37. Taylor
TAYLOR
Mikhail stands on broken glass in front of me, staring at me as though I have spoken in a language he doesn’t understand. His face is completely still. Only his eyes move. They drop to my stomach, then return to my face, then drop again.
For one horrible second, I worry that he’ll do something to the baby, and I wrap my arms tighter around myself, shrinking farther into the corner.
The silence is so palpable that I can hear the crunching of the crystal under his loafers.
Finally, he asks, “How long have you known?” His voice is low. Careful.
My instinct tells me to lie. “Since this morning,” I whisper, even though I have known for over a week. My voice is hoarse from bile.
His eyes shift to Nikita on the ground. “You knew.”
It is not a question. Nikita lifts her chin. “Yes.”
Something hard enters his expression. “You concealed this from me.”
“For several hours,” she lies. “The empire survived.”
Mikhail looks back at me. “You were searching for flights.”
“I was looking.”
“To leave with my child.”
The words hit me like a slap. “Your child?”
His eyes narrow. “Our child is my child, kotik.”
“Don’t call me that like that.”
“Like what?” he asks, but he knows.
“Like—” I push past him, flinching at how much of my space he’s taking.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asks gently.
I gesture vaguely to the glass on the floor as I help his mother off the ground.
“You knew you were pregnant, and you were preparing to leave the country without telling me.”
“I was not preparing anything.”
“You were looking at flights.”
“I was scared. This is happening inside my body.”
“It is my child.”
“And I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“After you landed in America?”
“Maybe.”
“Mikhail,” Nikita warns.
He ignores her. “You are absolutely not going home now. You know that, right?” There it is.
Not concern. Not a question. A sentence.
A wall going up around me one brick at a time.
His control is beginning to crack. I can see it in the tension of his jaw, in the way his hand opens and closes at his side.
The room seems to shrink. I stare at him. “I’m not your property now.”
“I did not say that.”
“You didn’t have to. You don’t get to use this baby like a leash to keep me here, Mikhail.”
His expression darkens. “A leash. You think that is what I am doing?”
“I think your first response was to tell me I’m not allowed to leave.”
“This baby makes you a target.”
“Your world made me a target before the baby existed.”
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
“And I am trying to keep my life.”
His face hardens. “You speak as if I have taken it.”
“Haven’t you?” I ask. Nikita says my name softly, but I cannot stop now. Not after the flights. Not after his first instinct was no. “You decide where I sleep, who drives me, when I need a doctor, whether I can work, whether I can leave the country.”
“I never kept you from working,” he says defensively.
“No. You just told me that they would know where I worked and you could not keep me safe there and made the idea terrifying for me,” I accuse, my heart rate spiking so hard now I think my heart might fly out of my chest.
“I am keeping you safe. I want you here with me, I want my baby—our baby—here with me, and I want you healthy. You have been vomiting.”
“That happens when you’re pregnant.”
“I can monitor it here.”
I laugh. The sound is ugly. “Oh God, Mikhail, well of course you can.”
His eyes flash. “What would you prefer? That I ignore it?”
“I would prefer that you trust me to know when I need help.”
“You refused a doctor while visibly ill.”
“Because I knew what was wrong.”
“And chose not to tell me.”
“Because I knew you would do this.”
His expression twists. “Do what? Care?”
“Take over.”
He turns away from me, dragging a hand over his face. For several seconds, he says nothing. Then he looks back. “And my money?” he asks. “Is that a leash too?”
I frown. “What?”
“Do you think your family feels leashed by me now that they are out of debt?”
The floor seems to shift beneath me. “What did you do?”
“I paid for it. I bought your father’s restaurant.”
My ears ring. Nikita closes her eyes.
“You did what?”
“You were sending money you could not afford. The debt was crushing your family.”
“That is none of your business.”
“It became my business when it was hurting you.”
My hands begin to shake. “You went behind my back.”
“You refused my help.”
“So you did it anyway?”
“There was a problem I could solve.”
“And you solved it.”
“Yes.” He says it as though that should end the conversation.
“You think you are proving something right now saying this, don’t you?”
Uncertainty flashes across his face for just a moment. He looks at Nikita, then back at me. “You should be grateful.”
Nikita groans.
I ask, “Do you think of all people as territories you must control or is there anyone safe from you?”
“That is absurd,” he says.
“Is it?”
“I asked for nothing in return.”
“Just our undying gratitude, of course.” I step toward him now. “You make people owe you, and then you stand there acting like you did them a kindness.”
“I did do them a kindness. You would have struggled for months to accomplish what I did in a phone call.”
“My hero.”
He stares at me. “I protected your family.”
“You took them.”
His face changes. The anger returns, but beneath it is pain. “I have taken nothing from you.”
“You don’t know the difference between helping and taking.”
Pain and fear intermingle on his face. They hollow his expression and make him look suddenly older.
“Okay,” he concedes. The word catches me off guard.
He looks down for a moment, jaw tight, then back at me.
“Maybe I do not.” For once, there is no argument attached immediately afterward.
No correction. No explanation for why I am wrong.
Then his eyes drop to my stomach again. “But you do not understand what this means.”
He steps toward me, then stops himself before I can retreat. There is such naked wonder in his face that my chest aches despite everything.
“I understand pregnancy.”
“No. You understand the child. You do not understand what other people will see.” His voice lowers.
“They already know you matter to me. If they learn you are pregnant, there is no question. No uncertainty. You become leverage against me, and our child becomes leverage against both of us. I cannot protect you in America. You think people will not travel there to kill you just to hurt me, and you are wrong.” He repeats it quietly to himself. “Our child.”
Not ownership. Disbelief. Something precious and terrifying he has not yet figured out how to hold. His hand lifts slightly. He wants to touch me. I know he does.
But he lets it fall and leaves me there with his mother in the glass he shattered.