Chapter 13 Ivan
IVAN
Isensed the second she regretted it. I felt her tense up too quickly after going so lax from her orgasm. I heard the hitch in her breath, as if she was snapping back into reality and acknowledging that in the heat of the moment, she’d caved for me.
Her anger was still there. It surrounded us, coated with a layer of my rage too.
Tension wouldn’t be fading anytime soon between us.
Yet, I felt a small degree of comfort in the fact that we’d fallen prey to desire together.
Mutually. Fucking her so soon after seeing her wasn’t wise.
I wanted answers, not a quickie. This wasn’t the way to go about discussing the fact that she had my son and never told me.
Having sex just happened, but now that the sexual tension had been dealt with, we were right back to square one.
“Get off me.” She pushed at me, but I didn’t give her much space.
I stayed right where I was, hovering over her, pinning her to the bed.
I didn’t let go of her wrists, keeping them flat above her head.
Although I shifted and slipped my cock out of her, smearing her thighs with our cum, I didn’t make any move to give her the room to get up.
Pushing my hips against hers kept her beneath me.
Captive and with nowhere to go. With nothing to do but answer me.
“You are staying right here and talking.”
She rolled her eyes, then narrowed them. “Oh, I have to explain myself whereas you don’t?”
I opened my mouth but she shook her head and glared at me. “Never mind. No explanation is necessary. You cheated. End of story.”
“That’s not true. And I will explain, but not until you tell me everything.”
“Everything?” She narrowed her eyes. “Including how I had to handle the aftermath of you just walking away and—”
“Talk.” I pushed her wrists down to jar her back into submission. “I will explain. But I’m not the one who’s been hiding a child for seven years. You’ve got more to answer for than I do. So talk.”
She licked the seam of her lips, a tell for her hesitation. But she wasn’t planning to hold out and not say anything. After a deep breath, pushing her breasts up and making me stupidly distracted and wishing that she were naked and not still mostly clothed, she stared right back at me.
“The day before you didn’t show up at my apartment, I realized I was pregnant.
It surprised me because I was still weaning off the birth control I had been on.
But I was pregnant. I planned to tell you that day.
But you never showed. So I called. I stopped by your place.
I left voicemails. You called me back once, but it must have been an accidental call because it was just the background noise of you with Serena.
I saw the tabloids and news. I saw the pictures of you with her. ”
Her throat flexed with a swallow as she stared at me. Blinking a few times was all the pause she seemed to need. “So, I knew it was over. I read the stories about all your dates, all that happened when you were supposed to have been with me that summer—”
“For fuck’s sake, I was with you all that summer. I barely left your side.”
“I thought you wanted me to talk.”
I pressed my lips together and bottled in a groan.
“I knew I was on my own. My father was due to visit me since I was overstaying for the break between semesters, and it goes without saying that he was mad to have discovered I was with you at all.”
I recalled those days. The worry that Konstantin or Luka would order us apart.
“He wasn’t happy with me, and I knew that if he realized I was pregnant, he would be madder.
So, I ran. I was planning to run with you, stupidly assuming you loved me and that you’d want to be a father to our child.
I trusted you. I thought you’d love me enough to want to run from your family as well, but that was where I made my first mistake. ”
“First mistake?” I replied wryly.
“Yeah, my second one was letting you kiss me in this room.”
I narrowed my eyes, daring her to really tell me that she hadn’t wanted it.
“I ran and hid. Then I had Lev and I’ve spent every day since his birth living under cover, using aliases, moving often, and trying my hardest to stay off the radar of anyone from any family.”
I shook my head. “Then why did I find medical records that said you’d lost a pregnancy?”
She went stiff, staring at me and lying so still that she resembled a ticking bomb ready to explode.
“You knew I was pregnant? And still left?” She shook her head.
“No. No. Fuck this. What? I didn’t tell you.
You left me before I could tell you, and I didn’t have any appointments before I packed a few things and ran. ”
“I—”
Well, fuck.
With her watching me so closely, I regretted letting it slip that I’d looked her up. Now she was using this partial fact against me, implying that I’d been aware that I’d knocked her up and still walked away.
“No.”
“Answer me, Ivan. What the hell are you saying? How do you know about those records? Or that I was pregnant at all?” She squirmed to get up, but I didn’t let her move.
“I wondered if you could be pregnant when I left. I wondered it only because your birth control was supposed to be due and we never held back from making love.”
“Fucking,” she clarified. “Because you clearly never loved me if you were with that woman all along.”
“I wasn’t. But that’s another story.” I sighed, hating to admit my vulnerability in missing her. “It was on my mind, though, that you might have been pregnant. So I hired someone to track you down. I had to know you were all right.”
She huffed a sarcastic laugh.
“And I found records that said you’d miscarried.”
“I had those made up in case my father ever looked for me. I didn’t want him to have any reason to follow me and know about Lev.
It was no different than how I had to be paying for new names and new identities, and for Lev, too.
I faked that miscarriage in those records and left them accessible in case anyone looked for me, just to throw everyone off.
Then I kept looking for places to stay hidden.
Once I cut all ties with my father, with you, with every member of any Mafia organization, I intended to avoid all the violence of that world. ”
A flurry of images flooded my mind. I envisioned it all.
Raisa being alone. Pregnant and moving. Looking over her shoulder.
I tried to stem the anger and frustration at her going through childbirth with no support.
No one to help her. She’d stubbornly run and done it all on her own, and it was impossible not to feel like she’d thwarted me from an experience I’d dreamed of having. Of being a father.
“I had to run and keep him from this world,” she repeated.
I shook my head, screwing up my face in a scowl. No. That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. This boy, Lev, he was my son. He belonged in my world, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t right of her to ever deny him or me that connection.
Reeling from all that she’d said, I retreated. Leaning up, I pulled my pants back on and tried not to lose my temper at all she’d explained.
As she sat up, then adjusted her clothes to cover herself, I refused to let the guilt take over me.
I should’ve been there for her. For him. But I wasn’t.
All because she decided to handle this on her own, to avoid me and the world we both came from, I wasn’t there.
Anger swiftly masked the guilt and sorrow.
She had no right. No right to hide this from me at all.
Even though I was just as much at fault for a shitty end to our time together, lying that I was cheating on her, it didn’t excuse her for hiding my son from me.
Years had been lost. So much time that I would never reclaim.
“I—”
I stood, holding my hand up to silence her. I couldn’t even face her right now, too mad and upset. We’d just come together as close as two people could, but I refused to succumb to looking into her eyes and going weak.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t face her. Hell, after all she’d said, I couldn’t even make sense of why the fuck she was here now, if she wanted to keep our son out of the Mafia’s reach.
“Ivan.”
I stepped back from her, only lifting my face to glare at her. “No.” I shook my head, backing up more. Distance was all we’d had for years. It was the punishment of missing her that I’d loathed so much. Now that she was here, right in front of me, I needed a buffer again. “I need to…”
Hell, I didn’t even know what to say, my mind was such a mess.
“I need a moment.” I’d need a lot more than that to figure out the next step.
Luka expected me to get answers from her, and I knew more were lurking, held back in her.
She had to explain why she was showing up here tonight, but I couldn’t face her.
After all she’d told me, I needed a moment to let all of this sink in.
Preferably while I was sitting down. The realization that I had a child to care for was a sobering one.
“I need to—” I shook my head, backpedaling for the door.
I didn’t have to explain myself to her. She’d come here.
She sought me and my family out after detailing all the ways she’d avoided anyone from the Mafia for all of our son’s life.
If I needed a moment to take these hits sitting down, then I would.
I turned without another word and left her in the room.