Chapter Thirty-One
Maksim.
I feel Sabrina’s green stare on me, but I stare at the frayed strings on the rug beneath my feet.
I stopped talking as soon as I felt her presence.
I once told her I feel her absence like a phantom limb, and that is true.
What I didn’t tell her is that I can feel her presence like the crackle of electricity in the air before a storm—looming and wondrous.
My wife is more than just a ray of sunshine warming your skin after a cold winter.
My wife is a sip of my favorite brand of whiskey after a long day, she’s the rain after endless days of too much sun, and the quiet during a raging snowstorm in the penthouse.
She is all of my favorite things wrapped into one.
Which is why I’m sitting in front of Damon.
He gets up from where he’s sitting and to my right, quietly shuts the door on my wife, then sits down again, placing his ankle on his knee and waits for me to speak.
He’s been waiting for me to speak since the other doctor told me I was fine.
Dehydrated and malnourished, but that’s as can be expected.
But I haven’t said a word. What is there to say, exactly?
“You understand I don’t expect you to speak?”
My gaze shifts from my shoes to his silver irises. “You don’t?”
He shakes his head. “No, Maksim, I do not. You’ve been through something horrible, so what I do expect for you to do is process your thoughts and emotions at your own pace.
Believe it or not, there is not a time limit on how you deal with your traumas even if you want to get past them as quickly as possible.
But I am here to tell you that day by day is best. Everyone heals differently, and everyone moves past things at different paces.
Your wife, for example, took years to be able to fully deal with what Kane did to her, and it sometimes may still be something she deals with in the aftermath of it all.
With that being said, I am more than happy to simply sit here with you in complete silence.
I have years worth of experience doing just that. ”
I snort at his joke and shake my head, knowing Raven was his patient before she was his wife. “I feel everything right now. Gratitude, anger, sadness… weak.”
Damon hikes a dark brow in question. “Weak?”
“They took me,” I growl.
“They did.” He answers a little too quickly with a singular copacetic dip of his chin.
“I’m a big motherfucker, and they got me.”
He looks to the side, then back to me, but stays awfully quiet.
“What?”
“They were men with guns. They tracked you down, chased you and not only attacked you but also Elio. You were the target, Maksim. While I accept this as fact, the other truth is that moment did not only happen to you.”
It’s my turn to blink while I wait for him to continue.
“Were you aware Parker was shot while defending your home from intruders and your wife tried to save him? Actually, she did save him. She was prompt in delivering immediate first aid. He died in her arms before Aleksi and Niko were able to resuscitate him.” I open my mouth to speak, but Damon holds up a hand.
“I am not saying it’s a competition of Worse versus Worse.
Speaking as someone who recently had the love of their life taken away, tied up and drugged, and then found her trying to stab her kidnapper with a needle, let’s just say I am speaking to you as a friend and not a therapist, yes? ”
I nod.
“You were each affected in such a way that all of you will and will not understand how the other feels. You do not know what it is like for your spouse to be taken from you. Parker does not know what it’s like to be chained up and drugged, and hopefully, you’ve never been shot and killed and brought back to life,” he says calmly.
“What I am saying, Makism, is that this is something all three of you will be navigating. I assure you, you are not alone in how you are feeling, even though at times you will be… and that’s okay. ”
“Day by day is best,” I murmur his earlier words.
“Day by day is best,” he parrots with a nod.
“If all you do tomorrow is eat a full meal without vomiting, that’s okay, too.
Nobody is expecting you to shout out orders at this very moment.
As it seems, your wife has taken care of a lot of things while you were otherwise…
incapacitated. She and Parker wanted to make sure you would not need to.
For now, rest assured Sabrina has been the perfect mafia wife, and my wife has been her partner in… a few of her crimes.”
I huff out a laugh. “They didn’t tell me you were funny.”
“I’ve been told I have my moments.” Damon grins, then relaxes fully in his seat, letting his back rest completely.
I follow, letting my spine flush to the antique sofa, taking in my surroundings for a few beats, then close my eyes. Soon, my fingers that have been clenched into fists relax on my knees. We sit there in silence for another twenty minutes or so, and I just… breathe.
After taking a shower downstairs and changing, I walk into the bedroom Raven pointed me to.
I find my wife on the bed, ankles crossed, arms wrapped around her legs, knees up to her chest, and her cheek resting on them, facing the wall.
She’s wearing what looks like extremely comfortable pajama bottoms and thick socks but is shirtless.
Parker sits behind her, also shirtless. There’s gauze and cotton balls all over the side of the bed along with that pink stuff.
He locks eyes with me, and though he looks relieved to see me, he frowns at Sabrina’s back.
Sabrina turns her head, jade eyes finding mine, and she smiles weakly at me. “Hello, husband.” She stretches her arm out, reaching for me.
I kneel on the bed, then lie on my stomach beside her, holding her small hand. “Is it bad?” I ask Parker.
He hums but only nods in my direction where Sabrina can’t see him so he can lie.
“No, we’ve seen worse. I had the doctor come take a look at her before he left, and he prescribed a corticosteroid.
But for tonight, it’s good ol’ calamine lotion.
I figure I used it on my siblings when they got chickenpox, and it helped just fine.
Tildy said she’d pick it up as soon as the…
chemist… is open. I’ll have Sabrina shower this off, then I’ll slather her in the steroid cream.
” He dabs a few more times then gently blows where he just placed more.
He grabs the first aid items and puts them on the nightstand and then grabs what he used, gets up, and throws them away, stopping by the dresser to pull out a shirt for Sabrina that matches her bottoms.
She lets go of my hand momentarily to put it on, then reaches for my hand again.
This time, Parker makes her move to the middle of the bed and lowers the comforter so we can climb into bed, with her between us.
He turns off the lamp on the nightstand, but the soft glow of the fire burning in the fireplace lights up the room just enough.
I turn to my side and grip her hand, finding her eyes glittering even in the dim light of the fire.
Parker moves his pillows and sits up, turning his torso, and puts a hand on Sabrina’s hip, not saying anything, just letting the silence linger as we listen to the wind howl and the soft crackling of the wood burning only a few feet away.
After being kept in a room where the lights were always on…
I have never felt so grateful to be able to sleep in the dark.
“I want you both to know, I would run into a war zone for you. Time and time again I would search every corner of the earth to find you. In this life. In the next. You belong to me,” my wife says with absolute finality.
“Nobody else is allowed to have you even in my death.” She leans toward me and delivers a kiss so soft it makes my entire body shudder with relief. She turns and Parker bends to kiss her.
I take in a breath so fucking deep I feel my lungs stretch against my ribcage. l then let it go. One hand clutches the comforter, the other clutches my wife's hand. I fall asleep like that. With the wind howling, the soft crackling firewood, my wife at my side, and her other man beside her.
I fall asleep… But I don't stay asleep. Snippets of memories and echoes of hushed screams replay in my mind like a broken record.
Unwanted touches and hands groping me make me feel fucking sick to my stomach.
The last image that swirls about in the fucked-up reels in my head is Alice's face. Brown eyes wide-open, pupils blown and staring into the afterlife, Sabrina making the executive decision and pulls the glass out of her chest. The final memory is of my wife, sitting stoically in the back of the van beside me in utter silence, not letting go of Alice’s hand until Raven opens the back door to the van, the blaring white abyss behind her, fat snowflakes flurrying down, the wind blowing her silver and chocolate locks across her face, brown eyes wide open, looking past me at Sabrina with worry etched on her face.
When I wake up, I stay in bed staring at the ceiling feeling worse than I did before falling asleep.
There's an exhaustion I've never felt before creeping onto my back and settling there like a fucking parasite, burrowing. I can’t fucking stand it.
I get out of bed quietly, find some of Parker's clothes to change into, and head downstairs.
It's eerily silent except for the few voices I hear floating to me from the kitchen.
Niko, Aleksi, Bianchi and Rossi sit around the kitchen island, bottles of whiskey and tumblers between them.
Pale blue eyes find me first and Niko dips his chin.
“Fellas,” I tug out a barstool from under the island and sit by my consigliere. “What are we celebrating?”
Aleksi beams, fishing out his phone from his pajama bottoms. “Sasha’s wife had their babies.
” He types something on his screen, then hands it to me.
“Boy and a girl, Tosha and Vera, a little early but healthy.” I glance down to see a picture of Sasha and his wife, Millicent, or Millie, holding their children.
Tiny little potatoes bundled in blankets, but the joy on Sasha’s face is irrefutable.
I grin down at the picture and up at my wary associates celebrating the first good news they’ve probably had in a while. I pour myself a shot of whiskey and hold it up. “The first of many to come, let’s hope.”
Bianchi and Rossi raise their tumblers to me with a round of “Salud” just as Aleksi and Niko say, “Vashe zdorov'ye.”
We all drink, then Rossi flicks his gaze over at me. “What’s next?”
“Go home. But first, catch me up on everything I missed.”
Niko shakes his head but stands, taking another small sip of his whiskey.
“This conversation might be better in the other room. Gentlemen,” he drains his tumbler and jerks his chin to the doorway behind me, setting the glass down on the island.
A chill rushes down my spine, and there’s a slight tremble in my hands.
We walk into a room I know very well. Parker and I had Sabrina in every position possible on every flat surface…
including the rug I’m currently standing on.
“That’s the thing, Boss, the Duchess took care of everything.
Before, during our flight, and when we landed.
What I can catch you up on is everything that went down before we left to make that happen. ”
This is how I learned that not only does my wife now own the luxurious manor we’re using as headquarters and that she threatened my father-in-law, but Charlie was indeed murdered by Kane.
“This entire operation was her idea, Maks. Sabrina didn’t break down even once. She did a lot better than any of the other wives would have. Kane declared war, and she gave it to him. She just had to go incognito, first.”
But she had. When she was in bed with me and I thrust into her with vigorous abandon, entranced by her sounds, needing to swallow them all.
I tasted the salt of her tears and the violence on her tongue like fiery honey.
I smelled the iron crimson on her torso and forearms, felt it sticky between us.
The Duchess did break down… but only in the safety of my presence.
“You married a good woman, Maks. A real good one.”
“She ran into a battlefield, pink, glittery gun drawn, jumping over corpses in what felt like subzero temps.” I chuckle, the memory bringing back a small smile.
“A pink, glittering gun?”
I lift my shoulders and let them drop. “She likes to DIY.”
Niko’s smile is huge. “I ever tell you I love your wife?”
“I ever tell you you’re gonna end up in the Hudson?”
He barks out a laugh. “It ain’t a good day unless you do.”
“I’m going back up to my wife,” I reply with a roll of my eyes.
“Oh, and Maks?” He calls after me once I've started leaving so I pause and wait for him to continue talking. “You’re allowed to lean on her, you know? Him, too.”
I don’t respond, just simply go back to the bedroom, put more wood on the fire, and climb into bed with her. She blinks those gorgeous green eyes at me; brows knitted together in concern. “Are you alright?
I nod. “Millie had the twins. Sasha’s glowing.”
She gazes up at me, a soft smile on her face and moves around so she can put her head on my chest. I let my fingers get tangled in her silky hair, doing my best not to touch her back.
“One day that will be us. Exhausted from late night feeding and changing diapers. You’ll glow, too, Maksi.
Fatherhood will look incredible on you.”
My heart sputters with want and hope. “Soon?”
She pushes up to kiss me, lips firm and plush but pulls away too quickly. “Soon, love. For now, let’s catch up on sleep? Tildy will be here way too early, and I’d like to soak these next few moments with you before she’s in my hair.”
I kiss her once more and rest my head on the pillow. I fall asleep thinking of my wife holding our first child, raising them in the mansion… I want her future—the one she envisioned for herself—and make it ours.