Blurred Lines

Chapter 15

When Ruslan got to Abigail's house, his people had long gone. The place looked exactly how he wanted her to find it; completely empty. Not a single item of furniture remained. It was as if she'd never lived there. Everything had been removed as he'd requested and was sitting in one of his storage facilities out of town. The only exception had been her personal belongings, which he'd had moved to his place.

He walked around her empty house, his rage finding release in the bareness that surrounded him, knowing that this punishment would be far worse than anything Abigail could imagine. He needed her to understand that there were so many ways he could hurt her - none of them involving physical violence. She seemed to be under some misguided assumption that she was safe from his fury because she was pregnant, but tonight she'd understand that the boundaries he set for her required her absolute submission, and that nothing less would ever be acceptable. Especially now since it was confirmed that he was the father of her baby.

While they were packing up, his men had left her mail on the kitchen island. He'd grabbed the stack of letters thinking they were bills, and noticed that one of them had the Northwestern Memorial logo on it. He flipped it over to see that the seal was still intact. As far as he knew the only time she'd ever been there was for the paternity test. He turned it over in his hand, his mind going back to what she'd said to him, knowing that there could only be one reason why she hadn't opened it - in her mind there'd never been any question about who the father of her baby was.

DNA Test Report for Personal Knowledge Only

His eyes scanned the table underneath. There was a list of codes in the first column followed by a column labelled Mother, Child and then Father.

His eyes scanned the section below the table.

The alleged father is not excluded as the biological father of the tested child. Based on the testing results obtained from the DNA loci listed, the probability of paternity is 99.9999998%.

He stood there looking at the paper, for how long he didn't know, but he was grateful that he'd had the opportunity to come across this when he was alone.

99.9999998%

She'd been telling the truth. By some miracle of God she really had gotten pregnant from him. He'd been thinking about this very moment since that morning she'd told him. What he'd do if it was confirmed. He knew even then that there was only one outcome to all this, and that was that he'd spend the rest of his life protecting that child and giving it what he'd never known; a family.

Abigail walked through the unlocked door, her heart pounding in her chest.

He stood behind her and watched silently as her hand moved tentatively toward the light switch, almost as if fearing what she'd find when she switched it on.

He heard her breath catch as the light went on and she caught her first glimpse of the empty living room. He watched as her hand went to her mouth and she muffled a cry.

When he took a step toward her, the floorboard beneath him creaked and she turned to find him standing there, his hands in his pockets, watching her in a way that was completely devoid of emotion.

He took another step toward her, but she held up her hand and moved away, as if his touch might scold if it connected with her skin. 

She walked to the guest bedroom before coming into the living room with the same stunned expression she'd worn before, wandering into the bare kitchen. 

He found her opening the bare cupboards one by one as she tried to process what had happened in the short time since she'd left the house. 

She turned to face him, attempting to say something but her racing heart felt like it was about to fail her. She placed a hand on her chest trying to catch her shallow breath, but her airways felt constricted, making her breath sound raspy.  The room began to spin around her. She reached out for the island bench to steady herself, noticing Ruslan in her periphery take a few steps toward her.