Chapter 30
EVGENY
My anger drains out of me, sudden and complete.
Thin light from the open window washes over the bed and over Eva.
She’s asleep and doesn’t stir even when the door closes with a soft click.
Her hair is a mess, and a bandage covers a knot on her forehead, already blue and purple.
Her left arm rests in a sling. She’s hooked up to an IV.
The heart monitor beeps slow and steady.
Eva is pale, and she looks so fragile in the oversize hospital bed. Beneath the gown and thin blanket, the rounding of her stomach shows through. I’m at her bedside before I’ve even finished thinking about crossing the room.
Even with her bruise. Even with the evidence of the enormous secret she kept from me, the IV, the messy hair, the hospital gown under fluorescent light that makes her luminous skin look sallow. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I’ve gone two months without seeing the woman I love, two months without hearing her voice, seeing the way her laughter lights up her eyes. I haven’t felt her touch, except in my dreams and memory, or held her in my arms, where she fits perfectly against me.
And now, not just one but two children grow beneath the swell of the blanket. It’s all I can do not to reach down and rest my hand over that spot, to feel what Eva and I created together.
Twins.
Unexpected, unfamiliar emotion burns at my eyes, tightens my chest, rises in my throat, and steals my breath so my next one is a gasp.
Eva’s eyes flutter at the sound as I try to master my emotions. When they open fully, she looks at me, her gaze unfocused and hazy, before they snap wide.
“Eva—” I start, but tears suddenly glimmer in her eyes, then spill over and slide down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and the raw anguish in her voice shocks me.
I came in expecting fire, anger, shouting, even seething hatred. I didn’t expect Eva to crumble.
“I’m sorry.” Her sobbing apology is muffled by the thin hospital blanket she pulls over her face to hide her tears. “I’m so sorry.”
It breaks my heart to hear the pain in her voice, to see her in this bed, to see the fire gone from her eyes. She must think I hate her, that I’m angry and that I blame her.
But everything I was feeling has disappeared in the face of the revelations in this room today.
The mattress dips as I sit as close to her as I dare, and for a time the only sounds are the patter of rain on the window, the beep of the heart monitor, and Eva’s quiet crying.
“Eva.” I say her name quietly, gently, and lay my hand on her shoulder. This is one of the few times I have no idea how to fix a situation, though I so badly want to. All I can do is hope my presence and touch let her know I’m here for her.
Except her sobs only get louder, and I almost take my hand away when words start pouring from under the blanket.
“Everything is so wrong. I messed everything up. Jordan is dead because of me. My father won’t even acknowledge I exist. Katie and Marco miss you. I miss you. I didn’t tell you about the twins. I’ve lost everything—”
I can’t stand it any longer and pull the blanket from her face so I can draw her into my arms. As gently as I can, I hold her tight while she curls into me, her tears wetting my shirt.
“Hush,” I tell her, the word my mother used to whisper to me at night. “Hush, Eva. It’ll be okay.”
The only thing I want is to make things okay for her again, no matter what it takes.
She fists her good hand in my shirt and curls her legs under her body until she’s fully turned into my chest. And wonder of wonders, I can feel the swell of her stomach against me.
“I swear, I’ll make it okay,” I tell her. I tell the babies in there, holding her even more tightly. It’s not just words, not just a wish, it’s a promise. An oath as sacred as the one I took to become pakhan. “Everything will be okay, Eva. I’m here.”
I hold her until her sobs quiet to occasional hiccups, and she wipes at her face with her palm. I reach over for tissues.
“Damn it, I’m such a mess,” she mutters, scrubbing at the tear tracks and mascara until her skin is red. Then she rakes her fingers through her hair, catching on knots still stuck together with dried blood.
“You’re beautiful, Eva.”
When her eyes meet mine, confusion flickers there, and I chuckle again, cupping her cheek. With my thumb, I wipe away the last tear at the corner of her eye and lean forward to press a kiss to the unbruised side of her forehead.
“You will never be anything but beautiful to me, Eva.”
She sinks her top teeth into her bottom lip, a faint flush of shame coloring her cheeks. “You’re not mad I didn’t tell you about my pregnancy?”
“I’m not mad. Disappointed, I suppose, but not angry. Shock is another word I could use.” My wry smile doesn’t earn one in return.
Instead, Eva bites her lip harder, and I see another shimmer of tears. “I’m so sorry, Evgeny. I just… my life is such a wreck. I’m such a wreck, and I—”
“You thought I had something to do with your brother’s death.”
A tear slips down Eva’s cheek, and she nods as her gaze drops to the blanket. She works her fingers in and out of the stiff weave.
“Don’t look away from me, Eva. We both have important things to say to each other. Never look away.” Hooking my finger under her chin, I bring her back so she meets my gaze.
“I know you aren’t the reason he’s dead.” Her voice is small, miserable, and she tears at the tissues balled up in her hand. “I’m sorry I ever believed you were. I was so lost in my grief and my anger at myself—”
“Eva.” At the frost in my voice, her gaze snaps back to me.
“I want you to remember this, and I mean it, you did not kill your brother. It was not your fault. Someone out there, and I’m looking for the asshole, pulled the trigger. He was on a bad path, Eva, and you did everything you could to get him out.”
“I told him that morning I was done with him.” The words spill out in a teary rush.
“I told him I was done if he wasn’t going to help himself.
I’d just found out I was pregnant, and I was so overwhelmed and feeling sick, and he wouldn’t listen to me.
And the last thing he heard me say was that I was giving up on him. ”
Eva claps a hand to her mouth, choking on another sob. When I pull her back into me, my fingers knotted in her hair, she shakes against me.
Then she pulls away with a small intake of breath.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Should I call a nurse?” I’m already reaching for the call button hanging off the side of her bed.
“No.” Eva shakes her head. “It’s one of the babies, or both. I don’t know. I just started feeling them about a week ago.”
“Can I feel?”
“They’re just little flutters right now. They’re not big enough yet to kick me like you see in the movies.”
“Oh.” I look down at the swell in her stomach between us. “I suppose I know nothing about pregnancy.”
“Join the club.” Eva laughs, and I see more of her usual spark slipping back into her eyes. “Talk about a steep learning curve. Although I guess having twins will be even steeper.”
“You’re keeping them, then?”
The thought had crossed my mind that Eva might put them up for adoption, she has enough on her plate already.
“I am.”
Her words are soft, warm, tender, and she curls her hand over her belly protectively.
On impulse, I rest my hand over hers and half expect her to pull away. And she does at first, then she smiles at me and sets her hand over mine again. The swell of her stomach presses against my palm, warm and round, the skin pulled taut over the place our children sleep.
Our children.
I can only stare down in wonder at the place the four of us connect.
And I know, in that moment, I will be in our children’s lives in whatever way Eva will have me.
I will do everything in my power to protect the three of them, make them happy in any way I can, and make this world safe for them to live in.
“Eva, I—” My voice is rough, gravelly, thick with emotion I have to swallow before I can speak again. “Eva, come stay with me. Please. I will take care of you while you’re pregnant. Give you anything you need. Make sure you’re safe. Please. I need to know you, all of you, are safe.”
The desire to see them safe rises until it fills every part of me.
A shadow passes over Eva’s expressive face, and there’s a plaintive note in her voice as she asks, “Just while I’m pregnant?”
“No, Eva. Not just while you’re pregnant.” I cradle her cheek again, mindful of the scratch on the side of her face. “I want you to stay forever if you’ll have it. Have me. I want us to be a…”
A family.
Never once had I entertained the idea of a family beyond my Bratva.
Family, a wife, children, were not part of my destiny.
Only success, power, and money. But now?
Now I can see Eva by my side, the ring on her finger showing the world how much she is mine.
I can see our twins playing in the yard or on the beach, where we’d have to put up a wall to keep them away from the sea cliff.
I can see warmth, laughter, light, and even love.
All the things I never imagined, never thought I wanted, never believed I deserved, but now need so desperately.
“Come stay with me, Eva. Don’t leave my side. Please.”
“I’ll stay.” She smiles at me, warmth and, dare I name it, love in her dark eyes. “I won’t leave.”
I dip my head, capture her lips softly with my own, then press my forehead against hers. “I love you. You’re all I need. You’ve become a part of me I didn’t know I needed, and I can’t imagine living without you.”
I have lived without her, and it was hell.
“I love you, too,” she murmurs, and the words reverberate through me, turning my world on its head.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I slip off my suit jacket and shoes, then slide into the bed beside her.
She curls up against me, her head on my shoulder.
I cradle her and our twins, mindful of her sling-bound arm.
And for a moment, as Eva slips into sleep, her breathing slow and even, her warmth pressed along my side, everything is right with the world.
The heart monitor beeps evenly, the rain patters on the window, and the closed door muffles an announcement and the Christmas music in the hallway.
Silence lets the anxiety slip in, the old trauma that has warned me away from anything like this.
“Please,” I pray to anyone and anything listening. “Don’t take them from me.”
Love may have found me, but I’m not some guy working at a bank and coming home every night.
I’m the pakhan of the Kucherov Bratva, and as my mother, father, and I learned, that puts everyone I love in danger.
Vasya, Dmitri, the other vor, and the men of the Bratva chose this life knowingly. Willingly.
But Eva is choosing me, not that life, and I will do everything in my power to keep them, Eva and our children, from harm.
Mine.
They are mine, and I will protect them. No matter the cost.