Chapter 24
24
Wil
I stand at the kitchen window, cradling a mug of ginger tea between my palms while watching the sun over the ocean. The babies stir inside me, their movements growing stronger each week as they develop from the tiny bean-shaped images on that first ultrasound to distinct little people with their own patterns and personalities, even in the womb.
My fingers trace absentminded circles over the stretched skin of my belly, responding to a particularly vigorous kick from Baby A, the most active of the five, unless he’s swapped positions with a sibling. "Good morning to you too," I whisper, allowing myself a small smile despite the heaviness that has settled over me since arriving at this isolated coastal property three weeks ago.
The sound of tires on gravel draws my attention to the driveway, where a familiar black sedan pulls up alongside the house. My heart accelerates with the irrational hope that accompanies every arrival, even though logic tells me Mak won’t be stepping out of that car. The disappointment when Leonid emerges alone is no less acute for being expected, and I turn away from the window, unwilling to watch him approach the house with whatever news has brought him here unannounced.
Zina appears in the doorway moments later, her dark hair tied back in a practical ponytail, and her expression carefully neutral as she observes me. "Leonid is here. He says he needs to speak with us both."
Something in her tone makes me look up sharply, a cold dread settling in my stomach that has nothing to do with morning sickness. "What's happened?"
She shakes her head slightly, a gesture so reminiscent of her brother that my chest constricts painfully. "He wouldn't say until we were both present."
When he appears in the kitchen doorway, his face tells me everything before he speaks a single word. His normally impassive features are drawn with a gravity I’ve never seen before, and for the first time since I have known this stoic man, he seems uncertain how to proceed.
"What is it?" Zina's voice cracks slightly, betraying the fear she tries to conceal. "Is it the Kazanovs? Have they found us?"
He shakes his head, moving his gaze between us before settling on me with uncharacteristic gentleness. "There was an explosion at the Eclipse nightclub in Manhattan last night. The building collapsed entirely."
The mug slips from my suddenly numb fingers, shattering on the tile floor and splashing tea across my bare feet, but I barely register the heat or the broken ceramic. My mind struggles to process his words, refusing to make the connection that’s already causing Zina to grip the kitchen counter for support.
"Mak?" Her question is hard to hear.
"Makari was inside, meeting with Colombian distributors." Leonid's voice maintains its professional detachment, but his eyes betray the emotion he normally conceals. "The explosion occurred in the basement and structural supports. The building... There were no survivors from the VIP section."
The words echo meaninglessly around me as the room begins to tilt and spin. A strange, high-pitched ringing fills my ears as my knees buckle beneath me. I collapse not gradually but all at once, as if someone has cut the strings holding me upright. The sound that tears from my throat is primal and unfamiliar even to my own ears. It’s not a scream or a sob but something more elemental, the raw vocalization of a pain too profound for words.
Zina reaches me first, encircling me in her arms as we both sink to the floor among the broken ceramic and spilled tea. Her body shakes against mine, her grief as potent as my own, and through the haze of shock, I feel a distant relief that she’s here, that neither of us must bear this moment alone.
"It can't be true," I manage to say between ragged breaths that refuse to fill my lungs properly. "He can't be?—"
The word "dead" sticks in my throat, refusing to be spoken aloud, as if my denial might somehow alter reality. Mak, with his imposing presence and carefully controlled power, seems too substantial to simply cease existing. The man who commanded rooms with a glance, who built an empire through will and calculation, who survived countless attempts on his life before I even knew him—how could he be gone?
"We received confirmation from multiple sources." Leonid kneels beside us, his usual stoicism cracking to reveal genuine sorrow. "The authorities are still recovering...remains. DNA testing will take time, but eyewitnesses confirmed his presence inside just before the explosion."
"Who did this?" Zina's question cuts through her tears, a sudden hardness entering her voice that reminds me forcefully of her brother. "Was it the Kazanovs?"
Leonid hesitates, smoothing his expression into careful neutrality. "Initial reports from Ivan Petrov suggest Kazanov involvement, but nothing’s confirmed. Fedor survived. He had stepped outside moments before the explosion. He’s already working to stabilize the organization and promising retribution."
The mention of Fedor sends a chill through me despite the warmth of the kitchen. Something about the timing feels wrong, with Mak sending us away to safety, then dying less than a week later in what was surely not a random attack. The coincidence is too convenient, too perfectly timed to throw everything into chaos.
The thought slips away as grief overwhelms suspicion when the reality begins to sink in. Mak is truly gone, regardless of who orchestrated it or why. The father of my children, the complex man I had only just begun to understand, has been ripped away before we could resolve what lay between us. Our last night together, with the argument, the desperate lovemaking, and the promises whispered against my skin suddenly bears the unbearable mark of finality.
"I need to see," I whisper, though I’m not entirely certain what I mean. To see the news reports? The site of the explosion? His body? All feel equally impossible and necessary.
Leonid nods as if he anticipated this, reaching for a tablet in his jacket. "The news coverage is extensive. I thought you might want..."
He trails off, uncertain how to finish the sentence, but I take the tablet with trembling hands. The screen displays a news website with footage of what remains of the Eclipse—a smoldering crater of twisted metal and concrete, with emergency vehicles surrounding the perimeter. The headline reads: "NIGHTCLUB EXPLOSION CLAIMS RUSSIAN BUSINESS MOGUL AND A DOZEN MORE."
Zina looks away, unable to bear the images, but I force myself to absorb every detail, searching for...what? Evidence that it's a mistake? Proof that Mak somehow escaped? The desperation of my hope shames me even as I cling to it.
The next hours pass in a blur of numbness and overwhelming emotion. I oscillate between hysterical sobbing that leaves my throat raw and my pregnant body aching with the strain, and a detached calm that frightens Zina more than my tears. When Dr. Wilson arrives for an unscheduled appointment, probably called by Zina, he administers a mild sedative after noting my elevated blood pressure and the stress evident in my physical state.
"The babies need you calm," he says gently as he helps me to the bedroom, speaking in the same soothing tone I once used with anxious mothers in the NICU. "Grief is natural, but your body is already under tremendous strain carrying quintuplets. You must rest."
The medication pulls me under into a fitful sleep filled with fragmented dreams of Mak reaching for me through flames, his voice calling my name as walls collapse around him. Each time I jolt awake, disoriented and gasping, reality crashes back with renewed brutality. He’s gone.
* * *
Days begin to blend together, marked only by the prenatal checkups and the steadily increasing movements of the babies inside me. I move through the safehouse like a ghost, performing necessary tasks with mechanical precision while my mind remains trapped in a loop of memories and regrets. I should have stayed. I should have found another way to make it work. I thought love wasn’t enough, but I was wrong. The litany of "should haves" haunts me through sleepless nights and hollow days.
The full complexity of my feelings for Mak confuse me with its intensity. He was a monster in many ways, the embodiment of everything I feared and rejected. He was violence personified, a man who killed without hesitation and commanded an empire built on blood and suffering. His world represented everything I never wanted for my children.
Yet he was also the man who held me at night with surprising tenderness, who built me a beautiful garden when words failed him, who kissed my belly and whispered to our unborn children in Russian, calling them his legacy with reverence in his voice. The contradiction of him—the violence and the vulnerability, the cruelty and the care—haunts me more thoroughly than any ghost could.
"You didn't eat again." Zina stands in the doorway of my bedroom one evening, a plate of untouched food in her hands. Her face shows the strain of the past weeks, with dark circles beneath eyes red-rimmed from her own private grieving. Unlike me, she channels her sorrow into action—ordering baby supplies online, converting the largest bedroom into a nursery, and researching quintuplet care with the same thoroughness she once applied to academic studies.
I look away from her concern, unwilling to see the worry etched into features that remind me so painfully of her brother. "I'm not hungry."
"The babies are." She crosses the room with quiet determination, setting the plate on my nightstand before sitting beside me on the bed. "They need you to eat even when you don't want to."
Her directness pierces through the fog of grief. The babies continue growing regardless of my emotional state, demanding nutrition and care I alone can provide. I reach reluctantly for the plate, forcing myself to take a small bite of the bland toast she's prepared, knowing the plainer foods are easier on my still-present morning sickness. I’m starting to think it will never end.
"That's better." She watches me eat with the attentiveness of a nurse, relaxing slightly as I continue taking small bites. "Dr. Wilson says you're still on track for weight gain, but he's concerned about your protein intake."
"Yeah." My medical training makes me acutely aware of the nutritional needs of a high-risk multiple pregnancy. "I'll try harder. It's just..."
"I know." She takes my hand, her fingers cool against my skin. "I miss him too. More than I thought possible."
The simple acknowledgment breaks something inside me, and fresh tears spill down my cheeks. "Why does it hurt so much? We barely knew each other. We spent more time fighting than anything else."
Zina's smile is sad but knowing. "Time doesn't dictate depth, Wil. Some connections form in an instant and last forever."
"He was going to change everything for us." I rest my hand on my growing belly, feeling the ripples of movement beneath. "He promised to find a way out, to create a different life. And now..."
"Now, we continue without him." Her voice carries the same resolute determination I heard in Mak's when he made difficult decisions. "We raise these children to know who their father really was, not just what he did."
Her words stay with me through the night as I lie awake, listening to the distant crash of waves against the shore. In rare moments of peace, usually at dawn when the house is quiet and the ocean is visible from my bedroom window, I talk to the babies about him.
"Your father had the most penetrating gaze," I tell them softly, running my hands over the stretched skin, where they press against the boundaries of my body. "He could look at someone and see straight through any pretense. It made him dangerous, but it also made him perceptive in ways few people ever develop. He knew when I was afraid even when I tried to hide it."
I share stories about their complicated father—how his smile transformed his entire face on the few occasions he allowed genuine happiness to show, how his hands could be impossibly gentle despite their strength, and how he loved them enough to send us away when he couldn't guarantee our safety.
I don’t know what else to say or how to explain their existence is both a miracle and a burden, the product of a love that never had the chance to fully form before violence claimed it like everything else in the Vorobev legacy. How do I tell them they were created in a moment of connection between two people from entirely different worlds that could never peacefully coexist?
As the days pass, Zina and I establish a routine that brings structure to the shapeless expanse of grief. In the mornings, we walk along the private beach, since the exercise is good for my circulation, and the salt air somehow making it easier to breathe. In the afternoons, we work on the nursery, painting walls in soft yellows and greens, or assembling furniture delivered under false names. Between all that, I rest a lot and try not to cry so much.
"Five cribs arranged in a semicircle," Zina muses as we unpack the fifth identical white crib. "They'll be able to see each other this way."
I run my hand along the smooth wooden rail, imagining tiny fingers gripping it someday. "They'll need to learn they're individuals from the beginning. It would be easy to treat them as a collective instead of as separate people."
"We could paint each crib a slightly different color? Subtle enough that it doesn't clash, but distinct enough for identification."
"Mak would have liked that." The words slip out before I can stop them, and for once, saying his name doesn't shatter me. "We should also add name plaques." It pains me that my babies will bear a different surname than Mak’s, or even mine. Zina and I are different people now, at least officially.
She smiles, and it’s a genuine expression that lightens her features. "He was obsessed with you from the first night, you know. I've never seen him so fixated on anyone. He called t to talk about you more than once, even before he found out about the pregnancy."
"Really?" I pause in unpacking onesies, hungry for any detail about Mak I didn't already know.
"Oh, yes. When he discovered you were pregnant, he was terrified but also...transformed. As if he suddenly had purpose beyond the next territorial dispute or business deal." She traces the pattern on a baby blanket with careful fingers. "When he brought you to the estate, he called me first thing. 'Don't frighten her, Zina. She's not like us.' As if I was some sort of monster who might scare you away."
The memory brings a reluctant smile to my face. "You were the least frightening person in that entire mansion."
"Except Mrs. Petrova,” she says, referencing the grandmotherly housekeeper who had fussed over my nutrition and rest with Soviet-era efficiency.
"Except Mrs. Petrova," I agree, and for the first time since receiving news of Mak's death, I laugh—a small, rusty sound, but genuine.
The moment passes quickly, loss settling over us again, but something has shifted. The grief remains, but alongside it grows a tentative acceptance. Mak is gone, but parts of him continue in Zina, in me, and most importantly, in the babies developing inside me.
In the evenings, I often find myself drawn to the living room windows that face the ocean. The endless expanse of water provides a strange comfort, its constant motion and immensity somehow putting my pain into perspective. I’m not the first to love and lose, nor will I be the last. Countless others have stood at windows like this one, watching waves that existed long before their grief and will continue long after.
* * *
Four weeks after Leonid's devastating news, I sit in this same spot, watching a storm gather on the horizon. The sky darkens with heavy clouds, and the waves grow wilder, crashing against the shore with increasing violence. The scene matches my mood—restless and turbulent, with pressure building toward some inevitable breaking point.
The nightmares have grown more vivid with each passing week. Sometimes, I see Mak reaching for me through flames, his voice calling my name as walls collapse around him. Other times, I dream of our children asking questions about a father they’ll never know, while I struggle to explain a man who was both monster and protector, criminal and lover. I wake from these dreams drenched in sweat, my heart racing as my hands instinctively search for him in the empty space beside me.
Tonight, after another troubled dream, I wander through the nursery Zina has painstakingly prepared. The room is peaceful in the pre-dawn darkness, with the five identical cribs arranged in a semicircle facing the window that overlooks the ocean. There are no name plaques yet because I haven’t figured out what to name them. It’s a decision I should be making with Mak, so I keep putting it off, though he’ll never be able to offer input. Tiny clothes sorted by size wait in labeled drawers, and a hand-painted mural of a garden stretches across one wall—Zina's tribute to the greenhouse Mak built for me, and a reminder of beauty in the midst of chaos.
My mother’s rosebush rests on the windowsill, brought by Leonid during one of his infrequent visits. It makes me think of the red rosebush Mak sent me after our night together that I threw away in front of him in my anger and grief after Gisele’s death. It seems somehow like foreshadowing that I left that plant behind to die—just like I eventually left Mak behind, and he died. It was to protect our babies, but it causes guilt and pain when these thoughts hit me.
I run my fingers along the edge of the nearest crib, imagining the tiny life that will soon occupy it. "Your father would have been so proud," I whisper to the empty room, the words catching painfully in my throat. "He was many things, not all of them good, but he wanted all five of you."
The admission brings unexpected comfort. Whatever else Mak was, however complicated our brief relationship, his love for our unborn children was genuine. I saw it in his eyes when he first learned about the pregnancy, felt it in his touch when he placed his hand on my growing belly, and heard it in his voice when he whispered to them in Russian, believing I was asleep and couldn't understand his tender promises.
"He called you his legacy," I tell the empty cribs, smiling slightly at the memory. "Not his empire or his wealth or his power, but you five. His true legacy."
Zina finds me there as morning light begins filtering through the curtains, sitting in the rocking chair beside the window with my hands resting on my belly.
"Bad dreams again?" she asks softly, leaning against the doorframe with shadows of sleeplessness beneath her own eyes.
I nod, not bothering to hide the evidence of tears on my cheeks. "I keep thinking there was something I missed, some sign or warning that might have prevented..." My voice trails off, unable to complete the thought.
She crosses the room and kneels beside the chair, her hand covering mine. "There was nothing you could have done, Wil. My brother’s choices were made for him long before he met you. The violence of his world... It was always going to end this way."
"Is that supposed to comfort me?" The question carries no heat, just weary acceptance of a truth I've been avoiding.
"No." Her honesty is refreshing in a world that has become shrouded in half-truths and comforting lies. "But understanding it might help you forgive yourself for surviving when he didn't."
The gentle accusation strikes closer to home than I want to admit. Part of my grief has been tangled with guilt that I left him behind, that our argument might have distracted him, or that I somehow contributed to whatever miscalculation led to his death. Irrational thoughts, but grief follows no rational path.
"I don't know how to do this without him," I say, voicing my deepest fear for the first time. "One baby would be challenge enough, but five? When they don't even have a father?"
"They have me." Zina's voice carries the same certainty I once heard in Mak's. "They have Leonid. They have a small army of Vorobev loyalists, who would die for Mak's children without hesitation."
"That's what terrifies me." I meet her gaze directly. "I don't want them growing up in a world where dying for someone is considered normal. I don't want security details and bulletproof glass and the constant fear that shadowed your childhood."
She doesn't flinch from the truth in my words. "Their birth alone makes them Vorobevs, Wil. We can change names and locations, but blood is blood. Some realities can't be escaped, only managed."
The practicality in her assessment reminds me so strongly of Mak that my heart contracts painfully. They share more than physical resemblance, including the same clear-eyed assessment of difficult situations, and the same unflinching acceptance of harsh realities.
"Then we'll manage it," I finally say, drawing strength from the determined set of her shoulders.
Later that day, Dr. Wilson arrives for my weekly checkup, his weathered face creasing with concern as he measures my blood pressure. "Still elevated," he notes, making a notation in my chart. "And you're not sleeping." It isn't a question, so I don't bother denying it.
The evidence is written in the dark circles beneath my eyes and the trembling of my hands. "The babies are active at night."
"The babies are active because you're stressed." He sits back, regarding me with the direct gaze of a man who has delivered thousands of infants and brooks no nonsense from anxious mothers. "Grief is understandable, Wil, but you're carrying five babies, who depend on your physical wellbeing. I need you to try harder."
The gentle reprimand cuts through my self-pity, reminding me of my responsibilities. I’m not just a grieving woman but a vessel for five developing humans, who didn't ask to be created in the midst of a mafia war. "What do you suggest?" I ask, straightening slightly in the examination chair.
"Mild sedatives would be my recommendation in a normal pregnancy, but with quintuplets..." He shakes his head slightly. "We need alternatives. Meditation, perhaps. Gentle exercise… And you need to talk about him."
I blink in surprise at the unexpected suggestion. "Talk about...Mak?"
"Bottled grief festers." He begins packing his medical bag with efficient movements. "Speak his name. Tell stories about him. Acknowledge what you've lost instead of trying to contain it."
The advice stays with me long after Dr. Wilson departs, echoing through my thoughts as I walk along the private beach that afternoon. The wind whips my hair around my face, and the sand shifts beneath my bare feet, providing natural resistance that Dr. Wilson assures me is excellent exercise.
The words come hesitantly at first, then with increasing fluidity as I describe the Mak I knew. "He had nightmares too," I say, remembering how I would sometimes wake to find him standing at the window, shoulders rigid with tension from whatever demons pursued him in sleep. "He never spoke of them, but I think they were about his childhood. Your grandfather wasn’t a kind man."
The talking helps, just as Dr. Wilson suggested. Speaking Mak's name aloud, and describing him to the children who will never know him directly, somehow makes the loss more bearable. I’m not erasing him or pretending he never existed but preserving his memory in the only way I can.
That evening, as Zina and I prepare dinner together in the safehouse kitchen, I share stories about Mak that make her laugh despite her grief.
"He actually said that?" She nearly drops the knife she's using to chop vegetables when I describe Mak's confused reaction to my explanation of pregnancy hormones.
"Word for word." I smile at the memory of his bewildered expression. "'You're crying because the commercial showed a puppy? Is the puppy injured? Did something happen to the puppy?' He looked so alarmed."
"That sounds like him." She shakes her head fondly. "Completely fearless in the face of armed enemies but utterly lost when confronted with normal human emotions."
"He was learning though." The observation comes with a pang of what might have been. "He was trying to understand things outside his experience. That's more than most people ever attempt."
We fall into companionable silence, the shared memories of Mak creating a bridge between us that rises above our grief. Briefly, I can see beyond the immediate pain to the future that awaits us—a future where these children will know their father through our stories, where his legacy continues not through violence and fear but through the lives who carry his blood, and perhaps, the better parts of his nature.
As my body grows heavier with their development, I begin to find small moments of hope amid the grief. I plan how I'll tell each child apart, imagine first steps and words, and picture Zina as the aunt who will teach them languages and history. The future remains uncertain, but the tiny lives depending on me provide reason enough to continue moving forward, one difficult day at a time.
One night, as I prepare for bed, I remove the first ultrasound image from my nightstand drawer of all five babies together, their tiny forms barely distinguishable as human at that early stage. I trace each outline with my fingertip, marveling at how much they must have grown since then, developing distinct features and personalities even within the womb.
"I wish your father could see you now," I whisper, a familiar ache spreading through my chest at the thought of all Mak will miss—their birth, first smiles, first words, and all the milestones that parents treasure. "He would have been amazed by you."
The grief remains, a constant companion I suspect will never fully depart, but alongside it grows determination. These children deserve more than a mother consumed by sorrow. They deserve joy and security and the knowledge they were wanted, that their creation was the product of a connection that, however brief, contained genuine love.