“See you soon, baby,” Rosa says before she hangs up on Logan.

Her bright-red lips spread into a wide, manic smile, which turns into a big, crazy grin, which turns into frenzied laughter. “I said ‘baby.’ I crack myself up sometimes.”

She turns to stare at my midsection, her dark eyes cold and scheming. She lifts her gaze up to my face but seems to be looking right through me, like I’m not a person sitting right in front of her but just a thing, a means to an end.

I’ve been sitting here for hours, watching Rosa as she orders her oversized, black-clad bodyguards around. In my mind, I’ve taken to calling them her minions.

She’s tiny—shorter than me with a petite body. Her long, wavy hair is dyed a harsh black. She’s wearing a tight, dark-gray tank top, a black pair of skinny jeans, and a pair of black, leather boots.

She’s not beautiful, but there’s something about her that demands attention.

She looks exactly like the kind of mean girl who would’ve been popular in high school, the kind who would’ve had a posse of girls following her around, doing her bidding.

So, this is Logan’s type, I guess? Jealousy jabs its sharp needle through my flesh and into my heart, injecting me with its poison.

I understand now why he said we weren’t meant to be together. I’m not as tough as Rosa. I’d look like an idiot in the midst of Logan’s usual associates. Like a scared, awkward squirrel with foxes and wolves prowling around me.

Sure, Logan called Rosa crazy when she visited his home, pounding on the door, calling his name. But Logan lives on his own up in the mountains where nothing ever happens. Maybe a little bit of drama is exactly what he needs to keep life interesting.

“Pete,” she calls the bald guy with the handlebar mustache and too many tattoos. She grabs the plastic bag I got from the drugstore and gestures at me with her chin. “Take her to the bathroom and make her take this.”

Rosa hasn’t addressed me even once since they took me into this drab, gray warehouse.

Before Logan called her back, she just paced around furiously, the sound of her boots echoing in the big, empty space. She cursed at her phone and her minions, complaining about everything from the leaks in the ceiling to the location of the power socket in the far corner of the warehouse.

Now, her mood has changed. She seems to have calmed down. She has stopped biting her red fingernails.

As Pete removes the ropes binding my wrists together and my waist to the chair, I wonder if it’s a good thing that Rosa is calmer. She seemed dangerously unstable before, but now she seems to have the mind space to come up with elaborate schemes.

My muscles ache when Pete grabs my arm and pulls me up to my feet. He drags me with him as he takes the plastic bag Rosa is holding out for him, then he takes me past rows of cardboard boxes, stacked so high they almost reach the ceiling.

I hear a click as Pete pulls on a cord, then a single lightbulb turns on.

We’re at the edge of the main warehouse area. In front of us are three doors, leading to two offices and—judging from the smell—a bathroom.

“You have two minutes.” Pete kicks the bathroom door open and shoves me inside, then gives me my plastic bag. He glances at his watch and gives me a creepy look. “I’m coming in after two minutes whether you’re ready or not.”

“Fine.” I push on the door but Pete kicks it open again.

“Did I say you can close the door? You’re not locking me out.”

I sigh. “I can’t go with you staring at me.”

“Do I look like I care?” Pete chuckles, his gaze falling to my crotch. “Like I said, you have two minutes. If you take longer than that, I’ll take that as a sign that you want me to help you.”

Jesus. This guy is delusional.

“The clock starts now.” Pete presses a button on his watch and stares at me with eyes full of expectation.

I guess I have no choice. It has been, what, almost twenty years since I last had an audience when peeing?

Still, that means this is not my first time. Besides, I’ve been holding it in for a while now and my bladder is starting to hurt.

I take out the blue box from the bag, tear the packaging, and pull out the long, white, plastic stick. Luckily, it’s not my first time using one of these things either, and I don’t need to read the instructions.

From the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of Pete standing just outside the bathroom door, lighting a cigarette. I try to forget he’s there as pull my jeans down, hover over the grimy toilet, and direct my stream to hit the end of the stick.

Thankfully, I finish at about the same time Pete’s watch beeps, which probably means it has been exactly two minutes.

“Time’s up,” he barks.

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m done.” I pull my jeans back up and glare at him as I walk out of the bathroom.

“Nice ass.” Pete grins, showing me a row of yellow teeth as he smacks my butt and squeezes a cheek. With no shame or remorse, he stares at me. “Give me it.”

Reluctantly, I hand the pregnancy test stick over. If I remember correctly, it takes a few minutes for the result to show up on the little window on the side of the stick.

Am I pregnant? With Logan’s baby?

I’ve missed my period—only by two days—but I’m normally super regular. And I feel a certain something . . . I can’t explain it, but it’s too similar to the way I felt back then for me to ignore it. The “flu” symptoms that Melinda noticed could be just sadness from losing Logan, or pregnancy symptoms.

Pete turns off the lightbulb and pulls me by the arm, this time grabbing my butt occasionally. Apparently he feels like we’re a lot closer now after the bonding experience of watching me pee.

As we walk past Rosa, Pete presents her with the test stick.

“Ew,” she says. “That’s fucking gross, Pete.”

Rosa’s other minion, an overweight man with weirdly tiny hands, laughs.

“I’m not touching it. Hold it for me,” Rosa says.

Pete says nothing although his face says he’s not happy. He puts the white stick on the floor beside my chair as he sits me down and pulls my arms back.

With my heart pounding, I keep my gaze on the test stick as Pete wraps a rough length of rope around my wrists, my waist, and the chair. By chance, Pete placed it with the window side facing up.

Positive is . . . two lines, right?

How long does it take for the result to show up?

And how long has it been? I don’t have my phone, and I don’t wear a watch, so there’s no way for me to check the time.

Before I see any change, Pete pulls a stinky piece of black cloth over my mouth and gets up, taking the test stick with him.

“Where are you going?” Rosa asks when Pete skulks away to join Ted.

“To smoke. I thought you don’t like the smell,” he says.

“I don’t. That’s why you’re not going to smoke, dumbass,” Rosa says. She points at the concrete floor in front of her. “Stand here. Hold the pee stick up.”

Pete’s face falls, but he takes his place and does as Rosa wants anyway. Ted grins.

These two seem to take enjoyment in the other’s suffering. Maybe that’s a detail that will be useful . . . if I manage to survive this.

I know I’ll live until tomorrow night, at least.

Rosa will have dinner with Logan tomorrow—a romantic candlelit dinner, by the sound of it. And she’ll probably want to keep me alive until then, just in case Logan demands proof that I’m okay.

At least that will be the case unless Logan and Rosa get off on playing these games. Maybe Rosa will kill me, snap a picture, show Logan, and they’ll have crazy monkey sex as the photo is projected all over the walls of their swanky hotel room.

I know how insane that sounds, but it’s possible, considering Logan’s penchant for incorporating pain and injury into sex . . .

Besides, how well do I really know Logan? For all I know, the kind-and-protective thing was just an act.

“Fuck,” Rosa curses. For the first time, she stares right into my eyes and speaks directly to me. “Slut!”

All night, I had been asking myself if I’m invisible because she didn’t acknowledge my presence. I even wondered what it would take for her to look at me.

But now, I’m not sure it’s a good thing.

“You dirty whore.” Rosa’s black boots make a rapid clack-tap, clack-tap sound on the concrete floor as she rushes toward me.

I shrink into my seat, fully expecting Rosa to deal me a physical blow.

And, she does. She lifts up her right hand and slaps me across the face.

“Fucking whore!” She points her index finger right in my face and speaks through gritted teeth. “You want to be fucked so bad, right? So bad you’d try to steal my man? I’ll help you out. Help you scratch that itch away. I’ll fuck you in the ass with a rusty pipe.”

Heat stings my face. This feels nothing like when Logan smacked my butt or my pussy. Rosa meant that slap.

I squeeze my eyes shut, afraid of what I might see.

Are Pete and Ted looking for a rusty pipe right this very moment? Or do they already have it handy for moments like this? Surely there’s a rusty pipe somewhere in this filthy warehouse.

Rosa’s perfume fills my nostrils with a fragrance so sweet it sickens me. Is she wearing too much perfume, or is that just pregnancy-related nausea?

Oh, God.

I’m pregnant.

I must be.

Why else would Rosa be this mad?

A million thoughts run through my mind.

Am I going to be alive to give birth to this baby? We used protection—how am I even pregnant? How is Logan going to react when—I mean if—he finds out?

I can’t decide how I feel.

Scared. Overjoyed. Guilty. Hopeful. Brave. Chicken shit.

I’m way out of my comfort zone. And that’s an understatement.

I was kidnapped by some gangsters and I’m being held hostage. I don’t even know where I am because they put a blindfold on me the whole time we were in the car.

All I know is I’m in a warehouse.

An unstable girl and two burly men are watching over me, making sure I don’t get away.

And I’m pregnant.

I may be a coward. But for the sake of my baby, I need to be different. I need to have courage. I need to be a mom.

I take a deep breath and slowly open my eyes to stare back into Rosa’s dark, hateful, heavily made-up eyes.

Smack! Rosa’s palm hits my cheek again, but I turn back to face her and look right back at her.

“You know what I’m going to do, skank?” A cruel smile spreads across Rosa’s face. “I’m going to get you something. A magic pill. Get rid of that thing in your putrid cunt. My boyfriend won’t have a bastard baby and a slut baby mama running around, sucking him dry.”