Chapter 21
ARTYOM
Getting shot might have been the best choice I’ve ever made.
I’m discharged from the hospital the day after they remove the bullet from my shoulder. But now I need wound care, and dressings, which gives me the perfect excuse to bring Nina home with me.
As soon as we walk through the door, we’re greeted by Babushka eyeing the three of us with a wide grin. She’s overjoyed to have Ava back in the house again.
“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?” Nina asks me with an arched eyebrow. “Get shot just so you could take me back to yours.”
“What kind of madman do you think I am, Nenoka?”
“A very obsessed one,” she says. The light in her brown eyes dims a little. “For reasons I don’t fully understand.”
The afternoon goes better than I could have planned it.
Ava gets the grand tour of the entire estate, running down the long hallways with alarming speed. She’s particularly impressed by the archery course and the rose garden.
I show her and Nina how to hit a croquet ball through the hoops, demonstrating one-handed to avoid straining my shoulder.
With one arm and painkillers that make my head feel like it’s stuffed with cotton wool, I’m playing at a four-year-old’s level.
Ava tries to drag me down to help her, sending a spike of pain through my arm, and Nina catches my wince. “Honey, Art can’t do that. He’s injured.”
“Sorry, Art,” Ava says, her eyes wide. My shoulder aches, but I refuse to miss a second of this.
Nina’s glowing, her face the happiest I’ve seen her in years, as she watches me teach Ava croquet. Her love for her daughter is palpable, but I swear I see her swipe away a tear.
Then we decide to let Ava loose on the course and I have to hold back from laughing.
Ava is determined to hit the ball, but can’t quite line it up. Her face scrunches in concentration as she aims for the hoop. Eventually she gives up and drags the mallet around, sometimes smacking it at the grass and bringing up a clod of mud.
“Innovative use of a croquet mallet,” I comment.
“I can tell her not to destroy your lawn, if you like.”
I shake my head.
“Excellent croquet skills, Ava,” I call out and she grins, tearing back over to us with the blue croquet mallet in hand.
“The ball wouldn’t go where I wanted it but ‘s okay now.” She points over to where she has made a hole in the lawn, the ball sitting on top of it proudly.
“That’s a point,” I declare. “You won, Ava.”
“I know,” she says confidently, taking Nina’s hand and storming back to the house.
That night, when Vanya’s cooks serve us a banquet just to impress a child that she mistakenly believes is mine, the doubts come rushing back.
When we’re alone again, after putting Ava to bed in the room next to ours, I have to ask.
I can’t stand it any longer.
“Who is he, Nina? I have to know.”
She continues dressing for bed, yawning. “Who?”
“Ava’s father.”
Nina whirls around, her face brimming with ire. She’s stunning in the lemon silk nightdress she’s wearing with her hair loose around her shoulders, but her amber eyes burn into mine so sharply that I have to fight the urge to look away.
“What do you mean, who’s the father?”
I press on, staring her down. “Who is he? Some guy you met when you left the city?”
She freezes for a second, then her mouth drops open, her plush lips parting in a gasp.
I don’t understand her reaction at all.
Then, to make things even more bewildering, she starts to laugh.
“Oh, you told me your family was poison, but I always thought you were exaggerating.”
Nina steps forward, placing a hand on my cheek. This is the first time she’s initiated physical contact with me in years.
I don’t understand anything right now. She’s looking at me with half-amazement, half-disbelief.
“You really don’t know, do you?” she breathes.
God, she’s so close and I want to kiss her. But I need to find out now, or it’s going to kill me.
I want this woman. I want to marry her. But first, I need the truth about Ava’s father.
“Just tell me,” I grunt. “I can handle it. It won’t change anything between us, Nenoka. I need to know.”
Nina shakes her head, the light shining over her dark hair, a smile spreading over her lips.
“You’re the father.”
For the first time in my life, I’m lost for words. I must have misheard her. Or developed some form of auditory hallucination.
“What do you mean?” I ask slowly.
Her words are spreading through my body like pure ecstasy, making me want to shout for joy, but I can’t let myself believe them. This is too good to be true.
“What do you mean, Nenoka?” I repeat, my voice rougher, more urgent.
Nina brushes her thumb over my cheek gently, tenderly, and I want to bottle up that sensation and keep it with me at all times. It’s like she’s come back to me.
I’m not the subject of her resentment, her suspicion, but only the warmth of her love. For the first time in a long time, she’s holding me like I am someone precious to her, not like I’m an addiction she can’t shake.
“Artyom Vassily Petrov. I have never thought of you as a stupid man, but I do right now.”
I do the maths. Slowly. Repetitively. Double-checking, then triple-checking.
I let myself believe it. Because it must be true.
When Nina left me, she was pregnant with Ava.
“Ava is mine. I have a daughter.”
Nina nods, stroking my cheek with her hand before she rises up on her toes to kiss me. She tastes sweet, her touch tentative and gentle. One of the walls between us has broken down.
But the burst of pure joy in my chest mingles with confusion as I hold her.
All this time, I’ve been searching for the father of Nina’s child, imagining how I would tear him apart for hurting them both, and it never occurred to me. I shrugged off Vanya’s pronouncement that Ava was mine.
Because she would have told me.
Why didn’t she?
“Congratulations, genius,” Nina chuckles as I pull back from the kiss, processing what this means.
She’s smiling like it’s a joke. Like this doesn’t change anything.
It changes everything. This uphill battle I’ve been fighting doesn’t need to be uphill.
This should have happened five fucking years ago, but I can make it happen now.
I feel in my pocket. The familiar hunk of metal is still there, where it’s been waiting for her for five years.
This was not the plan.
But goddammit, if this woman has had my child without telling me, then she’s going to wear my ring.
“We’re getting married.”
I shove the engagement ring onto Nina’s finger. It’s a perfect fit. Good. Because it’s never coming off her finger.
My voice is rougher than it should be. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. I’m equal parts overjoyed and overwhelmed.
This may be unceremonious, but it’s all I can do not to call a fucking priest and haul him up here right now in the middle of the night.
Nina blinks. She looks at her hand, sporting the antique engagement ring of polished gold and diamond, which had belonged to Vanya’s mother.
Then she looks back at me, her mouth dropping open as she pushes my chest.
“That is not a proposal.”
“You’re right, it’s not.” I dip my head to hers and look her right in the eyes. “I’m not proposing. I’m telling you. There is no question about it. You had my child, and this is what you get. You’re stuck with me.”
“You’re angry at me?”
“I’ve never been happier to be stuck with someone, Nenoka. But yes, I’m fucking furious. You didn’t tell me.”
Her eyes drop away from mine, her face shuttering. “I tried,” she says quietly.
“No. You didn’t. You ran.”
Nina sits on the bed with a sigh, pulling me with her. Looking so beautiful, so regretful, that I’m tempted to forgive her before she even opens her mouth. Then she turns to me, face-on, and starts to explain.
“I came here. The day I left. Your mother was here—”
“Polina was who you were seeing?”
Her delicate brow creases as she looks up at me, her breath catching in her throat.
“Yes, Nina,” I rake a hand through my hair. “I’ve watched the CCTV tapes of that day. A thousand times. You walked into the house with your head held high and then rushed out like you needed to get away. I know you were here that day.”
“I came to see you. To catch you when you got back from Chicago on a business trip so I could tell you.”
“But I never saw you that day.”
“Polina invited me in, and I told her everything. You know what my family are like. I was glad to have someone to talk to, someone who could give me advice.”
I swallow. I know what Polina’s advice is like.
Poison.
It all comes together then. Ivan said she’d been in the house for more than an hour. What the fuck was she talking to Polina about during that time?
Nina sees my expression and nods her head. “Exactly. She told me…” Tears spring to her eyes.
I’m still confused as hell, but I can’t let her cry without comforting her. I pull her onto my lap. I brush a tear from her cheek as she looks up at me.
“Polina was so kind at first. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders, served me tea and cakes, and didn’t wait for me to announce anything. She already knew I was pregnant, Art. She said it had been obvious, all month, and she couldn’t believe I was studying medicine and I hadn’t figured it out.
“At first, she was lovely and warm, sharing stories from her own pregnancy, telling me what to expect. I’d been doubting myself every day, agonizing over whether to tell you, and for the first time I let myself hope that it would all be okay. She treated me like I was part of the family already.”
I shake my head, squeezing her shoulder. I know this isn’t going to end well.
My mother is nothing if not a master manipulator. She can spot someone’s weaknesses from a mile away and emotionally devastate them. It would be impressive if it wasn’t sociopathic.
“And then she told me that you weren’t there,” her voice cracks, “because you didn’t want to see me.
That you’d left it to her to deal with me.
She told me I should get rid of the baby, because I was clearly not equipped to be a mother.
Your family would sue me into the ground if I claimed a cent of child support.
It was like a switch had flipped, and she was suddenly the coldest, most uncaring person.
“But I believed her. She was so convincing, Art. She told me you were engaged to some Russian woman, showed me photos of you together, said the wedding was scheduled.”
Karolina.
Polina had tried to set up an engagement between us immediately after Nina left. I’d always assumed there was some kind of money in it for her, that Karolina’s uncle in Russia had promised more business for the Petrovs if I’d agreed.
“I never—”
“I saw you with her, Art. That beautiful woman. I left in tears and rushed out to my car. I couldn’t drive for an hour because I was ugly-crying so hard. Then I saw you with the woman, and it looked just like the photos. That was the moment I believed it. All of it.
“I wanted to talk to you and confirm everything Polina had said, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t fucking embarrass myself like that, by trying to talk to you when you were clearly so happy with someone else.”
She’s right.
I’d brought Karolina back from Chicago with me. It all comes back now, how Polina had insisted that she travel with me in the private jet, that she would stay at the estate, though it was unusual for anyone not in the family to be granted access.
“That was never anything, Nina. You have to believe me. Karolina is an old friend, nothing more.”
I can feel how tense she is, how much this hurt her.
“I couldn’t watch anymore, Art. All of it was true. And I’d never felt secure in our relationship, I’d never understood why you wanted me, so I believed all of it.”
I rock her gently, swearing an oath to myself that Polina will pay for it.
I push her hair back from her forehead. I don’t want to scare Nina, but I need her to know my perspective.
“Do you know what I did the next day, when I couldn’t find you, Nina?”
She looks up at me. “What?”
“I broke into your dorm. In the student accommodation. You weren’t there and I knew it, because our men had been looking for you for a full day. Your stuff was gone, every trace of you, except this.”
I take it from the dresser. The bottle of Chanel perfume. Our second date, I’d gifted it to Nina, after going through a whole department store to find the scent that most reminded me of her.
“I gave it to you earlier that year and you wore it every day. It smelled like you. I kept it this whole time.”
And sometimes I would just inhale that scent to remind myself she was still out there somewhere.
Nina shakes her head. “It reminded me of you. That was why I couldn’t take it, Art. I sprayed that perfume automatically when I got dressed to leave and it hurt too much.”
“Want to know what I did after I grabbed this?”
She nods her head.
“I sprayed it through that room and then I slept in your bed. The mattress still smelled like you.”
Nina lets out a choked laugh, through her tears.
I nod. “Crazy, right? That’s not even half of it.” I rake a hand through my hair.
Things got bad when I thought Nina was gone.
But she’s back now, in my arms, wearing my ring, and that’s all that matters.
I trace my thumb over her lower lip, then I feel her tense against me again. She strokes a hand over my shoulder soothingly, as though trying to prepare me for something.
“Art, you know we can’t get married. This beautiful ring is lovely,” she looks down at her hand as though it might disappear at any second. “But it’s madness. It’s not how you start a relationship for the second time. We barely know each other anymore.”
I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss her ring finger. This ring is not going anywhere because it belongs on her finger. “You can’t escape me, Nenoka.”
“I know that.” She rolls her eyes.
“So stop running. This could be so easy. So good.”
Nina lifts her eyes to mine and I see something I haven’t seen there in a long time. Trust.
Her dark eyelashes frame her amber eyes, liquid with emotion.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Artyom.”