Chapter 8 Roman
ROMAN
Was it the most romantic proposal?
No.
Was it necessary?
Absolutely.
I bring them in through the underground entrance. Marcus takes point. Tanner carries the stroller. Marcus holds the door. The elevator opens into the service hall. The sconces are low and the heated floors radiate through gray stone. The babies cry when the door closes behind us.
Jennifer keeps Yuri on her shoulder. Mina has Xander, one hand cupped at his neck. She looks at the hall, then at me, and nods once. I feel better having them under my roof. I also feel the weight of what I’ve done.
I am marrying this woman. I am going to be a father to these children. Neither will be an easy task. But this is the only way to keep them safe.
It’s a heavy thing, taking on a young family. I’m fifty-three. She’s twenty-seven. Though, to be fair to her, she seems to have aged a bit since I saw her last. Being a single mom will do that to a person.
I clear my throat and my thoughts. “Rooms are ready. Nursery first, it’s next to yours. Your mother has the room on the other side of you.”
I walk and they follow. Inside the nursery are cribs, monitors, a rocking chair, and a changing table with drawers that shut themselves. All in soothing blues and greens—it looks like a baby spa in here.
Mina stops on the threshold. The twins stop crying for a breath, then restart, confused. She crosses to the nearest crib and sets Xander down. Jennifer kisses the top of Yuri’s head and does the same.
“Diaper pail,” Mina says, scanning. She finds it and lets out the smallest breath.
“There will be more of everything by morning.”
“I don’t need more. I need familiar.” She touches the soft blanket she packed and lays it over the sheet. Xander’s hands open. He stares at the ceiling and makes a sound like a complaint he forgot to finish.
The house is quiet in the way big houses are. Sound is swallowed fast. The boys don’t like it. I add white noise on the monitor. A low, steady rush fills the room. The twins go quiet, listening.
Jennifer looks around, eyes quick. “Bathroom?”
“Two doors down. Everything is stocked. You also have en suite bathrooms.”
She nods, moves with purpose. Mina stands still and listens, memorizing what the room sounds like when her sons breathe here. I step back and give her space.
“Okay,” she says softly. “What’s next?”
I take them through the kitchen on the way back to the main hall so Mina can see where bottles will come from at night without waiting for staff.
The night fridge is stocked. Formula is stacked behind a cabinet door a child can’t open.
She checks the labels and the expiration dates without thinking about it.
Good. She is not dazzled by the marble or the square footage.
We don’t linger. The house is a maze the first day. People get lost in it. I walk them back toward the bedrooms. The twins make new noises—short, uncertain—then settle again.
At the door to her room, Mina stops. “Thank you. For everything.”
“You’re here because it is necessary. You don’t owe me gratitude.”
“That’s not why I said it,” she says. Her eyes are tired and sure. “Good night.”
“Call if you need anything.” I look at the small screen on the wall with the list of rooms and the call buttons. “You too, Jennifer.”
She nods. Jennifer nods too, both of them ready for sleep, it seems.
In my office, the house feels different. Fuller. Marcus checks in on the internal channel. The night team is in place, perimeter is clean. Tanner is on the nursery hall.
I give the order I always give. “No chatter. Eyes open.”
I should feel victorious. I do not. I have my heirs secured under my roof. I have their mother and her mother. I also have two infants who smell like soap and warm cotton, a woman who is trying not to show fear, and a grandmother who has already decided how to fight me if I become another problem.
Fyodor arrives without knocking. He closes the door and keeps his hat on until he sits. I pour him tea to mark that we are going to talk like family and not like boss and advisor for three minutes. “This is unusual,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Unusual is expensive,” he says. “Expensive attracts eyes.”
“They were already looking. Now I choose what they see.”
“They see a man who brought a woman and two small sons into his house and said ‘marriage’ without a season of courtship.”
“They see that a boy who failed to kill me also failed to frighten her.”
“They also see a woman who used to belong to the boy,” he says. He leaves the ugliness of the word belong hanging until I cut it in half by looking at him. “Your enemies will not swallow that down.”
“They can choke, for all I care.”
He doesn’t smile. “You want my counsel.”
“I asked you here.”
He folds his hands. “Wait. You can protect them here without a ring. Name the boys in your heart and in the house, not in court. Prepare the papers. Do not sign them yet. We need time to bring the boy to heel.”
“He tried to kill me, Fyodor. He planted a mine in a public road. He is stalking her. There is no time to bring him to heel.”
“Even dogs come to heel when the leash is tight.”
“He is not a dog. Dogs are loyal. Vitaly is a son who wants to be king without temperance. If he became pakhan, the other bosses would not stand for it. We did everything we could to turn him around. We tried patience. Correction. Bribery. The boy is wired wrong. He has no care for family, for friends, for this organization. Vitaly is out. My sons are in.”
He looks down at the tea he hasn’t touched. When he looks up again, he has the face he wore when he told me my father was dead. Practical. Dry. “Then you must make the marriage work in the eyes of men who will use any excuse not to accept it.”
“I know.”
He watches me for a long breath, then nods like he had to verify that I am not blinded by the same fever that killed men before me. “You like her.”
“I do.”
“That is dangerous. For you. For her. For the boys. Liking is soft. Soft is deadly.”
“I am not a child, Fyodor. I know.”
He leaves. The office is quiet again except for the camera feeds and the low hum of systems that never sleep.
I look at the house plan on the wall. The hallway where the nursery sits is a clean line between my room and the guest rooms. I can reach it in ten seconds. Fewer, if adrenaline is a factor.
I can’t sit still.
At the nursery door, I stop. The white noise is a soft rush. The room smells like laundry. Tanner sits on a chair in the hall. He nods once. I nod back.
The door next to the nursery, Mina’s room, is open a hand’s width. I hear her quiet voice, counting under her breath, then humming without a tune. I knock the way you knock to not startle. “Roman,” I say, so she doesn’t have to ask.
“Come in,” she answers, low.
She stands by the bed in a nightgown that is more practical than anything else—soft cotton, narrow straps, nothing theatrical. Her hair is loose. She holds Yuri against her shoulder and pats his back with two fingers. The room lamp is on the lowest setting.
“How are you?”
“It’s too quiet.” She shifts the baby and he sighs. “They don’t like quiet. The white noise helps.”
“You can make it louder,” I say.
“I did. I also sang the theme song to a show I hate because it’s the only thing that stuck in my head.” She glances at me, amused at herself and tired. “Don’t judge me.”
“I’m not judging you. I am grateful you know how to keep them calm.”
“That’s my job, right?”
“Indeed.”
She takes a breath, as if to speak, but then hesitates. After a beat, she asks, “Do you want to hold him?”
“Yes.” The word is out of me so fast, as if it was waiting on the tip of my tongue. Maybe it was.
She transfers Yuri into my hands, and I support his head, shift him higher, and feel the weight settle into the place I didn’t know was waiting. He is warm and solid and serious even in sleep. He looks like he is considering a problem.
“He makes that face when he’s almost asleep,” she says. “Like he’s bargaining. Xander is easier. Or he was tonight. He’ll punish me tomorrow for daring to say that out loud.”
I try for a smile to comfort her. Not sure if it lands. “He can try. He’ll find I’m stubborn.”
“I believe you.” She watches me with mild amusement. “You look natural with him.”
“I had to learn with Vitaly. His mother was often absent. I did night feeds. Changed diapers. All of it.”
Her eyes meet mine at that sentence. Something in her relaxes a notch.
She reaches up and wipes a spot of milk from Yuri’s cheek with her thumb, efficient and tender.
“I was scared to bring them here. I’m still scared.
But this place feels secure, and right now, I need that more than not feeling scared. ”
“The doors are heavy. And so am I.”
“I noticed,” she says, dry, and I smile before I can stop myself. She looks at the bed and then at the chair. “You don’t sleep?”
“Later,” I say. “When I know everything is safe.”
“Control freak,” she says, not unkind.
“Survivor.”
“Sometimes you have to be a control freak to be a survivor,” she says.
I nod once, feeling the truth in her words.
Yuri sighs again and lets go, drifting deep into sleep. I hand him back. We walk into the nursery, and she sets him in the crib with a hand on his chest for the two seconds that keep him from startling. When she lifts her hand, he stays asleep.
We stand by the door and listen for a count of ten. Silence, except for the machine and the baby rhythm you only hear when you’re listening for it. She closes the door halfway and steps into the hall with me. Tanner looks past us, not at us. Good man.
“Thank you for the room next to theirs,” she says. “And for my mother’s room and…everything.”
“No thanks necessary.”
She looks past me at the dark end of the hall. “This house is too big.”
“It is.”
“I’m going to get lost,” she says.
“You’ll learn it faster than most. You see how things connect.”
“Compliment?” she asks.
“Yes.” I don’t add that I like how easily she moves between fear and humor. I don’t add that watching her hold a child is the most dangerous thing I’ve done in a decade.
“Good night,” she says, and her voice is softer but not weak.
“Good night.”
I walk back toward my room. I do not look over my shoulder. I don’t need to. I feel her step into her doorway and stand for one more breath before she goes to bed.
When I walk into my room, I close the door quietly and lean against it for a breath. Foolish of me to be moved by the sight of the mother of my children. Reckless, even. Fyodor would say I’m being irresponsible. My father would cuff the back of my head, at best.
I blink, and the image of her nightgown is seared in my brain.
This cannot be good.