19. Sandrine
Sandrine
My fingers tremble slightly as they clutch Kirill’s phone, my pulse an erratic time bomb in my throat.
“That is certainly me,” I whisper in a weak voice, the words forcing their way through a dense resistance inside my chest. “Was me.”
The video ends with the devastating reality that I’m not that woman on the screen anymore. She looked comfortable in her own skin, like she knew exactly who she was.
There was no fear in her. No wavering. Only certainty.
Only love.
Someone took that woman away from me. From the man standing over me. From the child who called me Mommy.
Anger fires under my skin, but I keep it together.
Kirill watches me with a raw sadness, reliving those moments. What he lost is visible in the shadows behind his eyes. He had our daughter all these years. He didn’t have me.
“The last time I saw you,” he begins, his voice laced with control. “You were going to see your father. He’d been calling you. He found out you had the baby.” His jaw tightens, the muscle ticking beneath his skin. “I never saw you again after that.”
That simple statement breaks my heart, the edges blurring together with Lourdes’s words all those years ago. Stairs, a fall, a skull fracture that split my life in two.
I press my fingers to my temple, the echo of that pain ghosting through my brain.
My thoughts of a past that is now a lie feel thick and murky until my mind wraps around the here and now.
“Does Violet know?” I ask, my voice more urgent now. “That I’m her mother?”
Kirill exhales slowly, nodding. “Yes. But I smoothed it over. I’d been telling her you’re here, but that you’re sick.”
I hold back tears at the idea of a little girl, my little girl, going all these years without a mother. Like I went without mine. I know that pain. I close my eyes briefly, letting all this settle inside me.
Lourdes’s voice echoes again: You made these choices. You loved him. You kept it a secret from us.
“Was I a virgin when we…” The question slips out before I can stop it, awkward and raw.
An entire part of my life exists in a hazy shadow. My body lived in a way that I don’t remember.
Kirill stills, but his eyes soften at the edges. “Yes,” he says finally. “You were.”
I blink, realizing that means he’s the only man I’ve been with.
“But you weren’t.” I voice the obvious.
“No.” His gaze holds mine, steady and unflinching. “I knew you were the one for me the minute I laid eyes on you. Before you, sex was just release, Sandrine. You made it about pleasure. But I’ve not touched another woman since you left.”
That confession breaks something open inside me. Tears spill out in my cheeks before I can stop them, hot and immediate.
“You remember us,” I whisper. “But I don’t.”
He exhales and crosses the room to sit on the edge of the bed beside me. The mattress dips toward him under his weight.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, his tone gentler now, stripped of all the hate he’d thrown at me yesterday. “You had an accident.”
“But you’re still mad at me,” I say, because I can feel an edge woven through everything he says.
“I’m mad because I begged you not to leave that night.” His voice cracks, and he looks away, pinching the bridge of his nose. But then he exhales, turning his head back toward me. “But there was no way to know this would happen.”
I study him, the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands flex slightly against his knees, like he’s holding back a darker side of himself.
“What now?” I ask.
The past is clearer, but the future seems much further away.
He stands and adjusts his charcoal suit jacket. The shift to controlling mafia boss is immediate, and any softness he just felt disappears.
“You’ll see a doctor at Norridge tomorrow,” he says, his tone returning to formal and distant.
“If you need lifetime care, you’ll have it.
Medication, treatment, therapy, whatever is necessary.
” His gaze flicks back to me. “I accept you as you are. And our daughter will, too. I understand you will have moments of confusion and other sensitivities, but I expect you to be a mother to our child.”
I scoff at his cold terms and conditions that are not the start of a love story. We had that. And according to him, I ruined it. Because I still left my family.
For a moment, his flustered expression suggests he realizes he said the wrong thing.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“No. Say it.” I cross my arms. “You didn’t have any problem telling me that all you want me for now is to help you co-parent Violet.”
“That’s not all I want.” His gaze drops to my mouth for the briefest second before he looks back into my eyes. “I mean… It’s like I said, you’ll have everything you need.”
“And what do you need, Kirill?”
He just stares at me. Again, what Lourdes said to me keeps ringing in my ears. I chose Kirill. Lived with him. I married him. Had his baby. And planned forever with him.
Right until the day I left. But why did I go if he specifically told me not to leave? This part of the story is all he’s been left with for five years. I’m just catching up after two days.
“I need to run my brotherhood without family complications getting in the way.”
Ouch. I look away, shaking my head.
“You left these, too.”
I turn to see him reach into his pocket and pull out a velvet pouch, emptying it into his hand. Rings. The diamond engagement ring I recognize from the video. The other, a plain platinum band.
“I didn’t realize you left without these at the time. I found them in your jewelry box weeks later.”
My breath catches at how that makes me look guilty. He thought I left him on purpose. That I left my child.
Did I, though?
I look down and notice the wedding band on his left ring finger. “Did you wear that the whole time?”
“I was married the whole time, wasn’t I?” he says wryly.
“Was I living here?” I ask.
“We didn’t live here. This is my father’s home,” he says simply. “Iron Keep is the base of the Volkov Brotherhood Operations. After my father’s third stroke, I moved us here.”
Us: He and Violet. I’m not part of that. Yet.
“Where did we live?” I poke my chest. “You and me?”
“In my penthouse. Downtown. We shared a bed, Sandrine. We had a very satisfying physical relationship. We made love nearly every night. You couldn’t get enough of me. And I felt the same. We fucked right up until Violet was born. Then…not again.”
I blink in surprise. “Why not?”
He tilts his head at my interest. “She was three weeks old. You weren’t ready.”
“Oh,” I manage through those harsh reminders. “Do you want a sexual relationship with me again?”
“I need a son,” he deadpans, and a beat passes. “Maybe two.”
“You’re keeping me as your wife solely to give you more children?”
“I’m not the same man I was five years ago,” he admits. “I don’t know what I’m emotionally capable of.”
I let that settle in my chest. The rest of my life. No love. And sex just for procreation. I could refuse it all. Lourdes had said she and Ares could take me away from here.
But then I would be leaving my daughter. There is no way Kirill would give her up. And I doubt he’d agree to any shared custody.
I don’t want to know what that fight would look like. I don’t want to lose Violet before I even know her.
“And the daughter I did give you? My daughter that you kidnapped me for?” I ask, my voice steadier now. “When will I get to know her?”
“Let’s see what the doctors say tomorrow,” he replies, already moving toward the door. “And then we will take it slow for her sake.”
I watch him turn into another person. While the video played, I felt that same man was in the room with me. He’s gone now. The memory of our happy time gave way to an ugly outcome.
“I’ll send your dinner up here,” he continues, but emotion catches in his throat. “Please stay in this room. My daughter. I mean our daughter,” he corrects himself, “has free rein of this house.”
A small, unexpected smile forms on my lips at that. “You don’t restrict her?”
“No,” he says. “There are guards everywhere.”
“Will I have a guard?” I ask.
“Yes.” He leans against the doorframe again, arms crossed, ankles, too.
“I was given my father’s authority to lead as Pakhan months ago, Sandrine.
But I don’t just want Chicago. I’m broadening my reign from coast to coast. That means I’ll be traveling often.
I need you here to be a mother to my daughter.
I mean—” He catches himself again. “Our daughter.”
“If I’m to be a wife in name only, will you seek comfort elsewhere?”
He balls his hands into fists. He waited for one person. Me. “I don’t know.”
Head spinning, I only think to ask about one more thing. “I assume I’m allowed to have some kind of life other than child-rearing. Drawing and painting were part of my therapy. All my supplies are in Arizona.”
“I’ll get you new supplies.”
I do that jaw-tightening thing I’m learning from him.
“What?” he throws in my face.
“Nothing,” I respond, being a brat.
“Say it,” he mocks me, but there’s a hint of a smile.
“You can’t buy my acceptance of this situation.”
Nodding, he says, “So you want your things from Marlowe?”
“Yes. Please,” I say and drop my arms.
“Done.”
“And I can have a life?” I ask, pushing him. The pakhan. “Friends?”
“Yes,” he says. “So long as you don’t try to run away from me again, you’ll have no restrictions.”
“I didn’t run away,” I immediately counter, the words feeling like the truth.
He frowns. “I don’t know that. You don’t know that.”
I drop my gaze to my hands. He’s right. I don’t know for sure.
What’s in your heart is the truth.
Frustration and helplessness coil together inside me. “I don’t think I did,” I admit softly. “I just feel it.”
He studies me for a long moment, then says, “That’s a good start.”
“I could have more breakthroughs,” I say, feeling stronger. “The point of my therapy at Marlowe was to rebuild those pathways.”
“I’m sorry, Sandrine. I had no idea. You can thank your brother-in-law for that. I went to him in good faith. He insisted I would never see you again but didn’t tell me why.”
Kirill was as blindsided as I was.
“I didn’t know that either.” I exhale, but I can’t be mad at Lourdes and Ares.
“Fair enough. Have a good night.” He straightens, opening the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And then he’s gone.
The room feels differently without him. Whatever we shared in that video sits under the surface of his skin. He’s keeping it hidden. The immediate tension is gone, but there is also a vibe of constraint.
And somewhere in this house, there is a little girl who needs her mother. Needs me.
Somewhere in my past, there is a version of me who loved them both.
And that same person may or may not have left them.