Pregnant & Desired By The Mob Boss

Nadezhda

Mother sits silently in the seat next to me; her gaze fixed on the blurry scenery passing outside the window. Her spine is straightened, attentive to every movement I make.

Even without her looking at me.

It hurts. She hasn't looked at me since we pulled out of the parking lot.

She hasn't really looked at me since I delivered the news a month ago.

I'm pregnant.

Getting pregnant was never part of the plan. Not in the next five, or even ten years. And definitely not now. Not when we'd only lost my father a few months before, when my mother was mired in a dark pit of grief. And certainly not when I would have to do it all on my own.

The pregnancy had been an accident, but my mother didn't see it that way.

"Did you see him? He seemed very big," I say, needing to fill the bludgeoning silence in the tight space of the car. The knot in my chest felt more tight, more solid.

Mother hums in agreement.

"I think the image was blown up, though," I say, tapping the black and white sonogram image sitting in the cup holder. "I'm not showing enough to have a baby that big inside of me."

"They magnify it." She turns to look forward, her face pulled back in an expressionless mask. Her lips, which only a few months ago were constantly turned upwards in a smile, sag towards her jaw. She looks older.

"Did you have sonograms with me?" I ask. "When you were pregnant, I mean? Did they have the machines back then?"

"I'm not that old," she says, her voice filled with a playfulness I haven't heard in too long.

"If you say so," I tease back, but when I elbow her arm across the console, her mouth tightens and she pulls her arms closer to her sides.

I swallow back my disappointment and turn down the long road that leads to the estate where we both work and live. The Paplovs hired my parents as caretakers to the sprawling estate when they were freshly married and my mother was pregnant with me. They were young and didn't have any skills, but the mafia family found a rare bit of pity for their situation.

My parents were forever grateful to the Paplovs and dutifully held their position for the last twenty years. And now that my father has recently passed, my mother is even more committed to her employer, Dominic Paplov. Our employer, really. As soon as I was old enough to work, I started alongside my mother as a maid in Dominic' home. Now that my father is gone, however, my mother has been taking on his duties, as well, leaving more of the cleaning to me.

"We are running late," she says, glancing towards the clock on the dash and then back out the window.

"We said we would be back at ten," I remind her.

"Yes," she says with a frustrated tip of her head. "And it is five after."

"Dominic knows how doctor's appointments can go, mother. He won't—"

"Mr. Paplov," she says. "You should call him Mr. Paplov."

My brows pull together. "I've always called him Dominic."

Growing up on the estate, I had free run of the grounds. My parents kept me inside our cottage when important guests were staying in the main house or when a deal was being worked out, but otherwise, I ran between our cottage and the estate's kitchens as though it was an extension of my own house. And Dominic was always kind to me.

He is a broad man with a thick neck and arms, and his shiny bald head makes his smile look menacing, but he always had a smile for me as a child. I'd seen him raise his voice to other household staff, berating them for simple mistakes, but even once I began working for him, he had a special fondness for me that I attributed to the fact he had watched me grow up.

"That was before," Mother says.

"Before what?" Before I began working for him? That had been four years ago, so if he minded me calling him by his first name, certainly he would have said by now. Or did she mean...?

Finally, my mother acknowledged the sonogram picture sitting in the cup holder between us. She pointed to it with a stiff finger. "Before this."