Russian Boss’s Secret Baby by Bella King

Ch 26

SLATE

I’ve contacted everybody that I can. I’ve called all my men out of their assignments for the day, despite the cost. Both helicopters have been deployed as well as three of my other men who operate on the other side of the city. That’s at least five people who can find her. I have them spreading out all over the state, some even extending up and over into surrounding territories.

Katya isn’t a smart woman. She’s spoiled and crazy, and to her, that means she’s intelligent.

I know she’ll slip up. She’s incapable of following through with her plans in any meaningful way. She loves to pretend that she’s the main character of her own life, and that fantasy has gotten her in a hell of a lot of trouble before.

It’s been about ten hours now, and we haven’t come up with anything. There are no leads, no information of any kind, even considering the bizarre circumstances. How often do you see two mid-twenties women driving around in a flawless vintage Firebird? Especially when one of them is visibly insane.

Every single notification on my phone has the potential to send me into a manic rage. It feels as though the only people who want to contact me are people who have nothing of importance to say, especially not now. People from all over are coming out of the woodwork to ask inane personal questions in an attempt to manufacture closeness to me for my money.

At around 7:30 PM, I receive a call from my last man out on the road. “We haven’t found anything, Slate. I’ve tried calling places too, like hospitals and jails. Nobody has seen her,” he says with genuine remorse in his voice.

I tell him thank you, and that we’ll resume tomorrow. We have a ton of product that needs to get pushed this week, so trying to allow for a manhunt while selling off millions of dollars’ worth of coke is going to suffocate me.

As I sit alone in my now-empty house, I try as hard as I can to think of any clues she may have left right before she ran away. I haven’t even looked at her things, the bag she left here as well as a sweatshirt she left here. Maybe there’s something that will give me a better picture.

When I walk into Mia’s office, I’m struck with a sort of homesickness as I realize that everything is exactly the way she left it. If I don’t find her, this could be the last remnant of her life on earth; hastily organizing paperwork, leaving a mess on her desk as she gets up to pour her third cup of coffee in two hours. Always working too hard, and now that could be all I have left of her.

First, I decide to go through her bag. She never seemed like the kind of woman who would carry her whole bedroom in a purse, but she does have more in here than I would expect. It’s like a black hole where she shoves things of minor importance.

Four or five lipsticks, two granola bars, a prescription for Zofran, and a copy of War and Peace, which I thought was weird. Nothing that would give me an idea of where she’s gone or why. I dump all of the items out on the floor, just to get one last look before I abandon the bag completely.

A receipt falls out.

This is a familiar scenario to me.

I cautiously pick up the receipt. The first few things on the list are snacks, but the very last item listed is a pregnancy test.

My breath is stolen from me as soon as I read those words. Pregnancy test. I mean, the timeline makes sense. And the prescription for Zofran… she must be having morning sickness. Is that why she’s been looking so sick lately?

My mind races as I remember her insistence on staying locked in the bathroom before she jumped out the window. Is that where she took the test?

I run up the stairs so fast that I almost don’t even recognize that I’m moving my own body. I’m hyper-focused, and there’s way too much for me to be thinking about right now. When I enter the master bedroom, I immediately see the glimmer of a little blue box on the bathroom floor, illuminated under the skylight like some kind of cosmic joke.

So, there’s the box. Where did she put the test?

I tear the room apart, nearly pulling the cabinet doors off their hinges. It’s not in the trash, and she wouldn’t have taken it with her.

Finally, I locate the test at the back of one of the cabinets.

The result is positive.

Mia is pregnant with my baby, and she ran away from me.

I know she saw me beat up Eli, that must have been terrifying, especially now that Eli actually is dead. I beat him to death in front of her.

If I were her in this position, I would do the same. Any good mother would. So now, I have to convince her not to keep my baby from me after I find her. God, I’ve screwed this shit up so badly. I didn’t even know what I was doing.