Chapter 15 Bastian
BASTIAN
garde manger /?ɡ?rd m?n?ZHā/: noun
Eliana might as well have ripped my spine out through my chest. Eight weeks, she said. The math is instant and automatic. It takes me back to the rooftop at Olympus, her skin silver in the moonlight and a moan that meant everything.
Now, there’s a baby. My baby. Our baby. Except no, not ours—hers. She’s made that crystal fucking clear.
The sorrow comes first, a serrated edge dragging through my soft tissue.
Then hope, because I’m an idiot who never learned when to stop wanting things I can’t have.
My kid is going to exist in the world, and I’ll be a ghost story they never hear.
The rage follows. Not at her, no, never at her—but at myself.
For everything I’ve done that I can’t undo.
My hand strains toward her stomach. I want to feel it so badly, the proof that something good came from us even after I torched everything else.
But her shoulders are pulled back, her chin lifted in that particular angle that means Try it and you won’t be the only one of us who severs fingers. So I keep my hand at my side.
I force down all the shit that’s threatening to overwhelm me and check my watch. We have seventy-one hours until Aleksei’s plane touches down at O’Hare. In that time, I have to find Sage, extract him, and disappear before my older brother realizes the corpse in that warehouse wasn’t actually me.
It’s a fucking disaster in the making. Even if Frank comes through with solid intel tonight, we’ll need time to surveil the location, plan the extraction, and execute it without getting Sage killed in the crossfire.
And that’s assuming Frank isn’t setting us up, which is a hell of an assumption, given the man’s track record.
“The meeting’s at Saints & Skinners,” I tell her, watching the way her nostrils flare in mild amusement at the name. “Strip club off Route 83.”
“Nice place?” she asks sarcastically.
I snort. “More like the kind of shithole where the cameras conveniently malfunction and nobody remembers faces.”
A muscle in her jaw starts jumping beneath skin that’s gone pale enough to worry me. The morning sickness is hitting her harder than she wants me to know.
“Frank picked the location,” I continue. “Which tells me he’s either scared enough to want neutral ground, or he’s setting me up for Aleksei. And I don’t trust the fucker as far as I can throw him, but desperation makes strange bedfellows.”
What destroys me most of all isn’t the danger. After all, I’ve been courting death since the night I got locked in Tolstoy’s freezer and listened to my brother commit murder.
It’s the fucking math again.
I now have two people I can’t afford to lose. There’s Eliana, who’s already sacrificed her vision and her peace and God knows what else just by knowing me.
And the baby, this theoretical person-to-be who exists as cells dividing in the dark, who will grow up never knowing their father.
I watch her sway slightly and prop herself against the wall.
I’ve seen enough pregnant women in restaurant kitchens—line cooks who worked until their water broke, servers who hid their condition behind aprons—to recognize the signs.
She needs to sit down, drink water, and about a dozen other things she won’t let me do for her.
“You should eat something,” I say, knowing she’ll refuse. Sure enough, she starts to argue, so I interrupt, “There’s a diner two blocks down. Greasy spoon kind of place. Nothing fancy, but they’ll have toast and ginger ale.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I can see her weighing her options. Pride versus practicality. The baby wins.
“Okay,” she says. “But this doesn’t change anything.”
“Believe me, I know.”
I need a shower. The blood from the parking lot creep is drying under my fingernails, and I can smell the motel stink mixing with my musk in a way that is highly unpleasant.
“I’m going to clean up,” I tell her. “Give me five minutes.”
Eliana nods, still pressed against the wall like it’s the only thing keeping her upright.
I disappear into the bathroom. The shower water takes forever to heat up.
When it finally does, I stand under the spray and let it scald me.
I scrub the blood from my hands. The soap is an industrial lye that strips everything—oil, dirt, probably a few layers of skin.
Good. I want to be stripped down to nothing.
My kid. Jesus Christ, my kid.
I press my forehead against the moldy tile and let that reality sink in. Eliana is carrying my child, and she’s made it abundantly clear that’s all they’ll ever be—mine in biology only.
I’m a fucking sperm donor, not a father.
The water starts to cool off, like it’s telling me to stop feeling sorry for myself. You made your choices, motherfucker. Live with them. I shut it off and towel myself dry with a towel that feels like sandpaper.
I wrap the towel around my waist and step back into the room to grab a clean shirt from my duffel bag.
Eliana has moved from the wall to perch on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap.
She’s re-tied her hair into a neat ponytail and straightened her clothes, trying to look put together.
If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think she was fine.
But I do know better. I know the set of her shoulders means she’s barely making it right now. I’ve memorized every tell she has, and right now, they’re all screaming that she’s about two seconds from either throwing up or passing out.
“Almost ready,” I say, pulling the shirt over my head.
She doesn’t respond, but I catch the slight turn of her head toward my voice. For a second—just one stupid, desperate second—I let myself imagine a different world. One where I could cross this shitty room and press my hand to her stomach and she wouldn’t flinch away.
But that world doesn’t exist. In this one, I’m the monster in the alley, and she’s the woman smart enough to run.
I finish getting dressed and open the motel room door. “Alright. Let’s go.”