Chapter 26
26
Wil
T ime crawls in the coastal safehouse, each day marked primarily by the expanding curve of my abdomen and the increasingly dramatic shifts of five active babies beneath my skin. My body has transformed beyond anything I could have imagined, stretched and strained in ways that defy medical expectation. The simple act of rising from bed now requires strategic planning and considerable effort, my center of gravity so dramatically altered that tasks I once performed without thought have become complex challenges.
"The fact that you're still mobile at all is remarkable," Dr. Wilson tells me during his weekly visit, measuring my blood pressure with a furrowed brow. "Most women carrying multiples would have been confined to bed rest weeks ago."
"I was a nurse," I remind him, wincing as Baby C delivers a particularly aggressive kick to my ribs. "I've seen what extended bed rest does to muscle tone and circulation. I'll rest when absolutely necessary, but not before."
He shakes his head with the weary resignation of a doctor whose patient refuses sensible medical advice. "Which will be now. Your blood pressure's climbing again, and the cervical changes we're monitoring suggest you need to minimize physical stress." He scribbles notes in my chart. "Complete bed rest for the remainder of your pregnancy, with bathroom privileges and short seated periods for meals."
I sigh heavily but nod, thinking about hours and days of confinement before me. Mak's absence feels heavier suddenly.
After Dr. Wilson departs with promises to return in three days rather than his usual weekly schedule, Zina helps me settle on the living room sofa with pillows supporting my lower back and swollen ankles.
"Bed rest doesn't have to mean the bedroom," she says pragmatically, arranging supplies within my reach—books, water, my phone, and the remote control for the television I rarely watch. "At least from here, you can see the ocean."
I'm grateful for her presence and for knowing me so well now. The rhythmic crash of waves against the shore has become my primary comfort, a constancy I cling to when grief threatens to overwhelm me. The ocean doesn't care about Bratva politics or deaths or pregnant women carrying quintuplets. It simply continues its eternal dance with the shore, indifferent to human drama.
"We still need to finish the nursery," I say, frustrated by this new limitation. "The mobiles aren't complete, and I still have no idea for the plaques."
"I'll handle it," she says, her confidence tempered with gentle understanding. "You've already done most of the planning. Just tell me where you want everything for the final touches, and we can always do the plaques once we’re back home and know their names."
I nod, knowing she’s already come up with a workaround since I seem paralyzed on name choices. Using her artistic talent, Zina has painted delicate flowering vines around each crib, and each one is a soft pastel shade as we’d discussed. She’s personalized them with subtle variations in the blooms—roses for Crib A, lilies for Crib B, violets for Crib C, daisies for Crib D, and wildflowers for Crib E. These distinctions will help us differentiate between the five identical beds, just as we'll need to find ways to recognize the individual personalities of five babies, who may look strikingly similar.
The peaceful scene we've created carries an undercurrent of melancholy that neither of us acknowledges directly. These preparations should have included Mak, and his absence haunts the careful arrangements we make, but I’ve found moments of joy in the process too.
I doze fitfully through the afternoon, waking to the sound of tires on gravel. Leonid, who arrived earlier in the day and will stay a few hours if he follows his usual pattern, moves to the window with professional alertness, tension visible in his shoulders until he recognizes the vehicle.
"Mail delivery," he says, relaxing fractionally. "I'll retrieve it."
These deliveries are rare at our isolated property. Leonid has arranged for essentials to reach us without compromising our location, but correspondence is strictly limited, and even grocery orders arrive on an irregular schedule to prevent establishing patterns that might be tracked. Each delivery undergoes thorough inspection before reaching us, which is evidence dangers haven't entirely disappeared despite Mak's death.
Zina brings me tea as he returns with a small stack of envelopes, which he examines with methodical care, checking for tampering or other security concerns. The process would seem paranoid if I hadn't already experienced firsthand the violence that follows the Vorobev name.
"Bills," he says, setting aside several envelopes. "Grocery delivery confirmation." Another envelope joins the stack. He pauses at the final item, his expression shifting subtly. "And this." He holds out a plain white envelope addressed simply to "W" in handwriting I don't recognize. There’s nothing to indicate its origin. Something about the simple initial makes my stomach clench.
"You've checked it?" asks Zina, suddenly alert beside me.
Leonid nods. "No chemical traces, and no suspicious materials." He hands it to me with uncharacteristic hesitation. "It was hand-delivered to our mail drop."
My fingers tremble slightly as I tear open the envelope, uncertain what additional grief could possibly await me inside. Two items slide out onto my lap—a copy of my very first ultrasound from when I discovered the quintuplets, and a plain sheet of paper bearing a brief message written in elegant, precise handwriting.
The ultrasound image is unmistakable, but it's the handwriting on the note that stops my breath entirely. I've seen this penmanship before, on documents in Mak's study, in notes he left for staff, and in the margins of books in his private collection.
The message is simple but devastating: "Wait for me."
The paper slips from my suddenly nerveless fingers, floating to the floor as recognition jolts through me like an electric current. Zina notices my reaction instantly, crossing the room to retrieve the fallen note. She reads it over my shoulder, and her sharp intake of breath confirms I'm not hallucinating.
"It's his handwriting," she whispers, voice tight with emotion. "It's Mak's."
We stare at each other, absorbing what it means. Mak is alive. His death was elaborately staged for purposes at which we can only guess. I've been grieving a man who never died at all, crying myself to sleep night after night, only to discover it was all part of some grand strategy he hadn't trusted me enough to share.
Relief wars with fury in my heart, emotional whiplash leaving me dizzy and nauseated. The babies respond to my surging hormones with increased activity, unleashing a chorus of kicks and rolls that physically manifest my internal chaos.
"He's alive," I manage to whisper, still struggling to process this seismic shift in reality. "He's been alive this whole time."
Zina's expression cycles through the same emotions churning within me—shock, relief, anger, and confusion—before settling into something more calculated. She exchanges a meaningful glance with Leonid, whose carefully neutral expression suddenly seems suspicious.
"You knew," I accuse, studying his face for confirmation. "You delivered news of his death knowing it wasn't true."
He doesn't flinch under my glare, but something shifts in his stoic demeanor—not guilt exactly, but acknowledgment. "I followed my orders, as I always have."
"Orders to lie to me? To let me believe the father of my children was dead while I grieved him for weeks?" My voice rises with each question, anger providing temporary strength. "To watch me cry myself to sleep while knowing the truth?"
"To protect you," he corrects, his tone remaining flat despite my bubbling anger. "Both of you. What you didn't know couldn't be forced from you."
"Forced?" The word hangs ominously between us.
"If Fedor suspected Mak survived, you would become targets again—this time for information rather than elimination." His bluntness is somehow more frightening than evasion. "Your grief had to be genuine."
The clinical assessment of my emotional suffering as a tactical necessity sends a cold shiver through me. This is the world Mak inhabits, where even love and grief become strategic considerations, where human emotions are weaponized or neutralized according to operational requirements.
"Did you know too?" I turn to Zina, whose expression reflects genuine conflict.
She shakes her head, tears gathering in her eyes. "No. I mourned him truly." She examines the note again, tracing her brother's handwriting with trembling fingers. "But I suspected something wasn't right when Leonid was too accepting of certain reports and too calm about Fedor's takeover."
For several moments, I can't breathe properly as my mind struggles to reorganize everything I've believed for the past months. The babies respond to my emotional turmoil with increased movement, as if they too sense the seismic shift in our reality. I press the ultrasound photo to my chest and cry again, but these tears are different—confused, hopeful, and angry all at once.
"Why now?" I finally ask, addressing Leonid directly. "Why tell me now that he's alive?"
"Because the danger is nearly past." His typical economy of words reveals little, but the implication is clear—whatever Mak has been doing during his supposed death is approaching completion.
"What's he been doing all this time?" Zina asks the question before I can form it.
Leonid's expression closes further. "That's for him to explain when he returns."
When, not if. The simple word choice confirms what the note already suggested. Mak intends to come back to us. The realization brings a complex wave of emotions I'm too exhausted to untangle. The father of my children is alive, but he deliberately put me through weeks of grief. He's coming back, but he didn't trust me enough to include me in his plans. He wants me to wait for him, but he gave me no choice in whether to participate in his deception.
"How could he do this to us?" I whisper, not really expecting an answer. "How could he let us believe he was dead?"
"Because my brother has only ever known one way to solve problems," Zina says, her voice gentle but unflinching in its honesty. "Completely and alone."
The assessment strikes me as painfully accurate. For all his complexity, for all the glimpses of tenderness and vulnerability I witnessed in our brief time together, Mak remains fundamentally a man shaped by violence and isolation. His solution to threats against his family wasn't to collaborate or communicate but to fabricate his own death, severing all connections to protect us through deception rather than partnership.
Exhaustion crashes over me suddenly, the emotional upheaval draining what little energy my pregnancy-taxed body contains. Leonid retreats tactfully as Zina helps me to bed, arranging pillows to support my unwieldy form. The day's revelations press against me as heavily as the babies themselves.
"Should I be happy or furious?" I ask her as she draws the curtains against the setting sun. "I don't even know what I'm feeling anymore."
"Be both," she suggests with the pragmatism that's sustained us through these difficult months. "He's alive, which is worth joy. He deceived us, and that deserves anger. You can hold both truths at once."
She leaves me to rest, understanding my need for solitude to process this revelation, but sleep remains elusive as my mind races through consequences and possibilities. If Mak is alive, what exactly has he been doing these past months? What danger necessitated such an elaborate deception? And most importantly, what happens when he returns?
As night falls, I’m drawn once more to the ocean-facing window. Despite Dr. Wilson's instructions for bed rest, I ease myself carefully into the window seat, needing the comfort of the familiar view. Waves crash against the shore in hypnotic rhythm, unchanged by the human drama unfolding nearby. I rest my hand on my belly, feeling the familiar patterns of movement from the lives who connect me irrevocably to Mak, whether he's dead or alive.
For the first time in months, I speak to our children about their father in present tense. "Your father is alive," I tell them softly, still adjusting to this new reality. "He's the most confounding, complicated, infuriating man I've ever known."
A particularly strong kick presses against my palm, as if in agreement with my assessment. I smile despite myself.
"He thinks he needs to protect everyone by himself. He makes unilateral decisions and expects everyone to fall in line." Another kick, this one gentler. "But he loves fiercely, and he's fighting for us in the only way he knows how."
The admission brings unexpected clarity. Mak's methods are questionable, but his motivation seems genuine, to create safety for his family by whatever means necessary. The deception hurts deeply, but I understand its roots in the violent world that shaped him. "And somehow, despite everything," I whisper to my unborn children, "I still love him."
The words settle over me with surprising lightness. Whatever happens next, whatever game Mak is playing with his apparent death and cryptic messages, these children will know the real man behind the myth—both his darkness and his capacity for love.
Whether he returns tomorrow or months from now, whether I forgive him instantly or make him work for redemption, he remains the father of my children, and the complicated man who claimed my heart despite every rational objection. It’s not blind forgiveness. It’s a choice, and a hard one at that. I choose to have him in my life when he returns, though I might kill him for real after I get done embracing him.