“Hello?” Rob’s voice is music to my ears.
“Oh, thank God. Rob?”
“Liv, where are you?” he asks. “Are you okay? Why haven’t I heard from you? Did he realize what you did during our last call?”
He shoots off question after question, but I don’t answer any of them. “I’m in a restaurant in town. It’s called…um…”
“Corino’s,” the bartender says, helping me out.
“Corino’s,” I repeat.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he says. “Don’t move.”
He hangs up before I can say anything else, so I pass the phone back to the bartender. “Thanks for that. I owe you one.”
“Yeah?” he says. “How about a drink sometime, then? On the house.”
I look him over and realize he’s not bad-looking, actually. He’s got a full beard, which is not normally my style, but it suits him. His eyes are bright and kind, his hair is a messy man bun, but it works with the whole “masculine bartender” vibe.
But my stomach turns.
And not because I’m pregnant.
It’s because I see another man’s face in my mind.
With that roiling nausea comes guilt. Like I’m cheating.
Except that, to cheat, you have to actually be involved with someone. And I’m not. Never was, really. What Aleks and I have—had—is an illusion.
It’s time it came to an end.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. My situation right now is… complicated.”
The bartender chuckles. “Aren’t they all?”
“I’m not making an excuse,” I tell him. “Seriously. You’re cute. It’s not you.”
He raises one eyebrow. “I’ll pretend to believe that. For my ego’s sake, if nothing else.”
“Really, I promise. I’m… I’m pregnant,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.
He stops short and sets down the glass he’s holding. “Well, shit. Guess it is complicated. Is the father in the picture?”
I shake my head. I don’t trust myself to do any more than that.
He winces. “I’m sorry. It’s cowardly when men pull that shit.”
“Well, he doesn’t know,” I hear myself say.
I don’t know why I’m telling anyone this, let alone a stranger. I don’t even know for sure if I’m pregnant yet.
But somehow, it feels cathartic to say all these things out loud. To play with the possibility that, in a few months, I’ll have a baby in my arms and that baby will be mine.
Not Aleks’s.
Mine.
“Oh,” he says. “Hm. The mystery deepens. Are you gonna tell him?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Bad relationship?”
I bite my lip and fall back on the only word that makes sense to me right now: “Complicated.”
He chuckles again, though his eyes flash once more with sympathy. I hear the bell over the door ring and I turn to see a tall, broad-shouldered figure. My heartbeat quickens for a moment—Can he really have tracked me down already…？
But it’s not Aleks.
It’s Rob.
I do my best to ignore the bitter tang of disappointment as I weave between the tables and throw myself into his arms.
“Rob!” I cry out. I bury my face in his shoulder.
He pulls away almost immediately. “Let’s go. Get in the car.”
He steers me towards the door with a painfully tight grip on my upper arm. I have only time for a backhanded glance at the bartender before I’m rushed back into daylight.
“Rob…？”
“Get in the car,” he growls again. “It’s not safe to be out in the open like this.”
Rob has always been calm, cool, collected. A picture of perfect control at all times—though not without his fair share of anger bubbling beneath the surface, especially since Isabella vanished.
But now? Now, that anger is raging for all to see. Along with paranoia and a kind of panicked franticness that sets my own heartbeat thumping along with it.
Something has changed for the worse.
He pushes me into the car and looks furtively up and down the street.
“I wasn’t followed,” I hiss at him.
“That you know of,” he corrects without looking down. “What about the blue sedan right over there? Could be Bratva.”
He waits for a moment until the car in question pulls away and disappears from sight. Only then does he hustle around the front of the car and climb into the driver’s seat.
The moment he is situated in the car, I turn to him. “Rob, is everything alright?”
He glares at me as though offended by the question. “Jesus, did you really just ask me that, Liv? Nothing is alright. You were held hostage for three fucking months. It’s not like you were on a goddamn vacation.”
“Listen to me,” I say, grabbing his hand. “There’s something you need to know.”
He starts the engine and pulls out of his parking spot. “Later.”
“Rob, I’m trying to tell you something important.”
“You can tell me once we get to safety,” he says.
I can’t explain it, but something isn’t right. A vague sense of foreboding is working its way up my spine.
“Rob, can you please pull over?”
“Liv, we don’t have the time for—”
“Make the damn time,” I snap. “Pull over now!”
He looks at me with alarm. He’s not used to me asserting myself this way. In fact, I’m not used to it, either. It feels wrong to be demanding, especially since Rob showed up to save me.
But he makes a turn and then, at the first available opportunity, he pulls over to the curb.
“Pretty sure this is a bus stand, so talk fast.”
It’s not the way I want to tell him, but I’m hoping this news will make a difference to him. Maybe it’ll pull him back from the ledge he seems to be on right now.
“You were right, Rob,” I say. “She’s alive.”
He doesn’t even have to ask who I’m talking about. His eyes go wide. I see relief and hope flood his features. In that moment, I see a flicker of the man he used to be.
“I knew it,” he breathes.
“But it’s not what you think,” I tell him urgently. “Isabella… that’s not even her real name.”
He goes still and fixes me with a strange expression. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, she was—is a spy.” I hate the clumsy way this explanation is coming out. “She works for Aleks. She was planted by him in the first place to try and suss out how deep the investigation into his Bratva went. They were trying to find the person who tipped the FBI off in the first place. She was meant to extract that information from you.”
He stares at me without saying a word.
“Her name is Jennifer,” I continue. “She disappeared because one of her former targets recognized her and threatened to blow her cover. It wasn’t a murder—it was an escape plan.”
Still nothing.
“Rob?”
He blinks once. Twice. Three times.
“Rob, this is all true. I spoke to her.”