him, she saw it as a perfect opportunity to infiltrate his business and take him down.

“I thought you were my friend, how could you do this to me?” I whispered, trying and failing to hold back my tears.

“Eugh, of course, you’d think that. Everybody loves you. I was the rich and fun one, it should have been me everyone liked, but no. Everyone always wanted you. When we were kids, I thought being your friend would make me look good. The saint of a person who befriended the weird black girl with dead parents. But even when you were weird and gawky-looking, people still wanted to be your friend. Even without your parents, you had an amazing grandmother and brother who loved you. I only agreed to meet up with you, when you called, because I wanted to see what had become of Little Miss Perfect,” she said with a sneer on her face.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, that someone I thought was my friend could hold such hatred and jealousy toward me when I’d done nothing to her.

“I was curious, I wanted to see how the mighty had fallen, and boy had you fallen. But again, no one seemed to care that you were some nobody working in a shitty diner and a second job on top of caring for a batshit old lady, all the guys would moon over you, and you thought you were too good for them, acting like you didn’t see how they’d look at you,” she said disbelievingly, giving me a look to show she didn’t believe it.

“I was ready to cut you out of my life and then you tell me that you’ve fucking landed the most eligible bachelor in Atlanta and my husband’s enemy, Yaroslav Volkov. You’re like a cat Kimmy, you always land on your feet. A gold-digging freeloader whose only redeeming quality is a pretty face. No wonder you turned down all the other guys, you had bigger fish to catch.”

Amelia’s tirade was like a physical assault, her venomous words hitting me like punches. I couldn’t believe she was the same person I once thought she was. That this whole time she’d hated me more than I thought possible. Though she didn’t admit it, I knew her jealousy stemmed from her parents treating her as nothing more than an expendable commodity. A pretty trinket to be paraded around and then sold off to the highest bidder.

She might pretend that she never liked me, but I know that’s not true. When we were kids, my home was her sanctuary. She always wanted sleepovers at ours instead of hers. Her house may have been state of the art, but it was a cold, lifeless place where noise and mess of any kind were strictly forbidden. My home was filled with love and laughter, a place where we could just be kids. I feel almost sorry for Amelia, that her life has become so sad and empty that she’s filled it with a jealous vendetta against her only true friend.

Since that first day, Amelia has visited every day. Her visits make me almost long for the days I was left alone without food or water. Although I am now given rations, Amelia also comes with company. Doctors who strip me naked and inspect my body, roughly inserting tests inside me to check on the baby. When they first came, I fought back against them, terrified that they were going to harm my child or me. Amelia calmly promised that if I struggled, she’d personally cut the baby out of me and mail it to Yaroslav.

Amelia further tortures me by not allowing me to see my baby on the sonograms, or to know if they are healthy. Every effort is made to keep the child inside of me growing well, so I have to hope that there is nothing wrong, that the drugs used to kidnap me, and the days of starvation haven’t harmed my baby.

But the fact that they are so focused on my child scares me. Will they keep me here until I give birth? Will they then take my baby from me and kill me after?