Chapter Eighteen
Dmitri
When I returned to my house that evening, I clocked the signs of child proofing.
The man I called this morning said he was booked up for three weeks, but his schedule suddenly cleared when I offered him five times his usual rate.
I definitely had the most expensive child proofing in the history of the city, but I was satisfied with my decision when I saw the bumpers on the corners of the tables.
The glass vase was gone, and the fireplace pokers had been relocated as well.
I was sure there were a lot more changes in the house.
The man had mentioned plastic locks on the cabinets, refrigerator, and outside doors.
He was also going to bolt all heavy furniture to the walls and put baby gates at the top and bottom of the stairs.
She might have been able to go down the stairs on her own, but I didn’t like the idea of her doing it without me or Sarah with her, just in case.
I didn’t even question this protective instinct anymore. I needed Sarah and Alexis to be safe, and that was all I needed to know.
In the living room, the coffee table had been pushed aside, and it looked like someone had dragged the dining room chairs into the room and draped blankets from the linen closet over them. I hadn’t been a kid in a long time, but I still recognized this for what it was. A blanket fort.
I walked into the room and could hear Sarah speaking in a fake deep voice.
Curious, I came around the front of the fort where an opening faced the TV.
Bending over, I peered inside to see that Sarah had also taken the pillows off of the bed in the guest room.
The two of them were lying on the pillows on their stomachs, knees bent behind them and feet in the air.
The reason that Sarah was doing a fake voice was because she was reading to Alexis.
“‘Who dares to come into my cave?’ the monster said, making the children shake in terror.”
Alexis looked at Sarah with wide eyes, completely engrossed in the story. In fact, neither of them seemed to notice my presence because they were so wrapped up in it.
“Are you two the monster in this cave?” I asked, making them both jump in surprise. Alexis even let out a small scream, and my booming laughter filled the room.
When was the last time I laughed this hard or felt so content from simply coming home at the end of a long day?
The warm happiness I felt at this moment was powerful, and I was already starting to think that I needed this in my life. Not temporarily. Not just until they were safe.
I generally liked to keep my house neat and quiet, but now, with a big fort taking up half of my living room, it occurred to me that the way I lived before was lifeless. Coming home to laughter and mess was something I never would have known I wanted before these two came along.
“You’re home!” Alexis said, scrambling to get out of the fort.
She threw her arms around me, hugging my knees because she was so short, and I felt something shift inside me.
My emotional map rewrote itself in an instant.
The hardened mafia man I’d been my whole life was all about loyalty and responsibility and gratification.
Since I saw Sarah again yesterday, my emotional bandwidth had expanded.
It was already more than I thought I was capable of.
But now, as Alexis hugged me like she was thrilled to see me, I felt a rush of something that felt a hell of a like love.
But that was crazy. I wasn’t sure I was even able to feel something so pure and powerful, but even if I could, surely it would take longer to lose my heart to a little girl? As for her mother… well, there was potential for a strong connection between us as well.
“Play with me,” Alexis said, looking up at me with big, green eyes just like her mother’s.
“I don’t think I’ll fit.” And I really wasn’t the type to do this sort of thing.
“You will,” Sarah said, scooting to the side. “Alexis insisted that we make the fort with extra room.”
I looked at the cramped space doubtfully. “I don’t know if I want to do this.”
“Pleeeease?” Alexis said, drawing out the word and popping out her bottom lip in the most manipulative expression of sadness I’d ever seen in my life.
And it worked.
“Fine,” I said, resigned to cram my big ass into the small space to make a little girl smile.
It took a moment, and I nearly knocked the whole thing down when I bumped into one of the chairs that the blankets were draped over. I had to fold my leg underneath and hunch my shoulders to fit. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, and I couldn’t hold back a scowl.
That was, until Alexis nestled into the small space between Sarah and me. She smiled at me with that toothy grin that seemed to soften my hard edges without my permission.
As Sarah resumed reading the book, I found myself smiling as I watched Alexis’s face. She gave Sarah her rapt attention, and Sarah continued to make funny voices for the characters in the story, making Alexis’s giggle fill the fort.
It didn’t matter that I was too big for this cramped space and too old for this kind of silliness. It didn’t matter that I usually spent my evenings with a drink in my hand, enjoying the peace and quiet of my solitude. It didn’t even matter that I was the Pakhan of the Gorsky Bratva.
I wanted to be here.
After the book was finished, Alexis insisted that we watch one of her favorite cartoon movies . I recognized the song she sang in the car last night as the main character belted it out while creating an ice castle, but Alexis was silent this time.
Glancing over, I saw that her little head was resting on her folded arms, her breathing deep and even in her sleep.
“How long as she been out?” I asked Sarah, who gave me a small smile, the first one I’d gotten from her since we saw each other in court.
“You mean, how long have we been watching a kid’s movie without the kid?”
I chuckled. “I guess we can get out of here.”
“I’ll go first. Do you think you can hand her to me gently?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I think I’ll throw her like a football.”
Sarah reached over Alexis to shove my shoulder, and even the playful contact sent a thrill through my body. She had no idea how much I still wanted her.
I couldn’t help checking out her ass as she crawled out of the fort, and I continued to stare as she stood straight and arched her back, stretching her arms over her head after being in a tight space for so long. Her T-shirt rode up, revealing a couple inches of smooth skin at her waist.
Fuck. My fingers itched to touch her again. I wanted to run my tongue along that strip of exposed skin and then go lower. I’d bury my head between her legs and make her forget that any time had passed since the night we spent together.
But Alexis shifted on the pillow next to me, letting out a little sigh in her sleep, and I remembered that time had passed. Years.
So, I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind and carefully lifted Alexis’s little body, making sure to support her head as I cradled her against my chest. Shuffling forward on my knees, I handed her over to Sarah. In that moment our eyes met, and it almost felt like we were a team.
Then she turned away, and the moment was broken.
While she took Alexis to the bedroom that they were sharing, I took apart the fort, returning the chairs to the dining room and stacking the pillows and folded blankets on the couch. I’d just finished cleaning up when Sarah came back downstairs.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said when she saw I’d taken care of the mess.
“Yeah, I did.” I didn’t elaborate, but I saw an understanding flash in her eyes.
“I guess having us around is different from how you usually live, huh? I’ve noticed that it’s very… clean here.”
She didn’t say the word ‘clean’ like it was necessarily a good thing.
As if she were talking about the cold and lifeless sterility of a hospital or laboratory.
I thought about her home, the brief glimpse that I’d gotten of it.
It was a little cluttered, but it was warm and lived in.
Unlike my home, which was decorated by a stranger.
“I’ve always liked to keep things neat,” I said.
What I didn’t tell her was that I used to keep things obsessively neat, and it started when I was a kid.
I’d spent so long in an abusive household that was always completely out of my control, and at some point along the way, I began to focus much of my energy on one of the few things I could do to have some influence over my environment, one of the only things that didn’t piss my old man off.
From the time I was ten years old, I tried to keep my space as tidy as possible.
I didn’t understand the impulse at the time, but now, nearly three decades later, I understood that I was so desperate to take some form of control over my own life that I latched onto orderliness as a way to feel like I wasn’t completely powerless.
Of course, I didn’t still need to live that way. There was no big, bad bully in my life anymore. My father was dead and gone.
But the memories of him lingered. It didn’t matter that I was thirty-eight years old and the head of a powerful criminal organization.
There were times when I still took comfort in having a tidy home because it put me at ease in a way I didn’t quite understand.
I didn’t know if it was just an old habit or if I had some unresolved trauma from my past, and I didn’t really want to know.
Some things were better left alone. I didn’t like to think too much about my past or the shit my father put me through.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “I know having us here must be such a change for you. Maybe we should just go home—”
“No.” My voice was firm, and she snapped her mouth shut. “I don’t want you to go anywhere.”
Her eyes widened, and I wondered what she saw in my expression. Did she see the way I hungered for her?
“Why?” she asked breathlessly.
“It’s safe here.”