Chapter 40
BELLA
I’m not sure what I was expecting to find when I walked into the foyer at a quarter after one, but Slava standing there wearing matching riding clothes with Alessandro was not it.
Alessandro breaks the silence. “Papa says you’re coming with us! Do you know how to ride?”
“Ride what?” I ask.
“Horses,” Slava answers. “The far pastures of the grounds can only be reached on horseback.”
A picnic. On horseback. With the Bratva boss and his child—a child whose life I hold in my hand right now.
“I’ve never ridden a horse in my life.”
There’s no point lying about something that will become catastrophically obvious within minutes.
“Then you’ll learn today,” Slava says, like it’s that simple. “We’ll pick one of the more well-mannered ones.”
With that, the three of us set off. It’s a quick ten-minute walk to the stables. Inside, the air is warm with the smell of hay and leather.
The stable master is already waiting for us with three horses: a massive black stallion for Slava, a smaller chestnut pony for Alessandro, and a gray mare with white mane for me that he swears is “as gentle as a lamb.”
But as I look up at the snorting head of the gray mare, I’m not sure if I trust this man’s claims.
“Foot in the stirrup,” Alessandro instructs me cheerfully. “And then you swing up, like this.”
He lifts one leg and shows me, and I puff out my cheek at how effortlessly he makes it look. Something tells me that it’s probably not that easy.
“Left foot,” I repeat. “Got it.”
I do not, in fact, have it.
The horse shifts as I try to mount, and I almost fall off before I even get on. The gray mare gives another snort, and stamps its front hooves in the dirt, and suddenly I have a terrible vision of being kicked right in the ribs.
At least then I won’t have to think about which child I’m going to offer up.
Slava walks up next to me and suddenly, his hands are on my waist.
“Relax,” he says, his breath warm against my ear. “She can feel your tension.”
Easy for you to say. I cling to the reins. “I am relaxed.”
He doesn’t dignify that with a response as he lifts me up with one single swift motion onto the saddle. His hand rests for a second too long on my ass as he helps me settle into the saddle, and the breath hitches in my throat.
He makes it feel too goddamn easy.
“So, how do I get her to go?” I ask. “I didn’t bring my cowboy boots.”
“She’ll follow us,” he replies and then swings himself onto the black stallion in a single graceful arc that has my thigh clenching around the saddle.
Together, we set off across the grounds, and they are extensive. The rolling hills are dotted with wildflowers. A forest edges the distance, and the summer sun is warm on my shoulders. It’s obscenely beautiful.
It’s almost enough for me to forget that I’m complicit in terrible things.
Alessandro rides ahead, his laughter carrying back to us on the breeze. He’s fearless, and he has no idea that someone came to kill him because of who his father is.
And because of what I’ve done.
My phone is burning a hole in my back pocket, and my chest tightens as I think about Nico’s choice for me.
I was never given a specific timeline, but I know that there isn’t enough time.
The weight of Gia’s necklace against my collarbone feels heavier suddenly, and I know that I have to keep her son safe.
But I can’t just give up Anthony either. Whatever sins his father may have committed, he’s still my nephew and an innocent child.
I have to find a way to keep both of them safe. But how?
Damn Nico! Damn him for forcing me to choose.
And damn myself for being foolish enough to think I can jump into the middle of this conflict and emerge somehow unscathed.
“Loosen your grip on the reins,” Slava’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts as he slows down slightly until we’re riding side by side. “You’re choking her.”
“I’m not choking her, I’m just—” The mare tosses her head. “Okay, maybe I’m choking her just a little.”
“Here.” He reaches over and adjusts my hands, his fingers brushing mine in the process. “Guide her. Don’t fight her.”
I flinch from the heat of his fingers and it takes a moment before my breath and heartbeat return to normal. Slava’s hand tightens slightly. He rides closer, and I try not to glance over at the way his hips are thrusting as he rides.
My heart races. Heat rushes up my face, and my clothes now feel too tight and itchy on my skin.
“Shh,” Slava soothes the horse, but I’m the one who hears. “I have you, girl.”
Up ahead, Alessandro has stopped. He sees the two of us riding side by side, his face splits into a wide smile, and he doubles back.
“Papa, can we show Bella the waterfall?”
“We’ll see,” Slava says, but his tone is warm and indulgent. He looks over to the left. “The waterfall is too far, and there are clouds on the horizon.”
My eyes follow his gaze. Sure enough, in the distance, fat billowing clouds are rising like cotton balls, pregnant with rain.
The wind seems to still. The air around us grows just a little hotter and heavier. The clouds don’t look like they’re moving.
Slava’s hands are still on my reins, still touching my fingers with an impossible tenderness.
He’s still protecting me, even as I practically contemplate how to destroy what’s his.
We ride on, and the sun moves in a lazy arc over the sky. Slava’s hand is still wrapped around my reins, and it stays there until we arrive at a small clearing near a stream
shaded by ancient oaks that must have been growing here for decades. He helps me down, and then spreads a blanket. Alessandro starts pointing out where everything should go with the confidence of a tiny king.
“The cheese goes here,” he says. “And the bread has to be near the cheese because they’re friends.”
“Naturally,” I say, settling onto the blanket. My thighs are already protesting the ride, though not from the exertion. “What about peanut butter and jelly?”
He giggles. “American usurpers to the throne.”
He’s so normal. So sweet. But sooner or later, the demands of his father’s life will slowly wipe the smile away. The sweetness will fade after, until one day, he sits just like his father.
It’s heartbreaking.
Slava pours a glass of wine for me, and then one for himself.
For a moment, I can pretend like we’re almost like a family on a well-earned vacation in the French countryside, passing bread and cheese, and listening to a seven-year-old explain his very strong opinions about which dinosaurs could beat which other dinosaurs in a fight.
“T-Rex would definitely win,” Alessandro says with absolute certainty. “Because he has all the teeth.”
“But he has such stubby little arms,” Slava points out, and shows the tenderness I keep glimpsing like sunlight through storm clouds.
I watch him with his son. The way he listens like Alessandro’s theories about dinosaurs are the most interesting thing in the world. Occasionally, he reaches over to brush hair from the boy’s forehead. And whenever Alessandro laughs, his entire face transforms.
This is who he is, too, I realize. Not just the Bratva boss and not just a killer. This was the man that Gia fell in love with.
And the man that I suspect I’m falling for as well.
The sun is warm on my face and the wine is good. I want to sink into this moment and never leave. To pretend like I’m someone else. But that awful choice floats up to my mind every time I try to pretend, and bile rises in my throat.
“Bella?”
I blink, realizing Alessandro is looking at me expectantly. “Yes?”
“I asked if you like it here,” he says. “With papa.”
“I…” I glance at Slava, who’s watching me with an unreadable expression. “I think so.”
Alessandro nods solemnly, processing this. Then, with the directness that only children possess, he asks:
“Are you going to be my new mama?”
The world steals my breath away. Maybe it’s just my heart stopping. Or my body forgetting how to function.
But I’m frozen in place by his innocent question, and the wine turning to bitter ash on my tongue.
“Alessandro,” Slava says quietly, warningly.
“What?” Alessandro’s face is open. “My friend Marybeth’s papa has a new mama. And her new mama loves her as much as her old one did.”
Then he wipes his eyes. “And I never knew mine.”
Tears blur my vision, and I want to sweep him up into the biggest hug in the world.
“And besides.” The happy expression appears again on his face. “Papa likes you. You make him smile.”
I do? The thought is almost worse than the question.
“Some things aren’t that easy,” I say slowly.
But what am I supposed to say?
I can’t be your mama because I’m in the middle of destroying your papa? I can’t love you because I already love my own nephew, and loving you too would mean I have to let monsters take him away?
I can’t be your mama because I almost got you killed.
“We should head back soon,” he tells Alessandro, his voice gentle and thick with emotion. “It looks like it’s going to rain.”
He’s right. I hadn’t noticed, too caught up in my spiral, but clouds are gathering on the horizon. The temperature has dropped. The wind is picking up, and I can smell rain in the air.
Alessandro doesn’t push further, distracted by the mention of weather and the task of packing up to go back.
But I feel Slava’s eyes on me and those eyes are seeing too much.
He knows something’s wrong.
He doesn’t know what.
This time, when we get back on our horses, Slava rides up ahead with Alessandro and I’m left with all of my thoughts.
The storm comes faster than any of us expected.
The chateau is still not yet in sight, and sky splits open with a crack of thunder that makes the horses rear. Alessandro’s pony whinnies in fear, and Slava is there instantly, one hand on the bridle, voice low and soothing.
“We need to move,” he says, already lifting Alessandro onto his horse. “The chateau is twenty minutes at full gallop. Stay close.”
I try. God, I try.
But my mare is terrified, and I am profoundly not a horse whisperer, and when the first lightning strike illuminates the sky, she bolts.
“Bella!” Slava’s voice, swallowed by thunder.
I’m holding on for dear life as the horse tears across the field, going the wrong direction, every instinct screaming at me to pull the reins but that just makes her run harder.
Rain lashes my face. The ground blurs beneath us.
I can’t see where we’re going, can only feel the terrifying power of an animal who has decided that any direction away from the thunder is the right one.
A branch catches my shoulder, pain flaring white-hot. I cry out, and my grip slips, and—
I hit the ground hard.
The impact drives the breath from my lungs. For a long moment, I just lie there in the mud, rain hammering down, trying to remember how to exist. My shoulder screams. My head spins.
Get up, I tell myself. Get up, Bella.
I manage to crawl to my feet, then stumble toward a cluster of trees that offers at least some shelter from the downpour. My clothes are soaked through.
The storm rages around me, and I have no idea where I am. Somewhere out there, Slava is riding back to the chateau with his son.
Will you be my new mama?
I have to save them both, I decide. I won’t let either boy come under harm.
Finding an old rotten trunk, I lean against it and wait, because there’s nothing else I can do. Did Luca ever hesitate before he betrayed Gia? About the family he was going to destroy? Did he care at all?
If he didn’t, then it doesn’t matter.
Because I care. And as long as I care, I will find a solution. That’s what Nico meant when he told me that it’s no longer within his power to control but mine, right?
Right?
There must be a way to save them both.
So, I sit there and think as coldness overtakes me.
By the time thunder cracks overhead again, an idea starts to take shape in my head.