Russian Boss’s Secret Baby by Bella King
Ch 37
MIA
It’s 3:00 AM now, and I’m still awake, ready to listen for the blast from the city. I feel so safe, too safe almost, like I’m cheating at life by having this amazing house and more money than I can know what to do with.
I haven’t had to pay a price for it at all. Is being pregnant with Slate’s baby the price? Is being tied to him until I die the price for this life he’s given me?
Before I’m able to work myself into a vortex of guilt, I hear the door open downstairs. Initially, I’m ready to fly into a manic rage and face an intruder on my own, but then I hear Slate and Luke speaking to each other.
Confused, I pull on some sweatpants and a hoodie and make my way downstairs. I’m starting to show a little bit, and being in such loose-fitting clothes makes me look even more pregnant than I am. I step quietly down the hallway, listening carefully to see if I can gather any details of why they’re both back so early.
When Slate sees me, he seems shocked and almost embarrassed that I’m still awake. “Hey Mia, why are you still up?” he asks, playing stupid.
“Are you serious? You guys were about to blow up a skyscraper. I wasn’t about to miss it,” I reply, sensing a confrontation of some kind. “Definitely wasn’t expecting you guys back so soon though,” I continue, waiting for one of them to tell me what’s going on.
“We weren’t able to complete the mission,” Luke says. “There was a heavy police presence due to some presumably drug-related deaths and we just couldn’t risk it. It’s likely that Katya wouldn’t even have come back.”
My blood begins to boil. Why is the universe favoring her like this? I’m so angry that she’s able to traipse around without consequence. My rage is returning and I’m sick to death of having to shove it back down, to be the bigger person.
Katya is going to die tonight, and I’m going to make sure of it.
“Where else would she be?” I ask unassumingly. Slate and Luke would never think I would be brave enough to go after her myself.
“She’s likely at the safehouse you guys found the first Imposter at, the guy Slate killed,” Luke replies. If I think hard enough, I can remember exactly where that house is. I don’t even need Vasya to take me there. The night we drove there is so clear in my mind that I could easily find it myself.
“Aren’t you going to go find her then?” I ask, still attempting to feign innocence and some impartiality to the situation. I put on my most clueless, ditzy face, the one Slate was attracted to when he met me at the nightclub a lifetime ago.
“No, it’s not worth the risks. We had a plan for tonight that we had worked hard at for days. The chances of something going wrong are way too high,” Slate replies, oblivious to my intentions.
As I nod along with what he’s saying, I begin to form my own plan in my head. I know where Slate keeps weapons, and he’s shown me how to use some of them. He thought I was just trying to impress him, but men don’t have the same natural sense of danger that women do, so I needed to learn some form of self-defense. Knowing how to use a gun is a good start and being pregnant means it’s too dangerous for me to risk having to get close to her.
“Why don’t we just go to sleep Mia? We can talk more about it tomorrow. You can help us come up with a new plan,” Slate says, trying to include me in the conversation when I’m having one with myself internally.
I know that the logistics of me doing this myself are much messier and less sophisticated than having an entire team of men with me, but in a way, this feels more personal. The damage done is personal, and so her death will be as well.
Just as Slate said, there needs to be a new plan, I can’t go into this blind. I can steal one of Slate’s cars, since Katya has seen what my car looks like. Even if I’m being overzealous, I don’t want there to be any liability on my part if something goes wrong. Not more than is deserved, anyway.
Slate and I head to sleep, and he’s out within minutes, hardly saying a word to me out of pure exhaustion.
Minute tick by slowly.
As soon as he’s completely asleep, I roll carefully out of bed and sneak out of our room, trying to be extremely mindful of anything on the floor or in my path that I could trip on, waking up Slate.
Just a few rooms over is where he keeps all his favorite weapons, at the very least, the ones I know how to use. I’d rather ask for forgiveness later than for permission now.
When I reach the room, I use the light from my phone to see where I’m walking. The room is another spare bedroom or office space that Slate has no use for, yet for some reason deemed it necessary to build into his house. Sometimes I wonder if he just likes having things for the sake of it sometimes.
There’s a huge gun case in the back corner, and I know he always keeps it unlocked. I want to have something bigger than a handgun just in case I need to take out multiple people.
I go for an AK-47, a pretty standard weapon as they come. Slate taught me how to fire it once or twice, noting that “his woman knows how to handle a weapon”. He was so proud of me when it happened. I don’t think he’ll feel the same about me this time.
I shine my phone flashlight into the bottom of the case to find some ammunition.
I’m still wearing a hoodie and sweatpants, so I’ll blend in with any other bummy-looking Miami twenty-something girls. Except I’ll have a gun. I think that might set me apart.
The rifle has a strap on it, so I toss it over my shoulder and head out to the car. As I’m walking down the stairs, I hear what sounds like muffled screaming coming from the room that Luke is staying in.
Immediately, I’m in defense mode. I remove the rifle from my back, holding it pointed at the floor, ready to strike if anything happened to jump out at me. Is Luke alright? Is he just having some weird sex?
As I approach the room, I hear the screaming grow more desperate, wordless pleas fill the space between me and Luke. As soon as I place my hand on the doorknob to open it, I feel the muzzle of a gun pressed into the back of my head.
