“Kolya Uvarov,” he answers at last, sort of woodenly.

I twitch. Kolya. Kolya hired this sad little stereotype of a man to abduct me and bring me here?

Something in me says no.

Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s abducted me.

I swallow past my dry throat. “Why?”

The man shrugs. “Apparently, you turned out to be a lot more trouble than the boss was anticipating. He’s decided that your baby isn’t worth the wait. So now, you’re gonna be sold.”

Every bone in my body rejects his words. Kolya would never sell anyone, let alone me. “You’re lying.”

He shrugs again. I’m getting sick of it. The nonchalance of it. “You can believe what you want,” he says. “I’m just following orders.”

He pulls out the knife he was wiggling around back in the laundromat from a sheath in his boot. Then he tosses it in the air, flips it, and catches it by the hilt, again and again. It glints in the dim light like a shooting star.

“The boss didn’t tell me you’d put up a fight, though,” he muses. “Oughta charge him extra for that.”

I strain against my bindings, but there’s not a chance in hell that they’re coming loose anytime soon. The skin of my wrists is already losing the battle against the edge of the zip ties. Blood seeps down my fingertips.

“Although I don’t know why he would let you go. You’re much prettier than the usual tier of whores I deal with.”

“I’m no whore, asshole.”

“No,” he agrees pleasantly enough. “But you will be soon.”

I whimper under my breath and try wriggling free again, but the zip ties hold fast. “Please,” I beg, trying a different tactic. “My arm is injured. Could you just loosen the restraints a little bit?”

A shake of the head. “Nope.”

“Afraid a pregnant woman half your size will overpower you and run?”

He chuckles, but makes no move to come any closer. “My orders were clear. The boys’ll be here soon to pick you up. I’m just supposed to keep you company until they arrive.”

The panic is starting to creep up in my chest like rising bile. Is this what Milana felt when she was taken? The fear, the desperation, the sheer helplessness. Of course, she’d been so much younger.

It would have been so much worse for her.

“They won’t want a pregnant woman,” I say, taking a shot in the dark.

The man keeps tossing the knife again and again. “You’d be surprised, sweetheart,” he says with a lurid grin. “Lotsa guys are into that sort of thing.”

I’m dangerously close to throwing up. It isn’t just the fact that I’m here. It’s why I’m here.

Kolya Uvarov is a good man. That’s what I’d come to believe after months spent under his roof. And yet everything I’ve heard since leaving his protection points to the polar opposite.

The same pair of questions that has been torturing me for days crops up again.