Chapter 40
MILA
András is on my chest.
He was born during the night. He is hours old. His hand is around my index finger and the grip is small and reflexive, the grip of a body that doesn’t know yet where it is, only that it is here, only that it is held.
He is going to forget this grip. I am never going to stop feeling it.
I am the godmother.
Oksana is asleep in the bed behind me. The cotton blanket across her lap has three sets of initials embroidered at the corner. Oksana’s. The baby’s. Yelena’s. I asked them to add Yelena’s. Nobody asked why.
Oksana named him András, after her grandfather. She didn’t ask. She didn’t have to. The wedding ring is back on the chain at her throat, recovered from Alexei’s effects. She fell asleep with her hand on it.
I hum. Quiet. Tonkaya Ryabina. The slow lullaby on the low register. The version my grandmother sang to my mother, who sang it to my sister, who sang it to me, and I taught it to Sofia.
He does not wake. His breath stays steady. I hum.
Sofia in the doorway. She comes in soft. She has been at Casa Lucia every morning for a week. Her hair is brushed. Her cheeks have color. She crosses to the foot of the bed. Looks at the baby. Opens her mouth.
She hums. Two bars. Pitched. In tune. The second voice of the song.
My throat pulls tight. This is what the song was always for. I didn’t know until now.
We hum to him. We do not speak. Sofia and I in a room with a newborn baby and a sleeping mother and the song extending forward for the first time in our lifetimes.
Nico is in the doorway. He has been there for the duration of the hum. He does not come in. He waits.
When I stand and Sofia takes my place at the bedside, I lay the baby in Sofia’s arms. Sofia does not flinch. I watch her settle the baby against her chest and my throat closes. She is already his. She is already mine.
I kiss the baby’s forehead. I kiss Sofia’s temple. I walk out.
Nico does not speak in the corridor. Neither do I. We walk to the SUV.
He drives us across the city. The route his hands know. I look at the line of his jaw. The watch on his right wrist. The cufflinks. The mark I left at the side of his collarbone weeks ago is still faintly visible. He glances at me once at the gate.
Our suite. My things are in his closet. The violin is propped against the wall by the desk. The two lockets and the wooden cross on the dresser. The painting space door is open across the room. The canvas of Yelena faces out.
He closes the door of our suite behind us. He turns to me. His shoulders have been sitting lower for weeks. Today more than usual.
“You held a baby. I almost lost it watching you.”
The heat of it moves through me before I can stop it. I hold his gaze.
“Did you like what you saw?”
A beat. His eyes are dark and steady and he does not look away.
“You have no idea.” His hand slides to my hip, fingers pressing in, and his mouth drops to my ear. “Milaya.” His voice drops. “Every man in that room saw what I see every day and I wanted to put my fist through the wall.”
My breath catches. My hands find his chest.
“Then stop thinking about that room.”
He pulls back just enough to look at my face. His thumb traces my jaw. Slow. Deliberate.
“I only ever think about you.” He walks me backward toward the bed. “Let me show you.”
He pulls me against him, already hard against my hip, the shape of him unmistakable through the fabric.
The morning shifts and settles, the baby’s weight on my chest and the small grip on my finger and the lullaby still in my throat, all of it folding into this, into him, into the press of his hand at my hip and his mouth coming down to mine.
He kisses me slow. Like we have all afternoon. Like we have every afternoon after this one. He tastes like the coffee from the Casa Lucia kitchen.
I kiss him back.
His hand finds the zipper at the back of my dress.
I lift my arms over my head. The dress comes off.
The chain stays. The two lockets stay. He undresses and pulls me to the bed and the morning falls away with it, the baby’s grip and the lullaby and the smell of Casa Lucia, all of it gone the second his weight is on me and I stop being careful.
He has been holding himself off me all morning and I felt every second of it, in the SUV, in the doorway, in the way he stood with his hand on the frame and watched me with the baby on my chest and I wanted him so badly I had to look at the wall.
He is not holding any of it off now.
He fucks me in the afternoon light with his mouth on the chain at my throat and his hands at the back of my head and the line of his jaw against mine, the chain burning hot between us, his sweat and his breath and the weight of him, and I let him take everything and give it back and neither of us is careful and that is the whole point.
I come twice, the second one wrung out of me while his mouth is at my ear, and when he comes after it his whole body shakes and he says Lyublyu tebya against my mouth, his voice low and wrecked.
I love you.
Late afternoon. We are tangled in the sheets.
The sun has moved across the floor of the bedroom and is at the wall.
He is half-asleep against my shoulder. His right arm is around my ribs.
His left hand is spread flat on my stomach.
The watch is at my hip. The room smells like him, like cotton, like the soap, like the jasmine through the window, like us.
I open my mouth. Quiet.
“Lyublyu tebya, Niccolò.” I love you, Niccolò.
His arm against my ribs tightens and he pulls me harder against his chest.
The lights are out. The sheets have cooled. The window is cracked. The cicadas are at their late pitch. He has been awake. His mouth is at the back of my neck. Low.
“Ty moya.” You’re mine.
I do not turn my head. The chain at my throat is warm against his cheek.
“Ya vybrala tebya.” I chose you.
He pulls me closer. His mouth stays at the back of my neck. The cicadas go on.
THANK YOU
You survived Nico and Mila.
And that means everything.
Leave a review if they wrecked you.
Up Next: Ruthless Grace — Luca and Gia’s story.
Coming Soon.