28. NIKOLAI
When I eventually coax her out of bed, I take Andie through to the kitchen and help her hop up onto the counter as I set about cooking some breakfast.
It has become our routine since she returned here—spending the morning together, those slow, lazy starts to the day that seem to make everything that comes after a little easier.
And besides, I know that there’s nobody else I would want to spend my mornings with.
Since she has been back here with me, it’s like a weight has lifted from my shoulders—that desperate urge to protect her has eased slightly, as counter-intuitive as that sounds, because I’ve proved to myself that I will be able to protect her if anything does happen to her.
There’s a relief in that, a comfort in knowing that I’m capable of standing against anything that might pose a threat to her, even if that threat comes in the form of my own brother.
“What are you making?” Andie asks, as she peers into the pan.
“Shakshuka,” I reply, as I crack another egg into the spicy tomato sauce bubbling on the stove. “Good for energy.”
“Well, we’ll need it, after how you just woke me up,” she teases lightly.
I grin. Yeah, I’ve been having a hard time keeping my hands off of her, if I’m being honest.
Not that I feel any guilt about it, given that she is my wife.
I swear I never believed in the pregnancy glow before her, but now, every time I wake up next to her, it’s like her body is just calling out to me, begging to be touched exactly the way she likes.
She pauses for a moment, looking down into the pan. When she speaks again, her voice has taken on a more careful tone, like she’s all too aware that she might be skirting too close to a sensitive spot.
“Did your mother teach you to make that too?”
I freeze for a moment, still holding the spoon, the bubbles popping on the surface of the sauce.
I don’t know what to say. If I should say anything at all.
I have hidden the truth of what happened to my mother from her, and for good reason—I didn’t want to terrify her with the possibility of what she could be faced with if she was part of our world.
But I can feel her curious eyes burning into mine as she searches for an answer, and I remember what I told myself the other day, when I had just come off that call with my father—that she has been honest with me, and I have to do the same to her if I want to earn her trust.
I nod. “She did,” I reply, and I reach to turn off the stove, leaving the eggs to finish cooking in the residual heat. I can feel Andie looking at me, a cautious edge to her gaze, as though fearful that she has overstepped the mark.
“You don’t talk much about her,” she remarks, closing her hands around her singular coffee of the day.
“I know.”
“Is there…is there a reason for that?”
I sigh heavily, leaning my hands on the counter in front of me for a moment.
I don’t know that I want to answer this question, but then, I’m not sure I have much of a choice.
I can duck and dive out of the way of what she wants to know, but it will not be enough to undo the pain inside me.
This is the grandmother of her child she’s talking about, and she deserves to know what happened to her, even if it stings to have to come clean.
“I don’t like to spend too much time thinking—thinking about the fact that she’s gone.”
Her eyes soften as I speak, and she reaches out to touch my shoulder, as though coaxing me to go on. “You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want?—”
“I need to, Andie,” I reply, shaking my head. “I—I’ve kept it in for too long. And this is your family we’re talking about now, as well as mine. I…” I pause. Fuck, this is harder than I thought it would be.
It’s difficult to bring it all to mind, the blur of memories from that fateful day.
I’ve done my best to block it all out. But it comes back to me now, in bits and pieces—the smell of blood, the sound of the gunshot, the roar of terror in my ears as I dropped down to my knees beside her and tried to pull her into my arms and will her to stay alive.
“My father, my mother, and Max and I,” I begin, speaking slowly, as though that will make it a little easier to manage.
“We were out one day. I couldn’t have been more than twenty, and we had taken a trip to Moscow—to one of the art galleries that my mother loved so much. God, she loved art, she would collect pieces from all across the world.
I used to tell my father sometimes that I thought he only got into this business because he wanted to keep up with everything she collected…” I shake my head, smiling slightly.
“But by then, our father was known through the country. His business was starting to grow, and it was coming with more attention. We had a few guards, but my mother insisted that we didn’t need them outside of the house. Told my father that she wanted our lives to be as normal as possible,
and that she’d do anything to make sure they were…”
I grit my teeth, swallowing hard, staring at the pan full of steaming red in front of me. “And when we stepped out of the gallery that afternoon, someone attacked us. An old debtor of my father’s—he was trying to get payback on my father, but he misfired, and the shot hit my mother instead.”
I choke out the last words, but force the emotion down. Andie reaches out to touch my hand, not speaking, looking at me intently as she nods at me to go on. I gather myself and continue.
“She died there, on the street,” I tell her. “With all of us. My father did what he could to save her, but it was too late. She had been shot through the heart, and she didn’t even make it to the hospital. I held her hand on the way there, but I felt it go limp in the car, I knew?—”
I stare up toward the light, stopping myself in my tracks. I can feel it all now, feel it all more clearly than I did then, the stark, sharp memory of her loss. “I knew that she was gone.”
“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” Andie mutters. “I had no idea…”
“There’s a reason for that,” I reply. “My father never speaks of it. Just redoubled the security on the house, made sure Max and I were never out without someone to protect us. By the time I came to America, I was glad to get out of the country for a while.
Just so I didn’t have to think about her every time I set foot in that city.”
“You didn’t seem to—I mean, when we went back there…”
“It was different, when I was with you,” I explain. “I didn’t feel like the same man. I was your husband then. Not just her son.”
“You must miss her like crazy.”
“All the time,” I admit, surprising myself with how sure I am of what I’m saying. “I wish you could have met her. You’d have liked her a lot. She never let herself get pushed out of what she…” I trail off as I realize what I’m saying, and I see Andie’s shoulders slump slightly as she listens to me.
Some nights need an alpha, some a billionaire, and some a heroine who scares both.
Choose tonight's company at Lokepub.
“Is that why…why you were so determined that I wasn’t going to go anywhere without you?” she asks me carefully. She must know that she’s skirting close to some dangerous territory, but now that I have laid myself bare in front of her, she’s willing to try and broach the subject.
I nod. “I think so. I never really thought of it like that, but…”
I’m caught off guard by an image of her in the same position of my mother, sprawled on the stone steps of the gallery, her mouth opening and closing as she searches for air.
I wrap my arms around her, pulling her close, and she leans against me as though aware that I need her right now more than ever.
“I’m here,” she promises me softly. “I’m not going anywhere, Nikolai.”
I draw back from her, clasping her face in my hands. “You mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
“You left before. After the argument. You snuck out of the townhouse?—”
“And look where that got me,” she points out, with a slight laugh. “Trust me, I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
I study her for a moment, realizing that I don’t entirely believe her.
Because the reason that she left could not have been just the clash we had over the pregnancy.
No, it was more than that. She wanted her freedom back then, and I can’t believe that she won’t long for it at some point down the line too.
Even if she feels safe and comfortable here now, there’s no telling if she will change her mind and go looking for more sometime down the line.
“What happens when you get tired of this place?” I point out, gesturing around. “You didn’t want to give up the business, you didn’t want to be stuck here. You told me that yourself. I can’t see you just forgetting all of that as though it was nothing.”
She tips her head to the side slightly, as if it’s the first time she has really considered the matter. She glances down at her belly, cupping a hand around it for a moment before she replies.
“I…I don’t know,” she confesses. “I think as long as I’m pregnant, I’m happy with the way things are. But…”
“After that? When the baby’s come along?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to just sit around here all the time with nothing to do but be a mother,” she admits.
“I worked too hard for that. But, my business…”
She frowns. “I don’t imagine people will want to associate their weddings with me, given that I’m part of your world now,” she admits.
“I could sell it on. Give it over to someone else so I have some savings of my own. And then…”
“Part of my world,” I repeat after her, the words hooking into my head before I can stop them. She glances up at me, seemingly surprised that I’m willing to so much as entertain the idea.
“What do you mean?”
I lace my arms around her, resting them on the small of her back. “You said it yourself,” I remind her. “You can be useful, right? With all you’ve learned about how to read people, you can help me see things in a different way. Tap into a different side of this business.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You would let me do that?”
“I don’t want you to feel trapped here,” I tell her. “I never want you to feel the way you did when you ran away from me. Not as long as you live. And if that means letting you into my world…” I let out a long breath. “Then that’s a small price to pay.”
She smiles as she reaches up to touch my cheek, as though making sure she really heard me right. “You mean that?”
I nod. “I mean that.”
She leans her head against mine, breathing deep, like she’s letting the reality of this wash through her.
There’s a part of me that is profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of even letting the world see her as my wife, but then, it’s already out there now—no point trying to deny it or hold back the information.
The best I can do is to show her that I’m willing to protect her with everything I have, and to give her the kind of life that she can take pride in.
The kind of life that ensures that she’s not limited in what she can do or how she can express herself.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, tracing a finger along my cheek. “By the way, I think those eggs are cooked now.”
“Oh, shit,” I mutter, having half forgotten that there was anything on the stove at all. She laughs as I go to rescue our breakfast, swiftly lifting the pan off the stove and grabbing a couple of plates from the cupboard above me.
“Hmm, you know, I think we should hire some home help before the baby comes,” she teases me. “Can’t rely on you to make breakfast when you can forget about it so easily, hmm?”
“Or maybe you could learn to cook it.”
“Hey, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves now,” she replies, and she hops off the counter, peering over my shoulder to get a look at what I’ve made. “Damn, that smells good. Could I have a little extra? I’m eating for two now, you know…”
I serve up our breakfast and hand her the plate, and as we head to the dining room, I find myself wondering how it became this damn easy.
I don’t know if I deserve all the patience she has shown me, all the second chances she has given me.
But I’m determined to do whatever I can to make sure she knows that I appreciate each and every one.
But right now, I’ll just start with making her breakfast.