Chapter 30
ARTYOM
Ithought being away from Nina for five years was unbearable. Living in the same house as her, while she refuses to look at me, speak to me, or touch me… That’s worse. A thousand times worse.
She’s still wearing my ring, but calling her my wife means nothing when she’s pretending I don’t exist. Nothing has been the same since I found out about Valentin's engagement. Since she found out about Vanya’s announcement.
I don’t regret lying to Nina. She never would have agreed to marry me if she'd known the truth. And the last thing I wanted was to marry someone else.
But those were my options.
Finding Nina, winning her back, that was two birds with one stone.
An efficient, win-win situation. She wasn’t exactly complaining about being married to me until she found out my motivations.
But the silent treatment is grating on my nerves. If Nina wanted to torture me, it's working.
“What?” I snap at Vanya when she asks for another meeting.
I swear she always asks at the worst possible time. Normally, she’s the one person in my family that I will drop everything for. Not lately.
“Is something the matter? Marriage troubles?” She purses her lips together.
“You know what's the matter. Valentin is the matter.”
The bastard never showed a scrap of interest in claiming our family’s council seat, until now. Valentin is my enemy, he’s lying to me about why he’s engaged to Karolina, which means there’s no one in this family I can trust anymore.
“And Nina.” She wags her finger. “Don't think I don't know what goes on in my household, Tyoma. Nina has been sleeping in Ava’s quarters.”
“That's temporary. We’re here to talk about business.”
“Nothing works unless you have a strong foundation.” Vanya is staring out the window, her face thoughtful.
“Stop talking in riddles.”
“You can't expect your business to be in order when your house is not.”
I know she’s right. Every day that Nina doesn’t speak to me, my tolerance for work slips a little further, until I’m getting pretty close to cutting ties with some close allies. Like that call with the Argentinian Cartel earlier today, where I hung up only five minutes into their speech.
“I’m trying.”
“Then try harder.”
Ava wanders into the sitting room, begging Vanya to read her a story.
“Not one that will give her nightmares,” I interject quickly. I still remember sleepless nights when Vanya would tell me traditional Russian folk stories about Baba Yaga, the ogre lady who eats bad children.
“She can handle it,” Vanya insists, her eyebrows waggling. I decide to stay and supervise her storytelling, not wanting Ava to suffer the same fate as me.
Babushka adopts a bone-chilling thick Russian accent for Baba Yaga, doing her best to make the monster as terrifying as possible, but it doesn’t affect Ava. She sits there grinning, then bursts into a fit of giggles when the monster eats the children.
“Aren’t you scared, Ava?”
“No,” Ava says simply, taking my hand. “Because I know you can stop the ogre, Daddy.”
She turns her blue eyes up to me and smiles with such trust that I feel a twist of regret in my stomach. I never trusted an adult like that when I was a child, not even Vanya. And I want to shelter Ava so that she never loses that trust in the world.
That’s when it hits me. I don’t only have myself to think of in this family drama. Nina and Ava are affected by this power struggle as well.
Unless I get things under control, they’ll be at risk.
Vanya’s eyes light up and she ruffles Ava’s hair. “That’s right, darling. You’re always safe here. Remember that.”
The conversation with Vanya is the final straw. I want my wife back. I didn’t marry her to lose her all over again.
That night, we put Ava to bed together, and she seems remarkably unscathed by the stories about Baba Yaga. I don’t leave after bed time like I normally do.
When Nina returns to the guest bedroom next to Ava’s, I appear in the doorway.
“You will sleep in my bed, Nenoka.”
Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and her face scrubbed clean. She doesn’t react to my suggestion, her expression blank. I can see her trying not to react.
I encircle her wrist with my fingers.
“Tonight.”
That gets her attention. She might not react to my words, but Nina will always react to my touch. She turns to face me, her face stony, her brow set. She doesn’t respond, just yanks her arm away, but I see the way her frown deepens.
“Nothing has changed since our wedding day.”
Nina sighs and rolls her eyes, but stays quiet. I know she wants to say something.
Just one word would be enough.
“You won’t talk to me. Will you kiss me?”
I tilt her chin up towards me, but her mouth is set in an unforgiving line. No warmth in her amber eyes.
“What can I do? How can I make this right?”
I trace my thumb over her lower lip and her lips part automatically. I think maybe I’ve won, but she wrenches herself away. She continues getting ready for bed, like nothing has happened, slipping into a pale green nightdress that clings to her curves.
I lean against the dresser and watch her. I’m not leaving unless she’s with me.
God, I fucking want her.
Even when she’s fuming.
Even when I don’t understand her.
I change tack. “You know, we’re married. I will not tolerate this kind of insolence from my wife, Nenoka.”
Her eyes flame. Finally. “Don’t you dare call me that. You have no right.”
“You said a vow. You’re mine. I married you and I wanted everything that went with it: your love, your words, your passion.”
“And you lied so that I would agree.” She throws a pillow at me. “That’s not love, that’s manipulation. I knew you had an ulterior motive. You never do anything unless there’s something in it for you.”
I can feel how angry she is, see the tension coiling in her shoulders. Yet even her most cutting words are music to my ears after being deprived of her voice for a week.
“Do you want to embarrass me? By not sleeping in my room?”
Her eyes burn. “I’m not trying to embarrass you, Art. But if that’s a side effect, I’m not mad about it.”
“Fine. You won’t sleep in my room? I’ll sleep here. I’ll sleep on the floor if I have to Nen– Nina.” I strip to my underwear to get ready for bed, too.
She turns away sharply, heading to the dresser to brush her hair.
Then she starts to speak, quietly but rapidly.
“I’m trying to understand why you haven’t apologized. Why you think I’m supposed to be okay with you using me and Ava to get what you want.”
I stand behind her and reach out to stroke her hair, but she dodges away. “I thought you wanted this. I didn’t force you into anything.”
She sighs and shakes her head. “I’m not saying you did. But you weren’t honest with me.”
I meet her eyes in the mirror. Her face softens a little, but not from forgiveness. From sadness. Her lower lip trembles as she sucks in an uneven breath. “Was I just the easiest option for you? The girl who was already too invested to see that you were just using me? Using us?”
It breaks my heart that she would think that. That she hasn’t got the message. I would do anything for her and Ava.
“There is nothing easy about you, Nina. If I’d wanted easy, there were a hundred bratva women waiting.”
I know that I’ve said the wrong thing when the tears start to well up in her eyes. She pushes past me to sit on the edge of the bed. “Then maybe you should have chosen one of them.”
“This was a long shot. I didn’t believe it would work, I didn’t believe you would forgive me, but you’re the only option I ever considered. The only one who was worth it. It wasn’t only about the marriage, Nina. It was about you. But I have to make this work without hurting you, or Ava.”
She’s sobbing now. I ache to close the distance between us, to cradle her in my arms, to pull her onto my lap, but she doesn’t want that.
“You say you want me to be a part of your world,” she glances up at me from her seat on the edge of the bed, her cheeks wet with tears. “But you don’t let me in, you don’t include me, and you don’t explain anything to me. I still don’t understand.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to know about any of this, Nina. It’s not your concern. Let me handle it.”
“Art, I walked into that study and saw you wrestling your cousin to the ground. You looked like you were about to kill him. Your favorite cousin. Help me understand what the fuck is going on that you need this leadership position so damn much.”
The truth would only push Nina away.
I want to be there for her, I want her to be able to rely on me, to trust me, but I don’t want to expose her to the seething, toxic mess that happens behind closed doors in this place.
“You shouldn’t have seen that.”
I leave it at that. Nina opens her mouth as though she’s going to push me on it, but she closes her lips just as quickly.
I won’t apologize for being the monster that I have to be to survive here. But I will hide it from her. Because if I don’t, she will run.