Page 81 of Bought to Bear Bratva Heir

"You are my mama, aren’t you?" he whispered.

Bending over him, I pressed my lips to his matted hair. "I am your mama," I admitted, and tears prickled my eyes, forcing me to blink them away so they slid silently down my cheeks to wet the top of his head.

"I knew you were," he whispered. "That first day I saw you. Papa had a picture in his drawer at home. Sometimes I caught him looking at it."

I held my breath. Ilya had kept a picture of me? All these years?

"Papa will come and get us." There was a new kind of strength in his voice, and I glanced down at him to find him staring at me. "Papa will come and save us because he loves us."

"He loves you so, so much," I whispered, smoothing my fingers down his dirt-streaked cheek. Ilya did love Alec, and he would come for him. But he didn’t love me. He wouldn’t come to save me. I was self-aware enough to know that. Maybe once upon a time, Ilya might have thought he cared about me, but that was a long time ago, and any time I had seen even a flicker of softness in his eyes recently, he had quickly followed it by cruelty.

Ilya only kept me around to punish me for something I didn’t do. Not that it mattered. I would take all the punishment Ilya doled out to be in my son's life.

From somewhere in the abandoned house, a door slammed so loudly that I jumped. In my arms, Alec sobbed into my filthy shirt, his little fists twisting the fabric.

"Mama."

"It’s okay. It’s okay." Keeping him close to my body, I moved him away from the door. If someone was going to come in here and hurt us, then they would have to get through me first. Wildly, I looked around for something, anything that I could use as a weapon, but there was nothing. If it came down to a fight, I would have to use my fists.

A man’s voice shouted something, and a woman answered just as angrily.

Halfway to my feet, I paused.

"Mama, that isn’t Papa’s voice," Alec whispered.

"I know." Slowly, I sank down to gather him back into my arms.

"Then why is she here?"

That was the question, wasn’t it? Why was Ilya's fiancée here if he wasn’t? But deep down I knew why.

Deep down I knew the truth.

Marguerite was behind this whole mess.

Days passed, or at least I thought it was days. Our water bottle was replenished, and a pack of stale sandwiches were brought to us, but the waste bucket didn’t get emptied, and the smell that was coming from it made me want to heave. I probably would have, except there wasn’t anything in my stomach to throw up, and honestly, I didn’t want to add to the foul stench of the room.

Sometimes I heard Marguerite's voice, but as the days wore on and no help came, I was beginning to think I was just imagining it all.

Maybe this whole thing was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. For all I knew, I hadn’t gotten out of that burning building, and this was just some weird coma dream or even death.

Every time I had those thoughts, I'd look at Alec and know the truth. If this was a dream, Alec would be happy. At the park and eating ice cream. Something like that. I refused to believe my subconscious would put us here.

Not that it made it any better. Reality was pretty dire, and I knew deep down that the longer we stayed here, the worse it was going to get.

In the half-light, I let my eyes fall on the sleeping form of my son. Soon it would be completely dark, and I wouldn’t be able to see him at all, but until then I kept my eyes glued to him.

He had lost weight since we had gotten here. His hair was matted, and his skin and clothes were filthy. There was a hollowness in his cheeks that shouldn’t be there, but worse than that, worse than anything was the fact he cried in his sleep now. It was the only sound he made. He had given up hope.

I tried to comfort him and to tell him that it would all be okay, but he didn’t believe me anymore. I wasn’t even sure I believed myself.

The one thing that gave me hope was the fact they hadn’t killed us yet. Each day that went past without our execution was a blessing because it meant they needed us alive for something.

Not that I was under any illusion that that thing would be good. It wouldn’t be.

Not with Marguerite in the mix.

I’d always hated that woman. Alec had as well. I’d thought it was just jealousy because she was going to marry the man I loved, but it hadn’t just been that. I hadn’t trusted her, and for good reason, it would seem.