Chapter 25 Sergei
SERGEI
Having Natalie and Maisie back in my home comforted me. I didn’t have to wonder if they were unharmed or provided for. I didn’t have to worry if Natalie was overwhelmed. I saw with my own eyes that they were safe with me.
Unlike the first time that I brought Natalie here, she fell into step and got with the program immediately. We didn’t go through another trial of her being stubborn. She didn’t protest that I wanted her in my home.
It was as though she expected it now.
Or she had accepted that I would expect her to be here.
Not that she wanted to.
Nope. Not at all.
Her coolness and indifference to me didn’t change. Things had shifted between us since she ran off, and it didn’t seem like she would ever want to return to the intimacy and friendship that we had built and fostered before.
It was hard to have hope that we would ever get back to that.
We didn’t talk about why she had left. Having a discussion about what happened to her husband was still on my to-do list. I wanted to talk to her. I wished we could be on better terms.
Each time I talked with my uncle, my cousin, or my brother about how badly I wanted to clear the air between me and Natalie, they all cautioned me to wait a little longer. To let her come to me about it when she was comfortable.
My uncle had a passive approach to the situation.
“Let her talk to Claire,” he suggested mildly.
While it seemed to me that he was trying to pass the buck and leaving it up to his fiancée to sleuth out what Natalie was thinking, I understood that Natalie probably felt more comfortable talking about her concerns and feelings with Claire before she would even consider talking to me.
I was still too much of the enemy in her eyes—despite saving her life twice.
Despite how her daughter saw me as a source of security and comfort.
Until Natalie would approach me and ask me if we could talk about how her husband died, I felt obligated to give her space and let her re-acclimate to being here.
For the most part, she seemed to adjust well. She got closer to Claire and Anya. We all witnessed how their friendships built and grew and got stronger.
Natalie resumed being the homemaker, like she enjoyed before. Just without eye contact for me or speaking to me at all.
She was back in the kitchen, cooking and baking and tidying up the apartment too. Her days were spent with her daughter as they read, colored, and played, all the activities they did before Natalie took Maisie and left.
The rift that existed between Natalie and me didn’t stop her from wanting to be in other’s company. Yet, I didn’t push. Under the advice from my relatives, I waited and endured her cold shoulder treatment.
I would take it all. Her silence, her attitude—if she were to actually show me any. And I would be patient. Just like I had been patient before.
Still, I didn’t want to use Claire as an intermediary. She proved to be a resource as an in-between, though.
“It’s not hard to see it from her perspective,” Claire told me one afternoon. “She had her husband taken from her, taken in what she assumed was senseless violence.”
I didn’t remark that it wasn’t senseless.
Nothing I did for my uncle was ever senseless.
The operation that I set up over a year ago had a point.
I arranged that sting against the Cartel to protect our business and our prosperity.
It wasn’t senseless to me. “I agree that her husband and the couple of other citizens who were caught in the crossfire were senseless deaths, though.”
And those weren’t supposed to happen.
“I don’t think that Natalie blames you directly,” Claire said.
“She can’t,” Mikhail said dryly. At Claire’s smirk, he shrugged. “She can’t blame him for it. It’s not as though he went out and specifically knew her husband or hunted him down with the express motivation to kill him.”
She pressed her lips together and exhaled through her nose.
“Yes, I understand that. And I think deep down, she understands that too. But you need to be gentle and remember that Natalie and I are not from your world. We were raised to view any kind of organized crime and the violence that comes with it as undesirable.”
Biased, you mean.
“Deep down,” Claire repeated, “I think she understands that her husband was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and that it is a tragedy.”
“I know,” I said. “I agree.”
“But it’s no easy thing to give up all that you know and believe. It’s not a simple thing to recalibrate your moral compass,” she explained. “She might just need the room and time to grow and adjust.”
I crossed my arms and sighed. “To the point that she would ever forgive me?”
She shrugged but wore a kind smile on her face. “I hope so. Wait out her hatred.”
“I will. I have been.” I shook my head, ready to walk away from the discussion. “So long as she is alive and within reach, I’ll hold on to the hope that she can still see me in a different light.”
My brother found me late that night, sitting on a patio space under the heaters as snow lightly fell. He sat with me, checking in on how I was doing.
“I just know that if I were you, I’d struggle to be patient,” he admitted.
I shrugged one shoulder. “You’re never patient.”
“And I’m also never settling down with one woman.” He grinned, a player at heart.
In that respect, he’d never get it. “I won’t give up on her.”
“I can see that,” he remarked.
“It’s not a point of wanting to or not.” I raked my hand over my hair. “I am unable to let her go. Even when she’s icy with me but friendly enough with everyone else…” I shook my head. “I can’t let her go.”
“Then don’t. Sooner or later, she’ll, um, well, fuck. I don’t know. Couldn’t you just fuck her out of how hung up she is about it all?”
I rolled my head on the back of the chair and gave him a dry look.
“I’m joking. Jeez. It’s just a joke.” He smiled and laughed, but then he sobered up and sighed. “But that tells me right there that she really is the one, then. You care about her for more than just sex.”
Was that not obvious?
Natalie had taken a hold of my heart and I wasn’t in the mood to let her break it to pieces. If Claire was right and she needed space and time, I could do that.
While I gave her the distance she insisted on, though, I didn’t have to be idle. I had a couple of ideas to thaw her out again—even if it was just to warm her up to talking with me.
“Hey, you said you talked to that babysitter that night.”
He nodded, glancing at me. “Daria? Yeah, I did.”
“And you said she commented on struggling?” It should’ve been impossible for him to get that young woman to share so much, but this was Roman.
He had the charm to get anyone to open up to him.
Not many people were so freely trusting or gullible to tell a stranger that they were hurting for money after losing a side hustle.
It sounded like Daria missed Natalie and Maisie not only because she liked them, but also because she needed the babysitting money. Tuition was an iffy topic for her.
“Go ahead and find her. Take care of her debts and tuition.”
He raised his brows. “Really? What, you’re going to try to use a good deed as a way to get Natalie to not look at you like you’re a monster?”
I shook my head. “I won’t manipulate her.”
But I wasn’t above doing anything I could to prove to Natalie that I wasn’t a cruel, heartless asshole.
I would do anything to get back in her good graces. Because the longer that this gap stretched between us, the harder I yearned for her and missed her warmth.