25. ANDIE
When I wake the next morning, I do so with a start. For a second, I think that I’m back there, still locked up in that foul apartment that Max was keeping me in, but then I look around, and it all comes flooding back to me.
Nikolai’s rescue. His gun to Max’s head. The way he listened to me when I told him not to shoot his brother. And the way he took me into his arms and cleaned me and made me come until I couldn’t think of anything other than how glad I was to be back with him.
My memories of what came after that are a little hazy. I’m pretty sure he carried me to his bed, which is where I’m waking up now. I look around, reaching out to the warmth of the bed beside me where he must have slept the night right there at my side.
It’s the first time we’ve shared a room since we came back from Russia, and I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that he’s so determined to keep an eye on me, given how I slipped right out from underneath him.
My stomach grumbles loudly, and I realize that it has been way, way too long since I actually ate something.
I press my hands into my belly, offering a little apology to the baby to tell them that I’m going to do what I can to make sure they are provided for in any way I can.
I just need to find enough energy to get out of bed and go to the kitchen and?—
But then the door opens—and I find Nikolai standing there in the doorway, carrying a tray of food. My mouth starts to water as I catch the scent of eggs and bacon, orange juice and coffee perched alongside the plate, and I grin as he carries it over to me.
“I didn’t know you did personal deliveries,” I tease him lightly. “Breakfast in bed, huh? I could get used to this…”
He chuckles as he puts it down at the bedside table next to me. “Don’t get used to it,” he warns me. “I just wanted you to have something to eat, given that you fell asleep before you had a chance last night.”
“Oh, right, that’s what happened,” I mumble, rubbing a hand over my face as I begin to string it all together.
I’m distantly aware of the memory of him cradling me against his chest after he lifted me out of the bath, the thud of his heart against my head, the way my drowsy eyes drifted shut when he laid me down in that impossibly comfortable bed.
And now here he is before me, taking care of me, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.
He’s wearing jeans and a white tee, and it’s the first time I have seen him so…
dressed-down. It’s odd, seeing this side of him, but it’s a side of him I hope I get to see more of over the coming months.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, concerned, as I reach for the tray and pull it onto my lap.
“I’m…okay,” I admit. I’m exhausted, and my body aches, and I know that it will likely take me a few more meals to restore myself, but he doesn’t need to know all of that. I am here, with him, I am safe, and I don’t think anything else really matters.
“You’re sure?”
“I will be,” I reply gently, looking up at him with a slight smile before I tuck into the breakfast before me. I take a bite of the bacon and close my eyes. “Mmm, that’s so good,” I sigh. “Did you make this?”
“Did my best.”
“You’re not a bad cook,” I remark, grinning. “Marta teach you in Russia?”
“My mother did,” he replies, and suddenly there’s an edge of sadness to his voice that catches me off guard.
I frown at him slightly. He hasn’t mentioned his mother to me, and of course, I didn’t meet her when I was in Russia.
Now that I think of it, nobody brought her up to me at all, as though perhaps her memory is a sore spot none of them can stand to press on.
A bad divorce? A tragic death? I almost think of asking more, but he has been through enough these last few days as it is.
“Well, she did a wonderful job,” I tell him, and he glances away from me, the two of us falling into silence for a moment as I tuck into my breakfast. I’m pretty sure any food would taste perfect to me right now, but this? This is especially good, I have to admit.
Once I’ve taken a sip of my coffee—I’m pretty sure I am allowed one per day now that I’m pregnant, and I intend to enjoy every little sip—he suddenly speaks, eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that surprises me.
“Why did you ask me to spare him?”
I blink, taking a second to process what he’s asking me. “You mean…you mean Max?”
He nods. “With everything he threatened you with,” he continues, shaking his head, his voice dropping as though he can barely stand to say it out loud. “You…you would have been well within your rights to want to see that fucker dead. But you stopped me. You let him live. Why?”
I pause for a moment, staring down into my coffee. He deserves an explanation. I appreciate that he listened to me without having to know all the ins and outs of what drove my decision, but I guess it’s only fair that he hears some of them now.
“I…I know what it feels like to lose a brother.”
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t take his eyes off of me, as though trying to read what’s going on inside my head.
I draw in a deep breath, not even sure how I’m meant to go on.
I have hardly spoken to anyone about what happened with Chris, it’s just hitting me now.
In the years since his death, I kept it all to myself, throwing myself so deeply into work and putting on that game face of the woman who orchestrated the most beautiful, exciting weddings rather than acknowledging the aching grief that burns through every inch of me when I think of him.
“My brother and I, we didn’t have the best childhood,” I explain. “I was the oldest—my parents, they were addicts. Heroin. I think from the moment I was born, I knew on some level that I wasn’t going to see them live long, happy lives. They just didn’t have it in them to get clean…”
“You didn’t deserve that,” he tells me bluntly, and I shrug, forcing a small smile onto my face.
“I know we didn’t,” I agree. “No child does. But that’s not how it works, never has been. They were stupid with birth control, I guess because they were high all the time, and that meant that they…well, that Chris and I happened, I suppose.” I shake my head.
“But I loved him,” I continue. “I really did. And I would have done anything to keep him safe. We got out of that place—well, one of the many we lived in—when I was about seventeen, Chris was sixteen, and I…” I feel a lump leap into my throat.
Nikolai reaches out to touch my arm, and just the barest caress feels like all I need to coax me forward.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “I’m just not used to talking about all of this, I keep it to myself.”
“What happened to him?” he asks.
“He became an addict too,” I reply, tears pricking my eyes. “Like our parents. I don’t know if he just had that kind of gene in him or something, that it skipped me and went straight to him, but he got sick the same way they did.” I close my eyes.
“And it was so fast for him,” I go on. “So quick. By the time he was in his early twenties, that was it. I don’t think I could have pulled him out of it if I tried, and God, I really tried, Nikolai. I tried…”
I let out a sob, and it surprises me, the well of emotion that suddenly seems to threaten to overwhelm me.
I take a sip of the coffee, trying to gather myself as best I can, and he doesn’t speak, letting me pull myself together.
There’s something comforting about the quiet—him not rushing in to tell me that everything is okay, that I shouldn’t blame myself, that I’m not responsible for what happened to my brother, but allowing me to process my emotions at my own pace even when it must seem ridiculous to him.
“That’s why I started the business,” I explain.
“Because I wanted to be able to make enough money to get him into rehab. I thought if he could just hold on a bit longer, if I could just work a bit harder, that I would be able to make enough money that he wouldn’t have to be stuck in that mess anymore. Sometimes I feel like…oh,
if I had just been there for him a little more, and hadn’t been so caught up in work, I might have been able to be there for him when he—” I stop in my tracks.
The image flashes in my mind—I had to identify Chris’s body when he was brought into the morgue, as I was the only one who could do that, his few friends having long since fallen away as they couldn’t bear to watch him torture himself to death with that awful shit.
His face was peaceful, cold, waxy, eyes shut.
I touched his shoulder, felt the stark coldness of his skin, and it nearly made me throw up right there on the ground in front of him. Well, what was left of him.
I feel Nikolai’s hand on my cheek, and he draws my gaze to his. I cling to it as the only anchor I have in this wave of emotion, the gentle brush of his thumb against my cheek, as though he doesn’t want me to torture myself any longer.
“You couldn’t have done any more than you did,” he says.
I force a laugh. “How could you know? You weren’t there?—”
“Because I know you,” he replies firmly. “At least, that side of you. And I know you’re not the type to just roll over and take whatever is laid in front of you. I know he couldn’t have asked for anyone better as a sister as he was going through all of that mess. I’m certain of that.”
I lean my face into the palm of his hand. I am beyond grateful for his kind words, even if I don’t entirely believe them.
I’ve lived in that guilt and grief for so long that it has almost come to feel comfortable, and the thought that maybe I did actually do enough—that there really was nothing else I could have done to keep my brother from succumbing to the drug that consumed him and my parents—that’s a peace I
haven’t felt in a very, very long time.
“Thanks,” I murmur, and Nikolai caresses my cheek with his thumb before he draws his hand away, giving me a moment to pull myself together.
“But, yeah,” I continue, once I’ve managed to clear my head enough to speak again.
“That’s why I didn’t want you to kill Max. No matter what he did. I knew that you would never be able to forgive yourself, if you shot him in a moment of rage like that. Even if you never see him again, at least you’ll know he’s out there.
And at least you won’t have to live with the guilt of knowing that you took someone who was your own flesh and blood off this earth…”
He nods. “I think I get it now.”
“You do?”
He shrugs. “Enough that I think I made the right choice,” he replies. “Nearly.”
“Nearly?”
“He took my wife from me,” he reminds me. “Tried to take my child. It’s hard to think of him walking around with breath in his lungs.”
“You think he’s gone now?”
He nods again. “I had one of my men follow him out of the city,” he tells me.
“To make sure he didn’t try and stick around any longer than he should have. He had commands to shoot to kill if Max tried to sneak off somewhere else and lick his wounds, but he was out of there like a bat out of hell. Must have known that he was lucky to get out alive.
And that I might not be as merciful as you were if I found out that he had betrayed me.”
“Does your father know about it yet?”
“Unless Max has told him, no,” he replies.
“And how do you think he’s going to take it? You know, when you tell him?”
He sighs, pushing a hand through his silver hair.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I know this is going to hurt. No matter what, he loves both of us—I think he sees our mother in us, to be honest, and saying goodbye to any part of her is going to sting. But when he hears what Max did, he’ll see that I had no choice but to do what I did.”
“And what about…what about the baby?” I wonder aloud. “Have you told your father about that?”
A grin breaks over his face, and he shakes his head once more. “Not yet,” he replies. “But I know that’s going to make things a hell of a lot easier. Knowing that he has an heir. That’s what—” He stops himself in his tracks, and I cock my head at him.
“That’s what, what?”
He falls silent. I nudge him with my foot beneath the covers. “Come on, Nikolai,” I press him. “I told you what was on my mind. You have to tell me what’s on yours, right?”
That seems to make sense to him. I guess a businessman like him responds to a barter. He flicks a tongue over his lips, as though considering how best to put this into words before he comes out with it.
“That’s what he had been hoping for when I got married,” he explains.
“A new generation, to take over the business. That’s what he told me. But if you ask me, I think he just wants to make sure that I have children of my own. He always told me that Max and I were the best things that ever happened to him, and I know he didn’t want me to miss out on the same thing.
Hell, probably didn’t want to miss the chance to be a grandfather in his own right too…”
“A grandfather who’s a Bratva man,” I remark, shaking my head. “You think that’s going to be a problem?”
“Oh, I think he’s going to spoil our child in any way he can,” he chuckles.
“I doubt they’ll want for anything. And make no mistake, when he finds out that we’re going to have a baby, he’ll put security on us like you wouldn’t believe. Half of the Russian immigrants in this city are going to be paid off to keep us safe,
and he’ll rain down hell on anyone who dares cause us trouble.”
“Might help when we’re trying to get them into a decent kindergarten,” I joke, and he laughs.
“You’re kidding, but I wouldn’t put it past him,” he warns.
“So when are you going to tell him?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Once we’ve had a chance to confirm the pregnancy with a doctor, probably.”
“And when will that be?”
“You sound excited,” he remarks, grinning.
My cheeks flush slightly. “I am,” I admit. “I…I really, really am.”
He reaches out to lace his fingers through mine as he looks back at me. As simple as those words are, they are the beginning of a future for us, as unconventional and unexpected as it might look.
A future that I thought might have been stolen from me—and a future that, now, I am going to enjoy every moment of.