Conquered by the Mafia Boss

Tony warned me. What the fuck was I thinking, coming here alone?

“Get off me!”

His arm tightens around my body, imprisoning me like a python coiling around my body, slowly squeezing me to death. “Why should I?”

Rafael drags me farther into the apartment, and my feet follow him backward.

“What are you doing?”

Arms pinned to my side, I’m fucking helpless. Every pause makes the knife cut into my throat, and something warm tickles down my neck. It’s not until he drags me into the bathroom that I see the line of red.

“Rafael, I’m engaged. He will fucking kill you!”

The door slams shut and he hurls me away from him. I slip on the tiles and fall on the toilet seat, gazing up at Rafael’s disheveled body.

He points the knife at me. “I’ll fucking kill you. We’re going to find out once and for all whether you are pregnant.”

His black jeans swim in front of me and the flat of his blade slaps my cheek. “I know it’s not beyond you to lie about something like this. You come from a family of rats.”

Burning, caustic rage explodes in my chest. “You just can’t stand the fact that I’ve found someone else. That I left you.”

I expect the blow, but it still hurts when his palm rips across my face. I catch myself almost immediately, gripping the edge of the toilet seat. He slams the knife on the counter and grabs a long box from a plastic bag.

It’s a pregnancy test.

My eyes burn as I take the box from him, shaking.

What the fuck am I supposed to do? I know that it’s going to be negative. I take my birth control pills religiously. It was a lie to make people believe our very abrupt, out-of-nowhere marriage.

Rafael takes the knife, his eyes simmering. “Take off your pants. Do it.”

He expects me to do this now? In front of him?

“At least give me some privacy.”

“What’s the matter? Are you afraid what it’ll say?” He smirks at me knowingly, giving the cheek where he slapped me a little tap. “Oh, I already fucking know you’re a piece of shit liar. I just need proof.” He leans in, his narrowed eyes almost gleaming with red as he presses his shaking lips to my ear. “You won’t be when Johnny finds out you paid Tony off with money that should’ve been given to Vince.”

A hole gapes inside me as though all my organs were sucked out by a vacuum. Dad never told me how he got the money, or where it was from. I never considered that it might not be entirely his, and I know Johnny. He doesn’t give a shit about me.

“Take off your clothes.”

Tears burn down my face as I look up at him, wanting to spare myself the humiliation of taking this test in front of him, but the knife doesn’t waver from my face. I stand up and pull down my jeans and panties in one swoop, opening up the toilet seat and sitting down before he has a chance to look.

Then I rip open the packaging and grab the pregnancy test. It looks like a thermometer. I take the cap off and tear the foil from the applicator, and then I just stare at it.

“Do it.”

I don’t have a choice.

Even though I know what it’ll say. Even though I know it’s hopeless, I point it toward my body and I relieve myself, jaw clenched shut. Then Rafael takes it from me.

“We have to wait three minutes. Here, do another one.”

To my astonishment, he shoves another box in my hand as he prepares a line of coke on my bathroom counter, cutting it with a small mirror before snorting it. Jesus. No wonder he looks like shit.

I wonder if I could just charge him right now-or maybe I should just grab my cell phone. It’s in my back pocket, sticking out. A few quick movements and I’d have Tony on the phone.

Not before he’d drag that knife across my throat.

I take the second test and give it to him. My stomach turns as the seconds tick by, and I see the cocaine coursing through Rafael’s system. The knife taps impatiently against the sink and then he looks down at the test.

The knife clatters against the sink-an ugly sound that makes me flinch.

He clenches the edge of the sink, his head hanging down, staring at the test results. It’s maddening.

“What the fuck?”

He says it in a soft voice that terrifies me, and I don’t know why it does. The second test-he grabs that, too.

“Oh my God.”

A shaking hand covers his mouth, and his head turns toward me, his eyes swimming with tears.

Tears.

What in the fucking fuck?

I can count on my hand the times I’ve seen Rafael cry. The first was when he hit me while my dad was still alive, when he was petrified for his life. The second is now.

“I’m so sorry, Elena.”

His words slam into my chest and I grab my jeans and panties, pulling them up as I walk over and push him aside. I look at the pregnancy tests. That positive, pink plus burns in my eyes. The other one has two pink lines.

Pregnant.

I’m actually pregnant.

WHAT THE FUCK?

I can’t scream it out loud, because Rafael’s arms wrap around my waist and he buries his face in my neck.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

His apologies are thick with tears, but I don’t feel a thing. Pregnant? How the hell is this possible?