Chapter 15
Gregor
A week later, we were at thirty thousand feet and I was functioning as a heated mattress pad for a Yorkshire terrier who had decided, approximately eight days ago, that I belonged to him. And right now he made more noise than the private jet we were in.
I listened as Mary stated her intention to "experience Vegas properly," which I believed, because the girl had the survival instincts of a lit match in a fireworks factory and approximately the same understanding of consequence.
“You’re not going clubbing by yourself,” Maeve stated, holding Mac’s head against her breast.
Two sets of documents were prepared. One with Maeve and one with Mary - just in case. The council were expecting to see Mary’s name on the document, so we were treading carefully.
The chapel was rented for the day. The officiant had been vetted, paid, and briefed on what would happen if he sold the story. It wasn’t pretty but Maeve didn’t hear it.
The hotel floor was secured. The council would receive photographs of Mary McCarthy in a white dress next to Artem Petrov, and twelve old men who believed women were signatures with hair would be satisfied.
Maeve would marry Artem legally because she had decided to. This meant all opposition was now decorative.
And I, Gregor, had been placed in charge of nappies and one tiny dog.
This was not in my training.
Mac finished nursing. Maeve took him to Ivan and came and sat beside me. “Are you okay with me marrying Artem?”
“We’re pack. You marry Artem, you marry our pack. The ring isn’t important, neither is the piece of paper. I’m only interested in what your heart says.”
She swallowed. “That’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She reached up and kissed me on my mouth, then rested her head on my shoulder.
Across the aisle, Ivan was fully reclined with Mac strapped to his chest in a carrier. The carrier had been my suggestion. Ivan had called it excessive for a ten-day-old. Mac had disagreed by vomiting on Ivan's shirt thirty seconds into the first attempt. The carrier arrived the next morning.
Ivan was asleep now, one hand splayed across Mac's back, snoring in a rhythm he adopted when he was genuinely resting rather than pretending to rest. Fergus, who had claimed my lap the moment we boarded and had not moved since.
His opinion of air travel appeared to be that it was acceptable only if someone else did the flying and he was provided with a suitable human to lie on.
Artem was kneeling beside Ivan's seat in a Tom Ford suit, explaining something to Mac in a low murmur.
I listened.
"—which is why the Glock is superior for close-range work but entirely inappropriate for a child your age. We will revisit this when you are four."
Ivan's eyes stayed closed. "You're briefing the baby on sidearms."
"He's attentive."
"He's asleep."
"Subconscious absorption."
Maeve leaned across the armrest. "Is he talking to him?"
"Luckily, he has moved past firearms," I said. "He is now promising a pony."
"A pony."
“A stallion,” Artem murmured. “No son of mine will learn to ride on a pony.”
"No doubt it will be armored, and have had combat training," Mary added.
Maeve's laugh was bright and genuine and still too rare, though it had become more frequent since the night she'd stood barefoot on the stairs and told Artem she was marrying him whether he liked it or not.
Mac stirred. His face, once comfortable, was now, through some cosmic injustice, slightly less comfortable.
Artem moved before anyone else. One hand under the head, one under the body, lifting Mac out of the carrier with the precision of a man who had once learned to field-strip a rifle in the dark and had since applied the same methodology to infant handling.
Ivan surfaced. "I had him."
"You were asleep."
"I just spoke t you.”
“You fell asleep.”
“I was guarding him subconsciously."
"Your subconscious was drooling on his hat."
Maeve covered her mouth as her shoulders shook.
Mac released a single outraged squeak.
"Ah," Artem said, already rising. "Nappy."
Maeve blinked. "You can tell from one squeak?"
"I have been studying his patterns."
"He's ten days old, Artem, not an emerging market."
"Both punish arrogance."
He carried Mac toward the bathroom where he’d had a changing station installed. I followed.
Artem removed his cufflinks, rolled his sleeves to the elbow, and undid the nappy. While he reached down to get cleaning wipes.
Ivan sat up, hair flattened on one side, carrier straps still crossing his chest. "Careful. He—"
But it was too late. Mac produced a fine arc across Artem's shirt cuff.
"—has range."
Artem stared at his sleeve.
No one spoke.
Maeve's laugh came out in a rush, bright and helpless. "Good aim."
Artem looked at our son. His expression should have been offended. But it went soft instead. Which I had only seen directed at Maeve, and now at the small creature who had just urinated on his shirt.
"It was an excellent aim," he told Mac. "You’ll fire a gun very well."
"Absolutely not."
He leaned down and whispered, "We'll discuss it when you're older."
"Also no."
Artem fastened the clean nappy, tucked Mac against his shoulder, and began pacing the aisle, murmuring low Russian.
Mac's fist closed around his collar. Within a minute, the baby had settled.
Within two, Artem had forgotten his shirt, his suit, and the fact that he was the head of a criminal empire, because a ten-day-old had him by the lapel and wasn't letting go.
Maeve sat back beside me and pulled a blanket over her lap while her gaze drifted to Mary, who was across the aisle scrolling through an iPad with the concentration of a scholar.
It appeared when Mary laughed too loudly. When she slept late. When she stood in the doorway of Mac's nursery pretending she'd wandered in by accident. Maeve measured each sound against years of silence.
"I'm worried about her," Maeve murmured. "She's eighteen. She shouldn't be wrapped up in a fake mafia wedding, flying to Vegas to forge documents. I should be—"
"I can hear you," Mary said without looking up. "And you don't need to protect me. I'm getting a new passport, a new name, and enough money to buy a private island. I’m vibrating with freedom. Don't ruin my vibe with older-sister anxiety."
"You don't understand the risks."
"I understand the scariest men in Europe are currently debating whether to armor-train a pony for an infant."
“A stallion,” Artem quipped.
She glanced up and flashed a grin that was pure McCarthy. "Besides, I'm going to be a fake Bratva bride for ten minutes, then I'm hitting the Strip. Margaritas. Gambling. Showgirls."
Maeve's eyebrow went up. “I said no.”
"I'm a free woman," Mary insisted. "I'm going to party."
"Mary," I said.
She looked at me. "Yes, Gregor?"
"The drinking age in the United States is twenty-one."
Silence.
She turned to Maeve. "Is he serious?"
"Completely."
"You can't even enter the casino floor," I added. "Let alone order alcohol."
Mary collapsed back into her seat. "This is the worst mafia kidnapping in history. I survived our father and I'm defeated by Nevada state law."
"You can have a mocktail," Artem offered, not looking up from Mac. "I'll have Blade acquire one with an umbrella."
"I hate all of you."
There was no heat in it.
I placed a bottle of water beside Maeve’s elbow.
She looked at it. "Are you ordering me to hydrate?"
"Yes."
"Very romantic."
"Effective."
She opened the bottle.
The cabin settled. Ivan had closed his eyes again but wasn't sleeping.
Artem was still pacing with Mac, his suit jacket abandoned over a seat, his shirt rumpled and damp and yellow at the cuff.
Mary had gone back to her iPad but her shoulders were lower now, her breathing slower. Fergus snored against my thigh.
And somewhere below us, the American continent turned to desert and mountains.
In two hours we would land. Tomorrow Artem would stand in a chapel and legally bind himself to an omega who had stolen his shirt, and decided, on a cottage porch at midnight, that she was done being afraid.
Then we would forge paperwork using Mary's name to satisfy twelve old men who use Artem not having an omega as collateral.
It had fifty points of failure. Perhaps fifty-one. Mary had not yet given up on the margaritas and I did not trust Blade to enforce the drinking age with appropriate seriousness.
But Artem was humming something low and Russian to his son, and Maeve was drinking the water I'd given her, and Ivan's hand had found its way back to Mac's carrier even in sleep.
I resumed cataloguing, and for the first time in seventeen years of service, the catalogue contained more assets than threats.