Chapter 55
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
Maxim
“I have to say Maxim, you’ve certainly held up your end of the deal.”
I glanced away from the barges at the pier. Guns and various other weapons—both illegal and not—filled them. It wasn’t every day I oversaw a shipment, but I did today.
I was restless.
It was Lettie’s idea for me to go out, and though she wasn’t wrong, I didn’t think now was the time. It was a very bad time, but I was urged by my daughter to get some fresh air. I think I was driving everyone in my life crazy these days.
Ronan O’Flaherty stood at my side. The Bratva had been working very closely with both the Irish and Italian mobs. As Ronan said, I held up my end of the deal. He also told me to take a shot once and not miss.
She hadn’t.
Sia had made a sacrifice the night of my father’s death. She’d gone to him to buy time. She’d been waiting for me even though I was responsible for taking her family away. The Chicago Bratva and I had ruined the Novikovs, and it was only at the urge of my daughter that I attended Natan’s funeral. She told me I needed to be a better man than him, but I think the only reason I actually went was because of Sia. She’d put my fake manipulative father figure in his grave…
And I needed to see him lowered into the ground.
Natan had been arrogant that night, foolish. He thought he’d killed the last daughter of Nikolai Novikov, and when he went to check the body, my girl delivered the ultimate maneuver that ended his life. She’d done it with a shard of wood.
She was so brave.
So much had come out after that. How the man who’d raised me had groomed me. How I became his lethal killing machine to enact his revenge. Natan’s private journals revealed his hate for the Novikovs. Sia’s great grandfather had a hand in the loss of Natan’s own family.
And he never forgot.
Natan’s manipulation began then. He rose up the ranks of the Brotherhood, and ultimately, made the Novikovs his puppets. The Novikovs may have been in charge, but Natan was working the puppet strings. That was until Nikolai Novikov saw right through him. He didn’t allow himself to be manipulated and so Natan arranged to take him out. An opportunity rose with the death of Nikolai’s first wife. Natan took advantage of the fact that the man was grieving and had Nikolai kill his own doctor.
My dad.
Natan had always admired my father for his skills in torture and death, and Natan also knew the man had a son. He knew he had someone he could groom and developed my skills to help overthrow the organization. He did, and I played right into it. I actually called that man my father.
I was haunted at the funeral, and I made myself steel during the discussions today. I was happy Natan’s death brought the Russian, Italian, and Irish mobs closer together. The streets had never been quieter. There was order, yes, but there was also respect. I had righted a wrong and exposed the world to Natan’s treachery. I also held up my end of the deal and showed the world that the Novikov bloodline still existed.
I just hated that the woman I loved had to get shot to do it.
“Should you even be here?” Ronan asked me, smirking. We had a respect for each other. I wouldn’t go as far as saying we were friends, but we had bonded over a beer or two in the past. He grinned. “Don’t you have a baby to deliver?”
There was no other place I wanted to be, but again, I was driving more than one person crazy in my home. I think the final straw had been when I threatened to have all the staff in my home fired because I noticed a chill hit my wife’s shoulders.
Lettie: It’s about time. You can come back now. *smile emoji*
My breath left as I checked my text. My phone had pinged, and Ronan’s grin widened over my shoulder. He must have seen my text message.
He patted my shoulder. “Congratulations.”
I couldn’t speak.
It was time.
Sia: Where are you? She’s coming fast.
She…
My world was continuing to fill with girls, but I’d want it no other way.
I was smiling the whole drive back home. A home birth was my wife’s choice. Sia and I had been married almost a year, and it didn’t take her long to get pregnant. We fucked like rabbits on the regular so that made sense.
“ Malyshka …” I said, my mouth dry.
She took my breath away.
Sia’s brow was glistening, her brown curls piled up on her head. The room was hot and thick with a woman’s labor, but my wife never appeared more beautiful.
Upon spotting me, Sia reached out for me. Her eyes narrowed. “It’s about time. I’ve been trying to keep her in.”
I laughed, which proved to help with my nerves. I hadn’t been around for Lettie’s birth. Her mother had stolen that from me.
My hand slid into my wife’s, a diamond ring and matching wedding band on her finger. We ultimately ended up going to Vegas to get married. Much to my daughter’s chagrin.
Lettie was here too, of course. It was her summer break. She was on the other side of Sia’s bed, but she got up once she saw me. Lettie grinned. “I’m going to tell Andre it’s almost time.”
He lived here too, my home a full one during the summer.
I spoke with both my wife and her brother about what they wanted to do now that they were reunited. They agreed that Andre would continue his education overseas. His entire life was there, but he did come home whenever he had breaks. He and Sia reconnected during that time, and she and I visited him too. In fact, the two of us spent half the year across the pond so my wife and her brother could have more time together, and that one hundred percent was able to happen thanks to Val. My head of security watched over things stateside while Sia and I were away. Natan had no family outside of myself, and it’d been left up to me to lead the organization. It was a position I never wanted. I also had no right to have it, but Sia and Andre were young and didn’t know this world. I would do what I needed to do until either one of them decided they wanted to have any part of it.
But in this moment, I wasn’t the pakhan . I wasn’t anything but a man who wanted to help deliver his child into the world.
“A girl,” the doctor said, the woman aged with warm eyes. We shopped around a lot for the perfect doctor, one we could trust. She lifted our daughter. “Ten fingers and ten toes. She’s perfect, mom and dad.”
She was, and I watched, awed, as the doctor handed our daughter off to her mother. Sia squeezed her, tears in her eyes, and the crying, kicking infant was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I’d already felt real love before. I felt it when I first realized I had a daughter, and again, when I found Sia.
But somehow my heart stretched yet again. It did for this beautiful baby girl with ten fingers and toes.
I pressed my mouth to Sia’s cheek. “You did it, malyshka .”
Sia didn’t cry a lot, but she cried rivers now. She’d been through a lot this past year. She’d been bed-bound for weeks after everything with Natan, and I thought I almost lost her that night. I’d come close. So close…
It was hard to remember that time now with so much joy in the room. Sia smiled, and both Andre and Lettie were grinning like fools on the other side of the bed. Sia’s brother managed to make it into the room in time, but my awareness of him had been lost upon watching my daughter come into the world.
“Wow, sis. Wow,” he said, his eyes shining. He shook his head. “She’s amazing.”
She was. She really was.
“She’s so beautiful,” Lettie said, cooing at her little sister. She faced Sia and me. “What are you naming her?”
Sia and I hadn’t really discussed too many names, but one had come up.
“Valerie,” Sia stated, rocking our child and smiling up at me. She handed off our baby to the nurse to clean up, and my heart went over there too. It did until our Valerie was returned to us.
And I finally got to hold her.
We hadn’t told Val we were naming our child after her, but it felt natural that we were. Our daughter was going to be a strong warrior.
We’d nearly lost Val the same night as my father’s death. Luckily, currently, Val was rushing to the house to meet our daughter. I texted her it was almost time on my way over. My head of security was working like a fiend in the organization so I could have time with my family.
She was working like a friend.
I didn’t know how I’d been gifted with such abundance in my life. I had copious amounts of friendship and love, and that would truly have been my father’s American Dream. I did it for him. I lived for him.
“Thank you, Dad,” I whispered at the ceiling as I rocked my baby girl. I kissed my baby’s mother after that.
“I love you,” she said, and I whispered the same. We both shared tragedy. We both shared loss, but we also both had been able to overcome it. We became each other’s family in the throes of adversity.
Together we won.