The Mafia's Heir | WMBM |MPREG

Chapter 3: The Two-Week Wait

The bunker's kitchen is a cold place, all steel and concrete. It's supposed to resemble something out of a home, I guess, but it doesn't. The overhead lights hum, too bright, too white. The stainless-steel table in the center is bolted to the ground, and the chairs around it aren't much better—metal, hard, unforgiving. Everything in here feels like it was designed to remind us that we're trapped. No comfort, no escape.

I sit across from Leon, who's staring down at his hands, fingers tracing the grain of the table as if there's something interesting about it. There isn't. There's nothing interesting in this place. The walls are so thick I've stopped counting how long it's been since I heard a sound from the outside. If there even is an outside anymore.

Leon looks up at me, eyes tired, like he hasn't slept in days. I don't blame him. 

"The two-week wait is the hardest," he said quietly, his voice just loud enough to break the silence we've been sitting in for what feels like hours. "It feels the longest."

I blink at him, caught off guard. "The two-week wait?"

He nods, like this is normal conversation. Like we're not sitting in some underground prison where the air tastes like sterile nothing and there's nowhere to go, no one coming to save us. "Yeah," he said. "To see if you conceived. They'll come and take you for a pregnancy test and do some blood work. It's how they keep you guessing, keep you on edge."

I want to ask him why he's telling me this, why he's saying it like it's something I should expect. Like it's inevitable. But I already know. I can feel it in my gut, twisting. Pierluca doesn't make idle threats. He's going to test me. It's only a matter of time.

My hands are on the table now, fingers gripping the edge, knuckles white against the cold surface. I've been trying to convince myself I'll find a way out of this. That there's still some hope. But every day, the walls feel closer, tighter, like they're swallowing me whole.

Leon doesn't meet my eyes when he talks. He keeps his gaze low, distant, like he's somewhere else in his head. I can tell he's been through this already. The way he talks about it, like it's just another fact of life now. I don't know how to feel about that. If it's meant to comfort me, it's not working.

"The blood work," I said, testing the words on my tongue. They taste wrong, bitter. "And then what?"

"Then they tell you if you're lucky," he said, but there's no joy in the word 'lucky.' "Or if you're not."

I don't ask what happens if you're not. I know what happens. We both do.

I lean back in the chair, metal creaking beneath me, and let my eyes drift around the room. The kitchen's too clean, spotless, like they come in and scrub it down every night when we're asleep. The cabinets are filled with the bare minimum—ration packs, cans of food that taste like cardboard, water bottles stacked in neat rows. Everything here is about control, down to the way they decide when we eat, how much we eat. They want us weak. Dependent.

I glance back at Leon. His shoulders are slumped, his body too small for the oversized hoodie he's been wearing for days. He doesn't talk much about his life before all this, but I can tell it's been eaten away. Piece by piece. He still touches his stomach sometimes, like he's afraid the baby growing inside him will disappear if he doesn't remind himself it's real. Maybe that's the only thing keeping him tethered.

I wonder how long it'll take before I start doing the same.

"They'll take you to the med center," Leon adds after a pause. His voice is softer now, like he's not even sure if he should keep talking. "They treat you like an experiment."

His words sink in slowly, like water seeping through cracks. Experiment. I knew it from the moment I woke up in this place, but hearing it spoken aloud makes my skin crawl. I want to punch something, break the table, scream until my voice cracks—but I won't. They'd love that.