Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Three
Milana watched Kelley leave the office and she smiled. She would never have believed it if someone had told her that she would love the brooding man. She minimized the tabs open on his laptop and looked at the folder aptly named ‘Norah Kensington’.
Milana bit her lip and then double clicked on it. Inside was a video file and she opened that one too. She sat back in horror, her hands shaking as she listened to her husband. She felt the bile rise in her throat and fear settled deep inside her heart.
She’d been wrong. He was exactly the man Ernesto had told her he was. He was part of The Club and it sickened her to watch him take advantage of this woman. She couldn’t look at it anymore, the stoic look on his face as the woman touched herself on his orders.
She made it to the bathroom just in time and emptied her stomach into the toilet. She dry heaved a few times and stiffened when a hand touched her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” Steel asked her.
“I … I don’t feel well,” she said and closed her eyes.
“Come on, let’s get you to the bed and I’ll go get you something. What’s your symptoms?” Steel’s eyes showed his worry but in that moment she couldn’t trust it. He worked for Kelley, surely he knew what was going on.
“Nausea and a headache,” she lied as he helped her to the bed.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said and wiped a stray hair from her forehead.
Milana shuddered but Steel mistook it for a shiver. She couldn’t trust anyone who was employed by him. She felt so stupid for trusting him, for letting go of her fear and giving in to him. When a few minutes had passed, Milana jumped up from the bed and ran to her dressing room.
She grabbed a bag and stuffed clothes and toiletries inside. She didn’t have a lot of time to formulate a plan but she knew she had to get the hell away from Kelley Alexander and whatever plans he had for her.
She opened Kelley’s personal safe hidden behind a wooden panel on his side of the dressing room. Inside she found what she was looking for, cash. She grabbed a few bundles, closed the safe and hid the money in between layers of her clothes and one stack went into her purse.
She opened the medicine cabinet and found the unused bottle of sleeping pills that had been prescribed to Kelley but had remained unused. She emptied ten of the pills into her orange juice on the bedside table and sat back down on the bed.
Steel returned a few minutes later with a brown paper bag in his hands. He sat down on the edge of the bed and emptied the contents. “This one dissolves under your tongue, it’s for nausea.” Steel handed her one of the tablets and she placed it under her tongue. It wouldn’t hurt her even though the vomiting had been because of that video.
“This is ibuprofen, it’ll help with your headache.”
Milana took the two pills from him and picked up the glass of orange juice. She sniffed it and made a face. “Does this seem off to you?”
Steel took the glass and sniffed it. “Smells fine to me.” She gave him a look and Steel drank half of the glass of juice and handed it to her. “See, it’s fine.”
“Maybe water will be better,” she said.
Steel stood up from the bed, walked to the bathroom and rinsed the juice glass a few times. He walked back to the bed and handed her the glass of water. Steel seemed to sway a bit and she put the glass down on the side table.
“Are you okay?” Milana asked him.
Steel opened his mouth to say something but his knees buckled and his eyes rolled to the back of his head. His body thumped down on the carpet. “I’m sorry, Steel, but I can’t stay here.”
In the garage, she loaded her bag onto the front seat of one of Kelley's cars and drove down the driveway to the gate and prayed that they wouldn’t question her. One guard nodded his head at her and the gate opened. Her fingers clenched around the steering wheel as nerves wracked through her body.
Milana drove to the shopping mall, left the car in the parking lot and climbed into the Uber she had ordered. Dark glasses went over her eyes and she leaned her head to the side, not sure when Kelley and the family would return from the church.
She’d left the phone, credit card and laptop that Kelley had given her at the house. She didn’t want him to have any way to trace her movements. She had her own personal card, the one that Kelley had paid part of the dowry in, money that was all hers. She didn’t need him, she’d never need him again.
The drive to St. John’s City took two hours and she felt like she could breathe a little easier. She paid the man with her personal card and walked into the reception office of the motel. It was in a good part of the city and it looked modern.
Milana paid for two weeks in advance, certain that two weeks was all she would need to sort out her personal life and decide what she wanted to do. Inside the room she took out the pregnancy test Steel had bought for her on the island.
She hadn’t used it and with everything that had happened she had kind of forgotten about it, blocked it from her mind was more accurate. She didn’t want to be pregnant now, she was almost nineteen, way too young to be a good mom.
She ordered food from her phone and changed into more comfortable clothes and paid for her food when the delivery guy arrived. Flashes of that video played in her mind, over and over. She couldn’t believe how blind she’d been.
He’d completely fooled her. Kelley Alexander was an even bigger monster than her uncle. At least with him she knew exactly where she stood. She was alone now, completely alone. She had nobody and there was nobody she could contact.
She had no friends, no family left and she shivered as she looked at the pregnancy test on the table. If she was alone, she’d have a chance at survival. She was used to struggling, having no money and even starving on occasion. A baby didn’t fit into her new plans.
