Chapter 29 Ivan
IVAN
I stay with the girls until they’ve fallen asleep then scoot out of bed.
I still have some work to do tonight, and maybe I’d actually get some shit done without the need to watch Gabriella all the time.
The old Pakhan also deserves an update. I haven’t checked in with Papa in person since Gabriella arrived, and the least I can do is tell him about her.
He will have watched her with the girls, but I can round out the information he’s gathered—that she’s the perfect woman to love the girls, to be a mom to them.
They clearly already like her, and that will evolve into love over time.
Gabriella is like that—big-hearted and pure. Everything Darya wasn’t.
I don’t know what magic she worked on Milana, but tonight was the first time we had dinner together as a family in months, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
If this is the start, then there’s hope for the future.
I need hope, after months of just hanging from this ledge, clinging by my fingertips alone.
As I walk past her closed bedroom door, I pause. Something was wrong earlier, but she wouldn’t open up to me. I’m used to a woman being a closed book, but I want us to be, I don’t know, different? She isn’t ready. Not yet. I have time, now I’ve put everything in motion.
I head down the stairs and through this maze of a mansion, toward the end of one corridor, and then turn to a door that isn’t visible until you reach it.
This set of rooms has its own outside entrance and forms part of the house’s original guest suites.
It’s on the first floor, which is essential.
I punch in the security code at the door, and it opens.
The night nurse glances up as I walk in, stands and greets me in Russian.
“How is he?” I ask, padding over to where my father is lying in a hospital bed, which faces the garden through some larger windows overlooking the girls’ playground, chicken coop, and rabbit hutch.
During the day, the nurse on duty can move the bed to have a view over the forest when the girls aren’t around.
Like most of the windows in the house, he can see out of them, but from the outside, nobody can look in.
“He’s the same,” the nurse says, her tone resigned.
I nod as I reach for Papa’s hand where it’s lying limply on the bed, like every part of him.
He looks asleep, and at this time of the night, he might even be.
Four hand-picked nurses look after him, working shifts, giving him the best care money can buy, but it kills me to see him like this.
This once-powerful man reduced to a body connected to oxygen.
He speaks only in halting slurs, unable to communicate any other way, and needs help with literally everything.
The first stroke was bad. The second one, which followed a week later, should have killed him, and I wish it had, but here we are, stuck in a dreadful limbo I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
“Papa,” I say, squeezing his hand.
A soft squeeze back, and I close my eyes. There’s still life here, and I squeeze a little tighter, putting all the love I have for this man into such a simple gesture.
“You’ve seen the girls? And their new nanny?”
Squeeze and squeeze.
“What do you think?” I ask, putting a bit of a tease in my voice, hoping it will lure him out.
He finally opens his eyes, icy blue, if watery and tired, but still aware. This is why I don’t have it in me to help him on to the next realm.
When he speaks, it’s slow, most words blurred together, but I’ve learned to decipher what he says.
Too pretty for the likes of you.
I chuckle as he echoes my own thoughts when I saw Gabriella in Central Park the first time, but an ache blooms in my chest at his words. He is gone, but he isn’t, and this little joke is like a shooting star in the twilight. “Can you guess where I found her?”
I can’t keep this secret from him any longer. Maybe he’ll give up, allow his life to end, if he knew I’ve got my own sorted out with a new wife who will give me the sons he and I both crave, which our legacy demands. A wife who is perfect in every respect to look after my daughters.
He grunts. That’s a no.
“She’s Don Scalera’s daughter, the old Don from Il Consiglio.”
A squeeze of my hand as he manages to widen one eye, giving me a stare that speaks volumes.
“It’s a powerful alliance, Papa. Do you think she’s good with the girls? From what you’ve seen?”
I wait, and eventually, there follows another grunt, but this time with a different intonation—it’s a yes.
“I’m marrying her,” I say, having seen enough of Gabriella to know. “I think for the Petrov Bratva, for where we are in the world, it’s the strongest alliance I can make. And she’s untouched. No bad habits. Perfect with the girls.”
She’s not Russian, he slurs.
“The last one was and see where it got us.”
After a long moment, he squeezes my hand, a weak acknowledgement of our battles this past year. I spared him most of it, and I honestly wish he won’t be here for the conclusion of our war with Nikolai Chertnikov.
I sit with him for a while longer, just holding his hand, and he seems to drift off.
“Milana was here today?” I ask the nurse.
“Only Yuri.”
“Okay. I’ll come again tomorrow.”
I make my way to my office and go through a few files, check emails, sign off some documents for trades we’re doing through our legal company that owns ships, containers, and everything else you basically need to cover up and run our type of operations.
By midnight, I’m done. I’m gaining ground on my work once more, and now that I have Gabriella, other things will fall into place as well, slowly but surely. The Petrov Bratva will be repositioned again, as we were, before the attempted coup.
I climb the stairs, energized by my father’s approval of Gabriella. That squeeze of my hand said everything. He gives the union the green light.
Reaching the landing, I turn toward our corridor and the gate I left open.
It feels reckless now, but I’m home, security is on point, and there hasn’t been anything for months.
My bedroom door is ajar, just as I left it, but Gabriella’s door is open, too.
I glance into her room; her bed is empty, and light beams out of the bathroom.
A wail sounds from my suite, sending a sharp chill down my back. I run.
Gabriella bursts out of my room, eyes wide, cheeks tear-stained. My stomach plummets, my pulse spikes.
“Ivan—the girls,” she sobs. “The girls are gone. They’re not in their bed. I—I—”
Blyad’. Impossible.
I squeeze Gabriella on her arm as I rush past her, blood draining from my body, fear tightening like plastic wrap around my heart, suffocating me.
I head straight to my bed where we read stories and the girls fell asleep.
I didn’t move them, always cautious not to wake them when they just fell asleep.
Relief crashes through me. How did Gabriella not see them? Sure, they’re lying there, barely noticeable between the pillows and soft toys that lie scattered on the bed and the floor, golden curls peeking out from the duvet, but still.
“They’re here, Gabriella,” I say as I reach for her. “They’re right here.”
“Oh, God. Oh, thank God,” she whispers on repeat, shaking. “I didn’t think—I—”
“Hey,” I murmur, watching her closer. She’s trembling more now, her whole body seeming to wrack with suppressed sobs. “They’re okay, moya ptichka. They’re safe.”
She shakes her head, her breathing becoming more haggard.
She’s free-falling into uncontrollable crying, bordering on a panic attack.
That look in her eyes, the fear…my stomach seems to churn with gravel, ripping at my insides as the urge to protect her from whatever has her in this tailspin boils up in me.
I pull her close, cupping her head with my hand and hugging her to my chest.
“Shhh….shhh…” I try to soothe her, but she doesn’t calm down.
It’s as if she can’t contain the dread of what could happen to the girls now that the idea has spilled out.
I see her now, the level of devotion she will have for my daughters and their care, that she’d probably die protecting them if ever such a situation—
I can’t think of it.
She leans into me, clutching my shirt, shaking with tremors.
“I’ve got you, moya ptichka. I’m here, just come back to me,” I murmur, needing to ground her in the present with words, with my body.
It’s as if I gave her permission to let go, because her legs cave, and I have her.
It hits me that this is about so much more than the girls going missing, that something was wrong earlier today already, that something could have triggered her.
Something that has been building up over the past few days of being in a strange place.
Without hesitating, I lift her up and carry her out of my room to hers, murmuring comfort all the way, and she pushes her face into my shoulder, breathing in gasps, fisting my collar. The gesture is so trusting, I want to hold her even closer and never let her go.
As I stride into the room, I consider lowering her to the bed, but the way she curls into me, her hand gripping my neck, signals she isn’t ready to let go. I walk over to the wingback and ease into it, keeping her on my lap.
She really is a light, feathery thing. My little bird, made of many fragile bones, but soft in all the right places, warm despite the cold she’s feeling. I hug her close, swaddling her with my arms as I did Irisha and Katya when they were finally able to come home.
Someone hurt this beautiful woman. Someone who is going to pay. I push down on the anger that has started to simmer in my gut. Instead, I focus on calming her, brushing my lips along her hairline, murmuring sweet nothings to her, how it will all be okay, the girls are safe—she is safe.
After what feels like an eternity, the sobbing slows, the tremors cease, and we just sit there, a man and a woman, clinging to each other, anchored in a moment that’s quietly making a tectonic shift in our relationship.
We have both lived through horrors. I know mine, but something triggered hers tonight, and deep in my gut, I know it has something to do with her past, which she probably projected onto the girls and their future. I need to know more. I need to know everything.
In time, she will open up to me. Not through force, like I’d wield on an enemy, but through trust. Through caring. Through mutual respect and consideration of the past we can’t erase. I’m here for her and she’ll know this.
Eventually, her grip on my neck softens, and she brushes her hand along my jaw to my cheek as her head drops slightly so our eyes can meet.
I could kiss her right now, so easily, but I’ve never held a woman in my arms when she was this vulnerable.
With this vulnerability comes trust, and I’d do anything to be worthy of it for her.
She’s just staring at me, as if she’s lost something in my eyes and is trying to find it.
Permission? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Who knows.
I want to be her safe space, and with her finally relaxed in my arms, I crave a deeper understanding of what triggered her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, not wanting to push, but tempted to find out things about her without using Yuri’s network.
She shudders and presses her nose to my neck in a gesture that’s so sweet, it breaks me a little.
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” she whispers against me.
“It’s okay. You can fill in the gaps as they come up,” I whisper back, my lips running along her ear and sending a little shudder through her…and a little shudder through me.
I’m actually holding her like this—a pure fantasy I’d never allowed myself to indulge in.
Her hand shifts to my shirt and travels, gentle, exploring, dipping a fingertip slipping between two buttons. It’s unexpected and sensual, and where I’ve been able to ward off my arousal, I feel myself hardening against the warm curve of her hip where it’s pressed to my groin.
“Gabriella…” I murmur, not sure this is what she wants, or needs.
When the rest of her hand slips in beneath my shirt, her fingertips searching then stalling when she brushes over the two bullet scars on my chest, my grip on her thigh tightens.
I don’t talk about what happened, because I might have been shot and nearly died, but the man who pulled the trigger is dead, and it haunts me.
She shifts a bit, and I suppress a groan as her body rubs against my hardening cock, her fingertips still circling the scars on my chest she mapped out in her mind the first time she saw them.
For all I’m getting aroused, Gabriella seems totally unaware of the effect she has on me, but her lips are right there, plump and pink and ready for the tasting.
“Did this hurt?” she asks softly.
Her question cuts me off midway to her lips.
Did it? The bullets were physical, and should have hurt, but everything that went with it was worse. So much worse. “Probably. I was too focused on what I had to do to survive to take stock of how they felt.”
She bites her bottom lip as her hand stills over my heart. When she glances at me, tears are pooling in her eyes.
“I always wonder how it feels,” she says, “because it all really started when they shot them, point blank, and I saw their bodies fall. That was the moment it hit me that my life was never going to be the same again.”