Chapter 25
GABBY
Bogdan had driven me home without a word, eyes fixed on the road the whole time. By the time we reached the lobby, I’d felt more like a package being delivered than an actual person.
The penthouse greets me with thick silence.
Soft light glows across glass and steel.
Everything in this place looks curated in the exact way to prove how in control Sasha is.
I look around. Doesn’t seem like there’s anyone here.
Sasha’s probably still at the office. Even with him gone, it’s almost like he never really leaves this place. The air is thick with him.
I head to the wet bar, grabbing a little bottle of tonic water from the fridge and cracking it open. After a quick sip, I plop onto the couch and turn on the fire with the remote control. If I’m going to be stuck anywhere, I suppose this place isn’t the worst.
I don’t know whether I’m more pissed off or scared. I take another sip of my drink and set it down on the coffee table, wrapping my arms around myself.
The elevator chimes. The doors open and Sasha steps through without a word, silently slipping out of his dark wool coat and hanging it up. No smile, no hello. Just calm and in control. Always in control.
With long strides, he makes his way to the fireplace, standing across from me. He slips one hand into his pants pocket; his thumb hooked over the side.
“Where did you try to go today?” There’s no anger in his tone, but the temperature of the room drops by five degrees all the same.
“What difference does it make? I apparently can’t go anywhere.”
“Because I want to know what you’re doing and why.”
His words rub me the wrong way. “You know, most people might greet the mother of their children with a ‘hi,’ or a ‘how are you doing?’”
He purses his lips. “Hello. Good evening. Now, where did you try to go today?”
His tone brings immediate defiance. “None of your business.”
“It’s absolutely my business.”
I’m practically ready to punch the guy. “So are you asking if I tried to go get lunch with a friend, like a normal human being might want to do?”
His expression is still, calm. I can tell he’s not amused by my attitude. I don’t really care.
He moves closer. “I told Bogdan you weren’t to leave. And he passed along this message to you. Yet you tried to disobey. Why?”
I let out a short and bitter laugh. “Because, in case you forgot, I’m not a member of your Bratva. You don’t get to just tell me what to do.”
Sasha doesn’t even blink. “You’re pregnant, Gabriella. You don’t understand how exposed you are.”
Something about the word exposed hits me in exactly the wrong way. “Oh, don’t make me out to be some fragile vessel or something. I’m pregnant, not made of glass.”
“I’m not treating you like you’re made of glass. I’m protecting you. And our children.”
“By trapping me in one shiny tower and then another, giving me a personal babysitter?”
The worst part is I can feel how irrational I’m being. He has a duty to protect me. And it’s true that I’m basically a big, waddling target for whoever’s trying to kill me. But I hate being trapped. I hate being stashed away. I hate losing my freedom.
I need to bang on the bars of my cage, if only a little.
“You may not like how I protect you, but I’m doing it the only way I know how.
You must think I’m a damn fool if you think I’m going to let the mother of my children wander around the city, when there are people out there who want to hurt you.
There have already been two attempts on your life, for fuck’s sake. ”
“No shit. I’m the one who was nearly run over and shot at, remember?”
“Of course, I remember, that’s why I’m doing this!” he shouts.
He takes a breath, looks away. Then he strides over to the bar and prepares a drink. I know him well enough by this point to understand that this is his way of buying himself a minute or two to regain control over his emotions.
He turns. “You need to understand. Peter has people out there, men watching.”
“They can’t possibly be watching 24/7.”
“Don’t be so sure. Besides, a little paranoia will keep you and our children alive.”
“At what cost?” My voice trembles, but I keep going. “You can’t control everything, Sasha. You think protection is love, but it’s just control dressed up.”
He exhales through his nose, slowly and dangerously. “If you step outside without my say-so, they’ll find you. This isn’t some low-rent gang of shitheads—these are dangerous killers. I won’t let them touch you. I will burn this city before I let that happen.”
The words hit me like a slap. There’s no doubt in my mind that he means them. I can see it in his eyes—the cold fire of a man who’s killed before and who would do it again without even flinching.
Maybe he thinks he’s being romantic, but in that moment, all I feel is fear.
“Do you even hear yourself? You’re talking about burning cities while I’m just trying to get through the day without breaking down.”
“But you’re not just you anymore. You’re responsible for the lives of those two children growing inside of you.”
“That doesn’t mean that I stop existing! It doesn’t mean I’m just some walking incubator--”
I don’t get a chance to finish. Sasha pulls his arm back, launching his glass across the apartment. I watch as it sails across the vast expanse of the living room, the scotch trailing behind it in a faint arc. It hits the wall and shatters.
Before I have a chance to react, he turns to me and moves closer. My heart is racing. Something in his eyes terrifies me. Rage or fear or protectiveness—I can’t tell.
“I’m going to protect you,” he says. “Even if I have to protect you from yourself.”
The words hang between us like thick, acrid smoke.
“Sasha, you’re scaring me.”
He looks down. I follow his eyes down to my hands. They’re shaking. The second he notices them, his expression softens. Every part of him loosens like a string had just been cut. He steps back. His eyes flash with something like regret.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“Yeah,” I say. A tear trickles down my cheek, and I quickly wipe it away. “You never mean to.”
He tries to speak, hands half raised, palms open like he’s approaching a wounded doe. “Gabriella.” The hard, authoritarian edge to his voice is gone.
Another tear flows. Then another. They’re humiliating. In those moments, I hate him, but I also know what his anger is rooted in, why he feels it so strongly.
He tries for a step closer. I shake my head hard, backing away. “You don’t get it.” My voice breaks, then steadies. “You scare me because you don’t know where the line is.”
He opens his mouth for a moment, ready to fire back, but he closes it. He forms his mouth into a tight line, swallows.
“I need air.” I take a step.
Maybe by instinct, Sasha’s hand shoots out and grabs me by the wrist. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to hold me in place. It’s the exact last thing I want.
“Not tonight,” he says.
“Let me go.”
For a moment, I think he might not. He stays still, that strange, half-angry, half-pleading look in his eyes. Then he releases me. I shoulder past him, brushing his arm on purpose. It’s a small act of defiance, but one that still feels like a little victory, silly as it may be.
“Gabby.” His voice is soft, almost weak, as if he knows he screwed up majorly.
I should keep walking. But I can’t help it. I turn.
“I’m not trying to control you,” he says.
“Sure as hell could’ve fooled me.”
“I can’t lose you. Not you, not the babies. You don’t understand what that would—”
I cut him off. “Then maybe you should’ve thought about that before building a life where everything you care about has to be locked behind glass. If you think this is the kind of life I’m going to bring two children into, you’re wrong.”
The silence is thick, final. I can feel my words hit him the way truth often does—quiet and lethal.
I’m done. I march down the hall to the bedroom door, throwing it open and slamming it hard behind me.
He doesn’t come after me. He knows better than to pull something like that, at least. The bed is mercifully soft as I fall onto it face-first. In no time at all, I’m sobbing into my pillow. I feel so stupid, so helpless.
It’s not long before I’ve cried myself out. Tired and achy, I roll off the bed and step into the bathroom, washing my face and pulling my hair back. Inside my chest, everything aches. Keeping it together for the babies is my top priority.
When I’m done, I go return to the bed and sit down.
The image of him hurling that glass across the room appears in my mind.
It was a glimpse of the kind of man he really is, deep down.
I don’t think he’d hurt me. Not intentionally, at least. But Sasha is a man capable of horrible violence.
What has he done with those hands? How many lives has he taken with them?
I place my palm on my stomach. These babies are half him, for better or worse.
And I hate how much the thought of that scares and thrills me in equal measure.