26. NIKOLAI
I drum my fingers on the table as I wait for my father to pick up, ready to hear his voice down the other end of the line. After all that has happened, I know I need to explain myself—and I can only imagine how hard he will take the news of what has happened with my brother.
It takes a few moments for him to take my call, but as soon as I hear his voice, I begin to un-tense. I might be a grown man in my own right now, but there’s still a comfort in knowing that my father is just a phone call away.
“Dosvedanya,” he greets me, clearly distracted. He only speaks Russian to me when his mind is somewhere else entirely, having taught Max and me English by speaking it in the house for as long as I can remember.
“Hello, Dad.”
“Ah, Nikolai!” he greets me, and I hear the creak of his chair as he leans back, as though glad to hear my voice. “And how are you keeping? Settling into life with your new wife, I hope?”
I hesitate before I answer. He doesn’t know.
Not yet. I’ve been putting off the part where I have to come clean to him, not wanting to shatter his heart with the revelation of what my brother has done.
But I have to think of my child now, as well as Andie, and I’m sure he will understand that as clearly as I do.
“Dad, there’s something I have to tell you.”
He falls silent. He can tell from the tone of my voice that this is a matter of great importance.
Has he noticed that Max is gone, does he know that it is to do with him?
He’s not stupid, he must have some sense that his other son was not pleased with how the division of our assets turned out, and when he took his trip to America, that he might seek me out to make things right.
“Is it about Max?”
I sigh. “Yes. Yes, it is…”
I can hear the resignation in his voice, and I know at once that he has some sense of everything that went down. He might not want to believe it, might have lived in denial that his own son would be capable of something like that, but there is no denying the truth.
“What did he do?” he asks, voice tightening, as though to force out the emotion.
I gather myself for a moment before I reply—but then I launch into it, every detail.
I don’t hold back a single thing, not what he planned to do with Andie, not how he drugged her and stole her away, not how he locked her up and threatened her.
I don’t make mention of the pregnancy yet, not wanting this to be how he finds out—and besides, I need to hold some good news back, given the pain of everything I’m hitting him with right now.
When I’m done, silence fills the air between us.
I wish I could be there with him now, to try and help him through the excruciating weight of everything that he’s hearing.
I’m not yet a father, and I can only imagine the searing pain of knowing that your own son has not only committed such an evil act, but has done it against his own brother.
“And I made it clear to him that if he set foot back in America, I would not be so merciful,” I add. “He left the country last night. I don’t know where he went, if he tried to return home, but?—”
“I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since he left,” my father replies.
His voice is measured, careful, as though intent not to give away more than he wants to.
“He told me he was planning to spend some time in Europe—I had no idea he was going to America, let alone that he was looking for you and Andrea…”
He trails off. I can hear the guilt in his voice, the blame he’s piling on himself realizing that he didn’t do more to stop it.
“You couldn’t have known,” I assure him. “I know you would never have let him even think of something like that.”
“Never,” he replies sharply. “You know how seriously I take the matter of family, son, and he—he disrespected that. And he’ll pay for it.”
“How?”
I wonder, briefly, if my father will do what Andie kept me from doing—if he will kill him, his own boy. But then he speaks again, swiftly making himself clear.
“He’ll be excommunicated from the Bratva,” he replies. “No protections. Any trouble he gets himself into, he’ll have to manage on his own. Effective immediately. I’ll send the memo out now.”
I breathe a long sigh of relief. I knew my father was going to take my side, but hearing it from him so directly is a weight off my shoulders I didn’t even know I was carrying.
I can hear the hurt in his voice, of course, the pain of having to give up on one of the sons that he has poured so much of his life into raising and crafting into the kind of man he can be proud of.
But betrayal doesn’t fly in this world, regardless of who it comes from.
Blood is no thicker than water, not when blood commits an act like that.
He falls silent for a moment, and when he speaks again, his voice is thick with emotion.
“Your mother always said to me that Max was going to be…that he was going to cause trouble, out of the two of you,” he tells me.
I tense. He rarely speaks about my mother, the weight of her loss still heavy on his shoulders. But now, with just the two of us left here in our family, I suppose it only makes sense to reflect on those members no longer with us, one way or another.
“She did?”
“She had a good eye for these things,” he remarks. “That was why I always kept her so close to the business, you know. She could see through anyone, could tell what anyone’s motivations were at a glance. I just—” He clears his throat heavily.
I don’t speak, not wanting to cut off his memories of her. I know how hard it must be for him to speak about her, given how we lost her, but it feels like something of a salve to know that she has not been forgotten.
“I should have done more to keep her safe,” he replies. “You take care of Andrea, don’t you, Nikolai?”
“Of course,” I reply. “If it wasn’t for her, Max wouldn’t have lived long enough to get out of the country.”
“She has a good sense about her,” he remarks. “And she’s kind. Fine qualities for a wife.”
I take a deep breath. This seems like as good a time as any to just come out with it.
“Or a mother.”
For a second, he doesn’t say a word, processing the enormity of what I’ve just told him.
“A mother…?”
“She’s…she’s pregnant, Dad. Andie’s pregnant.”
I hear him suck in a sharp breath. “She’s pregnant? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I know I should wait until we’ve had a chance to confirm it with the doctor, but I know he needs something to hang on to right now—some reminder that the family is not whittling down to nothing, even with the loss of Max.
“Nikki, that’s wonderful news!” he exclaims, so loudly I have to draw the phone away from my ear for a moment.
I chuckle. “I thought you’d be pleased. An heir for your empire, eh?”
“Oh, that will come when they’re old enough,” he replies. “But a grandchild—I’ll be a grandfather…”
He continues to speak, rattling through all the ways he will pamper this child of mine—I can already tell they’re going to be spoiled, but hey, I guess that’s what grandparents are for.
I barely had a chance to know mine, and despite my father’s age, I know I will do everything I can to make sure that my children have a chance to get to know the older generations of their bloodline.
To make sure they understand that their lineage stretches back and forward, that they’re part of an expansive whole.
“How do you feel about it?” he asks me finally, once he has finished rushing through everything that’s on his mind.
I blink—for a moment, I’m slightly caught off guard by the question.
I’ve been so focused on making sure that Andie is safe that I’ve hardly had time to ponder what my life will be like as a father.
For so long, the idea of an heir has been an abstract one; one that I will fulfill so I can ensure that this business has somewhere to go when the time comes.
But now, it’s real. Concrete.
It’s the baby taking shape deep inside Andie right now, the tiny life that’s flickering awake.
“I’m looking forward to meeting them,” I reply. It’s the truth. A whole person, half me, half Andie, who will be shaped by the kind of life that we give them. It’s a huge responsibility, but I know that the payoff will be worth it.
“You’ll be a good father,” he remarks to me. “You’ve got the patience for it.”
I chuckle. “I’m not sure about that.”
“Well, you’ll have to, if you want to make it through the early months,” he chuckles. “I still remember how you terrorized your mother and me, not sleeping through the night…” His voice takes on a tinge of nostalgia. “You’ll bring them here to meet me, won’t you? The little one?”
“Of course I will.”
It’s a promise I’m certain I will be able to keep, even if I haven’t discussed it with Andie yet. She seemed to really take to my father, and judging by what she told me about her own upbringing, it doesn’t surprise me that she felt so welcomed by his presence.
“Good,” he replies. “They need to know where they came from. And Russia is a beautiful country, even more beautiful to a child’s eyes. I’ll take them to the house in the mountains for Christmas, that way they can see the snow on Christmas morning…”
As he rambles, I smile, listening to him filling his head with ideas about how he’s going to indulge his grandchild.
There is hope for us, despite it all. Despite what Max did, despite the absence of my mother, despite the losses we have suffered.
It might not be how either of us had imagined our lives would unfold, but there’s still joy to be found there, no matter what.
I bid him farewell to leave him to take care of the matter of Max’s excommunication, and I sit for a moment at my desk in the silence, pondering how I wound up here. When I insisted on Andie joining me at the end of the aisle on our wedding day, I never could have imagined that it would end up here.
Hell, I never thought she’d stick around long enough to make it this far—I only intended to keep the humiliation of being abandoned at the altar from reaching the kinds of people who would use it against me.
But she has stayed. She came to Russia with me, met my family, made herself at home in the world that I have been part of my entire life. And even when we came back to America and she found herself frustrated by the way I protected her, she stayed.
And she’s back here now, asleep in the next room, draped across my bed as she rests after all she has been through.
The way she called my name through the door when she heard me busting into that apartment that Max kept her in, I know she couldn’t have faked that—a need for me that goes deeper than I ever imagined it would.
There’s still so much she doesn’t know about me.
So much that she deserves to, I’m sure of that.
Now that she’s pregnant, now that our bond has deepened beyond the point that it can ever be broken, she deserves to hear it, to be able to fill in all the blanks in any way she wants to.
She has opened up to me about what she went through, how it shaped the kind of person she has become, and if she’s willing to hear it, I want to give her the same.
“Hey.”
I glance up to see her leaning in the door, head resting against the frame, still a little sleepy. Her hair is a mess, her face still creased from the pillow, but she’s smiling. God, she looks so fucking beautiful like that, this delicate, intimate side of her that she chooses to show me now.
“You want something to eat?” she asks, nodding through to the kitchen. “I was going to give some breakfast a go, if you want to risk it…”
I grin, rising to my feet. “Let me help you,” I reply, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her against me. I brush my lips lightly along her temple, and she leans into me for a moment, slightly surprised by my sudden affection.
“What’s all this for?” she laughs, and I shake my head, looking down at her.
“A man can’t kiss his wife good morning?”
She cocks her head to the side, looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” she replies, shaking her head. “Just…getting used to being someone’s wife, that’s all.”
And with that, she leads the way to the kitchen, and I follow. I know exactly what she means. We might have been married for a few months now, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to truly feel like a husband to her.
And it’s a sensation I never want to let go of.