Chapter 55
Chapter Fifty-Five
Ivan
Recovery was a bitch. I hated every second of needing help.
I hated every second of my mother playing nursemaid.
But most importantly, I hated that when I was discharged from the hospital and came home…
It was to Poppy at her engagement party and a text to my mother stating she would be going home with Donovan for the night.
My mother was worried sick, I was fuming, and Jane kept shooting me odd glances. Finally, my mother left us alone, and I jumped at the chance.
“What’s going on?”
Jane chewed on the side of her pinky nervously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then why do you keep looking at me that way?”
Jane tucked her hands in her lap. “What do you mean?”
“You keep looking at me like you know something I don’t know.”
That made her eyes shine with mischief as she smiled slightly. “Yes and no.”
“Spill then.”
“I mean,” she leaned towards me and cupped her hands around her mouth. “I think she’s planning something. Something dangerous. You didn’t see her when she left here.”
I’d been avoiding the tabloids for a reason, but I knew now that I didn’t have a choice.
I typed her name in the search engine, and there she was.
A vixen. A viper. A dangerously enthralling woman stared back at the camera with a smile that screamed she won.
To anyone else, they would have thought the smile was because she was on the arm of one of New York’s most eligible bachelors, but I could see the hardness in her eyes and the determined clench of her jaw.
She’d won something else, and that scared me.
“What do you think she’s planning?” I couldn’t look away from my phone. Everything about her had me trapped.
“I don’t know.” She pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them like she needed something solid to hold on to. “But she was… different. Not sad. Not broken. She looked like she was going to war.”
My pulse stuttered. “And she said she’s spending the night over there? Did she know I was coming home today?”
Jane tucked her knees up against her chest. “I don’t think so, or she would have been home. She’s been a caged animal waiting for any news on you.”
I shot up from my chair, everything inside of me screaming with the fast movement. “I have to get to her.”
Jane rolled her eyes as if I was being dramatic. I knew I wasn’t. “You can hardly walk.”
“I’ll crawl if I have to!”
Jane untucked her legs from her body and began to stand. “Don’t make me get your mother.”
I winced. Emeline Cristof was a force to be reckoned with. Jane could move much faster than me, too. She would get to my mother before I had a gun strapped to my chest. Hell, she would get to my mother before I could even make it down the hall.
“Don’t be stupid. Poppy needs you. I need you.”
That was enough to split me open. I sagged back into my chair and watched the girl who was wise beyond her years. “What do you think I should do then?”
“I think you should wait because we might have to bail her out of jail tonight.”
A small laugh escaped me, though I didn’t think any of it was amusing. Jane was right. Tonight, I would probably need to have all of my shit in order.
“It’s some stupid shit when I have to bring my baby to see all of you,” Carina announced as she burst through the front door. She was pushing what looked to be an expensive ass stroller in front of her with a very worn out Ace on her heels.
His shoulders were slumped, and he looked like he was the one who gave birth, not his wife. “She insisted we make an appearance.”
My mother rushed from her bedroom with a bottle of hand sanitizer, and a massive grin stretched across her face. “Finally!”
“Don’t even think about touching her until I get eyes on my favorite brother,” she warned my mother.
My mother froze mid–sanitizer squirt. “Favorite?”
Carina arched a brow and pointed a finger at me. “The half-dead one. Move.”
Ace dropped onto the nearest couch and groaned, wordless and exhausted. I had no idea how Carina wasn’t fainting from sleep deprivation, but Ace looked like he’d been run over by a semi.
Twice.
She marched straight toward me, hands on hips, looking all of five-foot-two and terrifying as fuck.
“You look like shit,” she declared.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“I mean it,” she went on. “You look like someone threw you down a flight of stairs and then backed a truck over you.”
Ace snorted. “He kind of did get thrown around and shocked—”
She shot him a look, and he shut up. Was I that whipped when it came to Poppy?
She crouched down in front of me, eyes narrowing. “Why aren’t you in bed? Why aren’t you in the hospital? And why”—she flicked a hand toward Jane—“is this child letting you act like a dumbass?”
Jane lifted her hands. “Oh, don’t drag me into this. I’ve tried to stop him. I literally threatened to get his mother.”
That got my mother’s attention. “Get me for what?”
I threw my head back. I was surrounded by women who could kill me faster than any of Donovan’s men.
“He’s trying to go after Poppy tonight,” Jane tattled instantly. “He thinks she’s planning something.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Carina muttered. “Of course she’s planning something. Have you seen the pictures? That girl didn’t dress like a power-hungry assassin tonight for fun.”
My stomach churned.
“You saw the photos?” I asked.
Carina made a face. “Saw them? I screenshotted them, sent them to Dimitri, Ace, Audrey, Alexei, Griffin, all of Audrey’s friends—hell, even the group chat with all of her book club girls. They think she looks like a mafia queen.”
Great.
“Carina,” I tried again, “she’s going to do something dangerous.”
“No shit,” she said bluntly. “Women don’t show up at fake engagement parties in red lipstick and a cape unless they’re about to stab a man.”
Ace rubbed his face. “This is why I said we should have stayed home.”
Carina ignored him completely. “Ivan, you can barely stand.”
“I don’t care,” I growled. “I can’t let her get herself killed or thrown into jail.”
Carina rolled her bright blue eyes. “That’s what Dimitri is for.”
“Dimitri can’t get her out of a murder charge!”
My mother held up her freshly sanitized hands. “Murder? Wait!”
Jane rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet as she held her hands out to my mother.
They cared about the conversation, but probably cared about the baby more.
I didn’t blame them, I was sure the thing was much cuter than me.
Jane rubbed the hand sanitizer in and held her hands out.
“I will help anyone if I can hold the baby!”
Carina blinked out of whatever murderous tirade she was on and smiled at the teenager. “Of course, honey!”
She scooped the little bundle wrapped in pink and handed it right over to the small adult. “This is Gemma.”
Ace was on the edge of his seat, practically waiting for something to happen so he could dive forward and save his precious daughter. I wondered if that was why he looked like he hadn’t slept in a hundred years.
“Poppy isn’t going to go after Donovan tonight,” my mother announced as she watched Jane with Gemma.
“How do you know?” Carina finally looked away from me and watched my mother with her brows together in the middle of her forehead.
“Because she’s meeting with the grannies,” my mother shrugged as if this was completely normal.
“What?” Ace and I said at the same time.
Our mother smiled as if she had keys to all of the secrets in this family, and honestly… she probably did. “Poppy called me and asked me for my mother’s phone number before she left the party tonight.”
Jane narrowed her eyes. “But she told me she was spending the night with Donovan!”
My mother ran her hand over the back of Jane’s head affectionately. “I think that was the plan, but plans change. My mother wouldn’t tell me why they set up a meeting tonight, and Poppy wouldn’t disclose much either. We will just need to wait and see.”
Carina plopped down dramatically next to her husband and threw her hands in the air. “I hate waiting, but at least we are all together!”
Ace’s shoulders only curved in more. The poor man needed sleep, and he knew that was the last thing he was going to get here. “Why don’t you go take a nap in my room?” I suggested.
He perked up, and my mother scowled. “If anyone is going to take a nap, it’s the woman that pushed out a seven and a half pound baby last week.”
Ace blew out a breath and leaned back on the couch. Ah, so that was why he was exhausted. No one believed Ace deserved rest, too. “Has Ace been helping you?”
Carina nodded enthusiastically. “Of course. He gets up and gives her to me in the middle of the night for feedings and takes her with him in the morning so I can sleep in. He holds her and puts her back to sleep while he drinks coffee.”
I shot a look at my mother. “I think Ace is deserving of some self-care then.”