Chapter 27 Gabi
GABI
I walk into the bathroom, Katya and Irisha already two steps ahead, plug the tub, and reach for the bubble bath. I quietly exhale a breath. I’ve been on pins and needles since Ivan left me with Yuri and somehow, him just being here makes me breathe easier.
“Thank you for earlier today.” Milana’s voice comes from behind me. “I needed that.”
I straighten and meet her gaze. I give her a soft smile and a squeeze on the shoulder. “It’s nothing. Any time, really, if you feel like talking…”
She sucks her lip with a nod, and for a second, I sense she wants to escape, not wanting to help with the girls’ bath, but then she sinks down on the edge and helps Irisha with her clothes.
I test the water with my wrist and, happy it’s the right temperature, pour in a good dose of bubble bath. I help Katya undress as the tub fills up. With the layer of bubbles quickly building up, the girls are eager.
It’s quiet between me and Milana, and I’m grateful the girls are unaware of the strain between us as they chatter along. I heave Katya into the water and sit down on the rim to watch over them.
Irisha patters her feet, pointing at the bubbles with an excited giggle. “There’s so much of it!”
“It’s the only way to do it.” I still remember the joys of a tub filled to the brim, the pure innocence of it, how I was also just a girl this age once.
“In you go,” Milana says as she lifts Irisha up by her armpits. “Ooof, Irisha, I never thought you’d grown to be this big when you were born, tiny little bean that you were when you were born.”
“She was tiny?” I ask, curious to learn everything about Ivan’s daughters. They are definitely on the smaller side for their age.
“Premature, both of them,” Milana says as she takes a plastic cup to pour water over Irisha’s back.
“Premature?” I say, frowning in surprise. “How much?”
“Oh, God, born at seven months, both of them. Darya couldn’t carry them to full term what with her habits in tow.”
Habits. She’d mentioned something today about how their mom used to drink. We shouldn’t talk about the girls’ mom like this in front of them, but they are playing together with the bubbles and bath toys, in their own world.
“Just drinking?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation vague.
Milana snorts. “If only.” She makes the classic sniffing gesture while pressing her one nostril closed, then tosses imaginary pills down her throat.
“Started with the one and hopped over to the other. Drank to disguise the bigger problem. In the end, she probably used everything she could get her hands on. What do they say? Variety is the spice of life.”
My stomach turns. “Not while she was pregnant, though?”
The horror of it, being so irresponsible toward her unborn babies, their suffering…and Ivan, having to deal with that.
Milana nods, and my blood curdles.
“It was kept under wraps. Ivan tried his best to get her clean and keep her that way, but you know, men can be so blind. They don’t see the obvious thing in front of them.”
“Surely, he realized?” And once he had, he would have helped her, taking care of his wife even more than in anything and everything.
“Yes, but it was too late. She started using in Russia, and when you get to know someone while they’re high, with them knowing how to hide their habit, it seems like it’s just the way they are.
Their wedding was rushed, and when she came here, she had trouble adapting.
One thing led to another. I knew, our stepmom knew, even participated…
but Ivan was busy at work, gone for days, and slower to catch on.
It didn’t matter; he was already trapped in their arranged marriage.
There was no stepping away from it. Divorce wasn’t in the cards, either, not with the deal behind their marriage. ”
The Bratva sounds about as maniacal as the Mafia. Ivan is trapped with duties as the Pakhan, just as Matteo is trapped as Il Consiglio’s Don. We’re all birds in cages.
“Why would he have had two children with her—and the girls are so close together—if she was…you know…”
Milana shrugs. “He didn’t know when she fell pregnant the first time.
It happened so fast. Turned out she wasn’t getting clean for anybody, and well, you know how it goes.
Ivan needs sons. This—” she waves at the room encompassing the house, the compound, the Petrov Bratva, “—needs sons. These angels are going to need protection. It’s the way of our worlds. Surely, you know that.”
She meets my gaze, and again, there’s this quiet understanding. This morning’s mess and now this conversation are breaking down some of the wall between us, and I love this softer, gentler side of her. She seems calm now, if defeated. It’s almost as if we’re friends.
Katya is building a foam animal puzzle, and I help her fish out the next piece lost in the bubbles.
“I’m surprised he agreed to marry her at all, but I suppose he didn’t have a choice,” I say eventually. “He doesn’t strike me as the type who would choose someone less than perfect.”
“Oh, you already have him on a pedestal, don’t you?” Milana says with a soft chuckle. “He tends to do that to women, but trust me, Ivan is… Ivan is what he needs to be. Cruel. Ruthless. Calculated.”
And yet, I haven’t experienced any of that with him. Ivan has only been kind and considerate to me, tender as if I were a fragile bird with a broken wing.
My brothers are caring, loving, and somewhat overprotective of their wives, as is Dominic with Ariana, but what do I know of who they are outside of the close-knit family circle?
Nothing. They’ve only been good to me, if I’m honest, looking after me as if we weren’t strangers at all, but I’m under no illusion that they don’t have their vices or haven’t done things that will chain them to Hell for all eternity.
“I bet my brothers are who they need to be, too.” Although I can’t label any of them as cruel or ruthless right now. This is the world we live in, and I’m not here to judge. “I’m just surprised she would… you know…end herself when she had these two beautiful girls to live for.”
It breaks me to think they weren’t enough—that Darya was so deeply lost, she couldn’t pull herself out of addiction for her daughters’ sake. But what do I know? It’s not as if I’ve ever had any experience with drugs.
“That’s what you think happened? She ended herself?” Milana repeats my words, an elegant brow quirked.
“What else?”
“Tsk-tsk-tsk.” She just shakes her head at me. “I see now you didn’t grow up with your brothers, in the Mafia. With your real father. How nice to have been in a convent where everything is cozy and safe.”
What does that even mean? She knows as little of my experiences as I know of hers.
Irritation grates at me because Milana has no clue.
She’s the princess here. As for me…cozy and safe?
More like hunted, scarred, owned. I don’t even want to dissect this.
I don’t want to talk about my past, so I steer the conversation back to her.
“Where were you when the girls were born?”
“I was a student at Juilliard, but I spent time in Russia on and off all my life. I was there a lot at that time, during the summers the girls were born.” She grows quiet, and when I next glance at her, she’s sniffing and wiping at her cheeks.
“Let’s not talk about Russia. Let’s talk about you. How many brothers do you have?”
Safe territory, at last, with a topic that isn’t riddled with potholes. “Five. They’re all older than me.”
“So you see, your family is sorted. I bet they’re all married with kids of their own. I’m surprised you’re not needed in your own family, helping out with nephews and nieces.”
I still. There will be children in the Scalera family, probably sooner than we think.
I’m here because I’m protecting them. I will never be part of my family, not in the sense Milana could be, and it makes jealousy and regret stir in me.
Here she has these two beautiful girls who need a mother, and she basically shoved them to the side for reasons I don’t understand, not now, maybe never.
I’m planning to put as much distance as humanly possible between me and my brothers, their wives and children.
“No kids yet, but two of them are married, and one is in a serious relationship.”
“I see.”
It grows quiet between us, pensive, and Katya glances up at me, splaying all her fingers over the puzzle. “Look, it’s finished.”
“That’s very well done, sweetheart. Can I wash your hair now?” I ask, reaching for the shower head.
“Tryápochka!”
I smile and reach immediately for the face cloth on a close-by rail and hand it to her. Katya plasters it on her face. “Ready!”
“Dip your head back,” I say, reaching for the faucet, and she complies.
“Tryápochka?” Milana says quietly.
My hand stills.
My heart starts to hammer.
Katya’s request. Tryápochka. It’s not exactly a word used in basic everyday conversation.
Milana’s eyes are on me, burning, and in the quiet of the moment, the tension balloons, as tight as a suspension bridge at snapping point.
In one split-second, I gave my secret away.
In one weak moment of being too comfortable with Milana, I let my guard down. If she guesses that I understood Katya’s request—not exactly a simple word or one used in basic everyday conversation—then I’m screwed.
Nervously, I shift in my seat, my fingers quivering as I open the faucet, not wanting to look at Milana and read her reaction.
If I ignore the slip, she might not pick up on it, but even my body is treacherous and giving me away now.
I get busy with washing Katya’s hair using the hand shower, waiting for Milana to say something—anything.
“Day mne shampun, ya pomoyu Irisha golovu.” she says softly.
It isn’t menacing, but still, the words dance a trail of goosebumps down my back. Her gaze dares me to challenge her, making as if I don’t understand a word she just said.
Pass me the shampoo, I’ll wash Irisha’s hair.
I could play dumb, but for how long? She’s on to me now, and she’ll catch me out again. Even worse, she’ll toy with me in front of Yuri or Ivan until I expose myself.
My fingers fumble for the shampoo, and it plops in the water, but Milana leans down and fishes it out of the bubbles. For a good five minutes, it’s just the girls being busy playing, us washing their hair, me secretly freaking out and trying to stay calm. Milana holds all the cards.
I’m clueless as to how she’s going to play this. Conversation has dried up completely between us, and I still have so many things to ask but don’t dare. Bottom line: I understand Russian and have been lying about it.
We have the girls wrapped in towels, and they are waddling to the chest-of-drawers that holds their pajamas in one corner of the bigger bedroom.
We help them get dressed to speed things along, and then I just stand there, sand in my mouth, as I brush Katya’s hair with trembling hands. The silence stretches.
Milana puts Irisha’s hairbrush down on top of the drawers. “Go find some stories to read, girls,” she says to them in Russian, and I avert my gaze, having been reduced to nothing but a waiting body, ready to accept whatever cruel, ruthless, and calculated retribution Ivan’s sister has in mind.
But she pulls me gently to the side, out of the girls’ earshot where they are going through the books on Ivan’s nightstand.
“So, this is what you mean by running? All that experience of getting away when you need to get out?” she whispers. “But you’re not a spy. You’re too fucking terrible at it.”
I bite my lip, legs weak as I shake my head. Me? A spy? Dominic did want me as a plant here, but we’d never stretch it that far.
“You know,” she carries on. “My dad always said, ‘Don’t fight the cage, you’ll only hurt yourself.
Learn how to work the cage, then, you let it work for you.
’” She leans closer, looking me in the eye.
“I’m not sure what you’re doing here. I mean, I could guess, and I should warn Ivan, but you’re not here to hurt him, are you? ”
It isn’t a threat, but it’s as if I’ve stumbled upon a snake that’s reared up, calculating if I’m worth the effort of a bite and the release of its precious venom.
“No, never!” I whisper back urgently.
She grabs my wrist, fisting it so tight, I flinch. “So it’s worse? You’re here to hurt the girls? To arrange for their kidnapping? To traffic them?”
The world seems to turn upside down. Doesn’t she know? There’s no way she could know I’ve been trafficked as a girl.
“No!” I’m horrified she could even think this about me. What I went through changed me forever, and I don’t wish that on anybody. “I’m here to help with the girls, honestly. As their nanny. They need me.”
She keeps staring at me, icy blue eyes searching for the lie in my words. Eventually, she lets go of my wrist, and I wrap my hand around it, shocked at the force of her grip.
“I’m not sure what deal Ivan has made with your brothers—”
“There’s no deal. I pushed to come here. I have my own reasons to have distance between me and my brothers.”
She slowly starts to shake her head. “Stop pretending to be so fucking naive, Gabriella. I’m on to you now.”
“Honestly, I—”
“Shush,” she hisses. “Like me, you’re just a pawn, and you’ve been moved into this position.
Now, we’re going to play them at their own game.
I’m not sure what their bigger plans for you are, or what you think you’re doing here, or how the hell you’re going to get out when you want to, but I tell you this now, once, and only once: you can’t run until you’ve helped me get the hell out of here. ”
She leans in, her sweet tone somehow sickly menacing. “Until then, your secret is safe with me. Who knows what Ivan will do to you if he finds out you’re just another Darya, here to fuck him over.”