97

Allison
“Allison, you’ve been hiding in there for two hours,” Orin hisses through my bedroom door. “Open up and talk to me. I’m freaking out!”
I almost feel bad for him. I really do. Except I’m also freaking out and I have a really good reason for it.
The tests sit on the edge of the tub. I can see the little blue marks through the doorway.
All four are positive.
And I’m spiraling into panic mode.
No, I’m hurtling past panic into something worse.
I’m firmly into desperation territory.
“Allison! I can hear you walking around. Will you just talk to me, please?”
I don’t respond. Even though Orin’s my only friend here, I’m also very aware that he’s Gregory’s personal assistant, and ultimately his loyalty is with the Callahan family.
My life is over. When Gregory finds out about this baby, he’s going to freak. The guy’s been avoiding me like the plague for weeks now, and when he realizes that he’s stuck with me, that I’ve trapped him into this marriage with a baby, I’m terrified of what he’ll do.
I don’t know who I can turn to for help. I have friends, but I’ve been keeping them at arm’s length for the last month, making up excuse after excuse for why I can’t hang out. I’m already pushing them away, but that’s for their own good. I don’t want to get anyone involved in this mess.
Which leaves me with nothing. I don’t know a single person that’s aware of my situation and who knows Gregory and Paul, or at least is aware of what they can do.
I’m trapped in this house at the mercy of my husband.
At least until I realize there’s one person I can call.
It’s a huge mistake. I know it the second I huddle in the shower with my phone pressed to my ear, getting as far from the door as I can to be sure Orin won’t overhear. If I weren’t so desperate and terrified, I would never, ever make this call, but I don’t see how I have any other choice.
“Hello? Allison?”
“Papa.” I say the name and feel so small and defenseless, like a little girl again.
“Are you okay?” He sounds relieved. I halfway expected him not to answer. We didn’t exactly leave things in a good place the last time we spoke in that cafe.
“I’m okay. I mean, I think I’m okay. I just-can we meet up and talk?”
He pauses and I hear him let out a long breath. “Yes, of course we can. Where are you?”
“I’m at Gregory’s place. I can meet you at the same cafe like last time?”
He grunts his assent. “When?”
“An hour. Can you meet me?”
“I’ll be there. But are you safe? Is he hurting you?”
“No,” I say quickly. “It’s not like that. Just meet me at the cafe.” I hang up the phone.
This is a mistake. But I pull on my running clothes anyway, still trying to think of someone that could possibly help me. Papa is the only one short of Paul, and I’d never turn to that psychopath for anything. I don’t care how desperate I feel, Paul murdered my sister.
I push past Orin as I storm out of the bedroom.
“Well?” he asks, keeping pace, practically fluttering around me like a moth. “What did it say?”
“I’m going for a run.”
“A run? Allison, are you insane? Gregory’s away and you might be-” He snaps his mouth shut when I stare at him. “A run’s a bad idea. What did the tests say?”
“I’ll be back in a little while, okay?”
“Allison!”
I shove the front door open and hop down the stoop. I halfway expect Orin to chase after me, but instead I sprint off, heading in the opposite direction of where I need to go.
Losing the cars isn’t that hard. They tend to circle around me since they can’t crawl along at my pace. I wait for them to get out of sight before ducking into a shoe store. I wait a while, sprint a few blocks, duck into a stationary store, wait a little while, and repeat that for a half hour. Then I double back, take alleys and side streets, before finally reaching the cafe right on time.
Papa’s sitting up front near the windows this time. He looks skinny and haggard, but more or less healthy as I head inside, feeling like a sweaty mess. He gives me a quick hug, which I don’t feel great about, and ushers me to a seat.
“I was very surprised when you called,” he says. “You sounded like you’re in trouble.”
“That’s not it,” I say, trying to find a way to break the news, but now that I’m sitting across from him in this cafe all over again, I find I can’t make myself speak the words. “I’ve just been thinking about things.”
“About what?” he asks, glancing at the door. He seems nervous. Slightly agitated.
“When you learned that you were going to be a father, how did you feel?”
He looks surprised by the question and sits still for a moment. His face goes distant as he recalls the past, and he shrugs. “It was the happiest day of my life. Your mother and I had been trying for a while, and when Freya came along-” He stops himself. Papa rarely ever talks about Mama. She died when I was only seven from breast cancer that spread into her lungs. He was a mess after it happened. I have a distinct memory of him sitting on her side of the bed, weeping into her pillow.
“You were a good father,” I tell him, which is true. He was a good father. Attentive, dutiful, mostly kind. He could be strict and impatient, but he made sure we knew he loved us. “What happened?”
He stares down at his hands. “Nothing changed.”
“Something did. You made Freya marry Paul. The Papa we grew up with never would’ve done something like that. Looking back, I can almost remember the day you came home and were different.”
His expression hardens. “You wouldn’t understand. Freya was difficult, but she accepted the arrangement.”
“Why?” I press. “Why didn’t she fight it? Why didn’t she run away? I don’t remember her saying much, only that arranged marriages happen all the time. She was optimistic it could work out. Why did she do it?” My sister was never the sentimental type, but I’ve still always wondered why she went through with the marriage, and now that I’m sitting here with a baby growing in me, I feel like I need answers more than ever.
“She did it to help me,” he admits, sounding morose. But it hits me like a truck.
“What do you mean, to help you?”
Papa wilts slightly. He stares at his hands. I don’t know why he’s telling me this now, after everything. Maybe it’s because I made him remember that he actually used to love me and Freya, once upon a time.
“I owe Paul a lot of money.” His voice comes out soft. Shame drips off him like wilting flower petals. “There were some bad business decisions. When I purchased CashOut Limited, I did it with borrowed money.”
My eyebrows raise. CashOut was a small vaping company that specialized in marijuana equipment. Turns out, their technology was trash, and the purchase was a terrible loss. Papa’s company survived it, but barely. I remember how stressful that was for him, and it happened only a couple years before Freya married Paul.
“That’s why?” I ask, leaning back in my chair. “She did it to pay your debts?”
“Yes,” he says, unable to look me in the eye. “She understood what it would mean to me. And to you. She kept saying you were the future of the business, and if she took care of it, she’d be taking care of you.”
I blink at him rapidly. Tears form in my throat. Freya married Paul for me? To pay off the company’s debts? She never said anything about it, only kept insisting that Paul was an acceptable match.
But now it made so much more sense. She wasn’t marrying Paul because she wanted to be a Bratva wife; she did it to help her family.
That was Freya, always putting others first, always sacrificing.
Anger swells in me. I lean forward, glaring at my father. “How could you let her do that?”
“I didn’t know what would happen,” he says, glaring back. “It made sense at the time. Paul wanted our families to move closer together, to bring the whole supply chain in sync, and erasing my debt was a beneficial side product of the match. I had no clue-”
“You should have.” All of a sudden, I remember why I’ve been so angry with Papa. My pregnancy is forgotten, or at least diminished, as my anger flares up again. “You knew what Paul was and you got involved with him anyway. Then you let your daughter clean up your mess. You sold Freya. You got her killed.”
“I made a match,” he says through his teeth. “I didn’t have any idea-” But he stops talking abruptly. His face goes pale as he stares over my shoulder toward the door.
I want to scream at him. I want to punch him in the face. How could he do that to Freya? It’s so much worse than I ever pictured. The selfish bastard-he made the match, and he did it for money.
A hand squeezes my shoulder, and a cold jolt of fear runs down my spine.
I look back, expecting Paul.
Instead, Gregory stands by my side, staring at my father.
“Allison,” Gregory says softly. “We’re leaving.”
“Gregory. I thought-”
“I came home early.” He glances at me. “Get up. We’re going.”
I slowly rise to my feet.
Papa doesn’t move. He looks horrified. “Gregory. My daughter. She called, and I just-”
“If you say one more word, I’ll have your ankles broken.”
Papa’s mouth shuts with a click.
I move away from the table. Gregory steers me to the door. I move like I’m dragging myself underwater, digging my feet into the silty bottom of the ocean. Once we’re outside, his grip on my arm tightens, and his lips move closer to my ear.
“You should’ve hidden the tests.”