Chapter Sixteen
Tatiana
F our Seasons Private Residences, One Dalton Street, Boston...
Morning sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting golden stripes across the marble floors. The Boston skyline stretched before them in a vista of glass and steel against a crisp autumn sky. Tatiana’s hands trembled as she poured tea into delicately hand-painted Herend cups with the tantalizing Darjeeling’s fragrant steam rising between them.
“You really don’t have to leave, Mom.” She set down the teapot with her fingers lingering on its warm ceramic surface. “We just found each other, and the penthouse is huge. Jarek invited you to stay as long as you wanted.”
Her mother reached across the table to brush a stray lock of hair behind Tatiana’s ear. The maternal gesture made her chest constrict. Thirty years of missed touches and absent embraces. She wanted to barricade the doors and disable the elevators, anything to keep them here, safe in this suspended moment of reunion.
“We’ve imposed enough, my darling girl, but we will see each other every day, I promise.” Mila cupped Tatiana’s cheek. “Your husband needs his home back. He’s been too kind by staying away to give us privacy.”
“Your mother is right, Tattie.” She blinked as her father leaned forward in his chair, watching the morning light catching the silver at his temples. That childhood nickname in his rich voice sent a warm flutter through her heart. “If there is one thing we learned over the years, it’s that marriage only survives with complete honesty and togetherness. No secrets, no distance.”
Tatiana wrapped her hands around her teacup, seeking its warmth. Marriage. Five years. Even though Jarek had made it clear that night at the club that he would never let her go, in her mind, she still clung to that timeline. But it was a deadline that suddenly felt both rigid and fragile. There was no denying that her feelings were changing, especially when Jarek held her at night and when his lips traced her skin with such tenderness. That resolution was becoming blurred like watercolors in the rain. Now, he took it one step further and had found and brought her parents back—a miracle she had stopped believing in decades ago.
“What if Dedushka finds out you’re back?” The fear churned bitterly in her stomach. Her fingers tightened around the cup until her knuckles whitened. “His network spreads everywhere. No Polov would ever escape his notice.”
“We’re safe as can be, my darling.” Maxim moved to kneel beside her chair to cover her hand with his strong one until she gradually loosened her grip on the cup. “Maxim and Mila Lovett are simple immigrants from the Isle of Man. Your grandfather’s people search for Ivan and Sophia Polov—ghosts from thirty years ago. We have changed, Tattie.” He smiled wryly. “Grown old and wrinkly.”
He was right. The photographs she had kept hidden beneath her mattress as a child showed strangers now of a raven-haired beauty and a golden-haired man with bright eyes. Night after night, she had traced their faces with small fingers, whispering prayers for their return until Gregor found her crying one evening.
“They abandoned you,” he had snarled as he ripped the photos away with his grip cruelly bruising her small arm. “They chose their freedom over their own child. You’re a Polov. This weakness stops now.”
Young Tatiana had believed him then and allowed her heart to calcify against the pain. But sitting here now, feeling her mother’s warm hand in hers and watching her father’s eyes crinkle with love, she understood the truth. Gregor and Elizabeth had stolen her childhood and poisoned it with lies. They were the ones who had chosen power over love and control over family.
“Still,” she whispered as she leaned into Mila’s touch, walking with them to their room to finish packing. “I need more time. There are so many stories I haven’t heard, so many years to recover.”
The delicate balance of her two worlds weighed on Tatiana’s mind as she watched her parents prepare for their departure. Her mother folded clothes with practiced grace while her father checked the closets and the bathroom for stray items.
She stood at the window with her arms crossed tight against her chest. The city sprawled below in a maze of streets and scattered lives. Each intersection was a choice and each building a destination. Like her life now, it was a complex web of decisions and consequences.
“You’re very quiet, Tattie.” Her father’s voice pulled her from her thoughts.
“I don’t know how to do this.” The words spilled out before she could stop them. “Be a Polov and a Farrel. Be your daughter and Jarek’s wife. To live in both worlds and succeed on my own without drowning.”
Mila paused her packing. “You don’t have to choose, my darling. You’re not betraying anyone by embracing all parts of who you are.”
“Aren’t I?” Tatiana turned from the window. “Jarek leads one of the most powerful mafia groups in Boston. Dedushka would kill him if he could. I still don’t know what’s coming, except that I never want to see either of my grandparents again. And you...” She swallowed hard. “You ran from that life, like I am from them. How can I justify staying in it with Jarek?”
“The circumstances are different,” Maxim said. “We ran because your grandfather gave us no choice. He would have killed us, and you, if we had taken you away, to maintain his control. Jarek...” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Jarek gives you choices. I see it in the way he looks at you, in building a new corporate empire for you, and the way he has stepped back to give us this time together.”
“But the violence, the danger...” Tatiana’s voice trailed off.
“Is not as bad as what you grew up with,” Mila finished softly. “From what we’ve heard through the grapevine, he purely deals in white-collar crime. Not that I’m saying that’s acceptable, but I perceive there to be less violence and danger. More than that, the difference to your grandfather’s world is love, myshka . Always remember, real love doesn’t cage you. It gives you wings.”
Tatiana’s chest tightened. Five years. She had committed herself to only five years, but standing here, caught between past and present, she realized time wasn’t the answer. The real question was whether she could forge something new from the broken pieces of her history. A legacy that belonged purely to her.
“I want to know everything,” she said suddenly. “About our family, about where you’ve been all these years, and about who I was meant to be. Not for Dedushka’s sake or even Jarek’s. For mine.”
Her mother crossed the room and took her hands. “Then that’s what we'll do. Start with truth. The rest will follow.”
Tatiana nodded as the first threads of a new pattern emerged from the ashes of the past. She couldn’t erase what had happened or predict her future, but she could weave them together into a stronger strand than either alone. Make it uniquely hers.
“We’re not leaving the country, Tattie. In fact, we’re staying right here in Boston, in a penthouse apartment Jarek owns and offered to us two blocks from here. We’ll be seeing you every day, I promise. And we’ll take it one story at a time.”
One story at a time. One truth at a time. One choice at a time. Perhaps that was how she could reconcile the incongruous. Not in great, dramatic gestures but in small, deliberate steps toward a new beginning.
Tatiana’s eyes narrowed as suspicion coiled through her. Despite his earlier kindness in finding her parents, Jarek always had ulterior motives.
“Did Jarek put you up to this? Moving out? Is that what happened?”
“Not at all.” Mila’s voice carried that maternal tone that both soothed and irritated at this critical moment. “Your father approached him. It doesn’t feel right that he’s become a stranger in his own home.”
“It’s his choice. He doesn’t have to stay away.” Tatiana lifted her chin, the stubborn gesture so reminiscent of her childhood self that Mila smiled. “As my husband, he should get to know you, too.”
Even as she said the words, she recognized their hollowness. Jarek had given them space and respected their need for privacy, yet here she was, twisting his consideration into a sinister act.
“There’ll be lots of time for that,” Maxim said firmly. “I, for one, am thankful for his consideration. Not many men would isolate themselves from their own homes and wives. Character... that’s what that man of yours has.”
The words struck uncomfortably close to truth. Tatiana remembered Jarek’s face when he had first introduced her parents to her. There had been no triumph, no smugness, just quiet satisfaction at her joy. She thought of how he had arranged everything without seeking credit. How he had stepped back, giving her space to rebuild these precious bonds. Her father was right, damn him, but admitting that meant acknowledging she had also misjudged other aspects of Jarek, and she wasn't ready for that particular revelation.
Mila’s eyes glimmered as she smiled coyly at Tatiana. “I know you just got married, but neither of you is young anymore. When can we expect our first grandchild?”
The air sucked from Tatiana’s lungs as she looked up to find Jarek lounging against the door. As usual, he had materialized like a phantom, his presence filling the room soundlessly. His silvery eyes traced the rising color in her cheeks with evident amusement, and beneath it, a possessive hunger flashed that made her pulse skip treacherously. His words that night at the club rang through her mind.
“You wanted this, my dear wife, and now you got it. You are mine, and I am yours... and that’s never going to change. Not now... and sure as hell not in five years.”
Perfect. Did he have to appear at this exact moment? The question of children, his children, sent conflicting waves of panic and an unexpected longing through her. A desire she refused to examine too closely as his eyebrow pitched upward in that familiar mocking salute to her discomfort.
“Well, my lovely wife, aren’t you going to answer your mother?”
Tatiana flashed him a searing look, silently warning him that she refused to be intimidated. He knew exactly her take on the matter. Hell would freeze over before she gave him a child. Yet even as she clung to that resolution, an unwelcome image flashed through her mind of a little boy with his father’s silver eyes and her blonde hair. She shoved the thought away, disturbed by how easily it had formed and by how it made her heart contract in ways she couldn't comprehend.
“As my mother rightfully said, we just got married,” Tatiana offered with a saccharine smile and aimed a deliberate barb at Jarek. “Besides, I always maintained that five years is a good time for a couple to fully settle with each other before they have children.”
“Five years!” Mila’s face paled. The intentional jab at Jarek’s expense had no impact on her mother. “You’ll be forty, darling, and Jarek... I don’t know, forty-five?”
“Fifty,” Tatiana smirked, watching Jarek for any reaction. His face remained impassive with that infuriating half-smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Her attempt to mock his age slid off him like water. “He’ll be ancient, and by then, he would agree our lives are perfect without adding a baby to the mix.”
Mila’s face crumpled as tears welled up in her eyes. “You don’t want children?” Her voice was raw with anguish. “It’s because of us, isn’t it?” She gripped Tatiana’s hand. “Leaving left you feeling deserted, and now you don’t want a family of your own. Oh, no, it’s our fault.”
“Mom, stop.” Tatiana's words came out as a growl, directed more at Jarek than her mother. As usual, his presence invited the defensive and combative bitch to the surface. “In all honesty, I have never given much thought to having children.” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue. “All I ever wanted was to stand on my own two feet. To find a way to get out from under Gregor Polov’s control. My career, my business gave me that. TAP is what molded me into who and what I am today.”
She swallowed hard, refusing to complete her thought. The truth burned in her chest. She had always wanted children. Many times, she had imagined cradling a newborn and watching it grow by creating the family she had lost. But not like this. Not as payment for a debt. Not with a man who saw her as property to be owned.
“I can understand that, my dear child, but don’t let your grandfather take away such joy from your life.” Maxim’s voice carried quiet authority. “We only had five years with you, but to this day, we still remember every single one of those days spent as a family. It will break my heart if you never get to experience the joy of being a parent.”
The transformation in Jarek’s face at those words stopped her cold. Gone was the perpetual amusement and the calculated darkness she had grown accustomed to. Raw grief etched deep lines around his mouth as haunted shadows darkened his eyes. Twenty years hadn’t dulled the agony of losing his daughter and his wife or the memories they had created. The mask he wore daily cracked, revealing a father who still mourned and a man whose heart had been ripped apart.
For the first time, she truly witnessed the depth of devastation Gregor had wrought. The memory of a four-year-old’s laughter silenced forever and a family destroyed in an instant must be torture. No wonder revenge burned so hot in his veins even now. The realization rattled her carefully constructed wall as she was forced to see beyond the Dark One to the broken man beneath.
“I need some air,” Tatiana excused herself to the balcony, desperately needing space from the suffocating weight of unspoken truths. The wind whipped her hair, matching the turbulence in her chest. Behind her, through the glass doors, she could hear her parents’ voices mingling with Jarek’s deeper tone. It was a domestic scene that scraped raw nerves she had thought long cauterized.
“A child.” Her throat constricted around the words.
In her darkest hours, in the privacy of her own thoughts, she had imagined it countless times as she crafted those dreams in secret, like origami birds hidden in drawers, too fragile to show anyone.
“Dreams are dangerous,” she murmured as she pressed a palm against her stomach, remembering the hollow ache she had carried since childhood in yearning for her mother’s touch and her father’s protection. The scars Gregor had left weren’t just physical. They were coded into her DNA and whispered warnings of history’s tendency to repeat.
“What if I become like Babushka ?” she whimpered softly.
Cold, distant, and viewing her child as nothing more than a pawn in a greater game. Or worse. What if she had to make the same choice her parents had? Run and leave everything behind, or stay and watch her children wither under a continued war between their father and Gregor’s influence.
The glass door slid open behind her. Jarek’s presence filled the space, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The grief she had glimpsed earlier still lingered in the air between them in a shared understanding of loss that made her usual defenses useless.
“I refuse to bring a child into this world as payment for a debt,” she finally said in a raw whisper. “I won’t have them grow up knowing they exist because of a contract.”
“Is that truly what you think I want?” His question came in a soft and dangerous tone.
She turned to face him with her chin inching higher. “Isn’t it? Another piece in your revenge against my grandfather? A Farrel heir with Polov blood?”
“Your grandfather took my daughter from me.” The words fell like stones between them. “I had to watch as my world burned to ashes around me. Do you honestly believe I would use a child, especially my own, as a weapon?”
The truth in his voice shook her. She had seen him ruthless in business, knew from firsthand experience how merciless he was with enemies, but never cruel to the innocent... except for her. Yet, somehow, she knew that even in their worst moments, he would never raise a hand to her or use force where words would suffice.
“That’s what you said that day, Jarek. You made your conditions for payment abundantly clear. A wife and a child for a debt owed.”
“That was for the benefit of Polov, Tatiana. Everything changed... I told you that night at the club... everything changed.”
Her heart started hammering. “Then what do you want?” she whispered as she stared at him with bated breath.
“What do you want, Tatiana?” he countered as he stepped closer, close enough that she could feel his warmth against the morning chill. “Not what you fear, not what you think you should want. What does your heart demand?”
The question undid her. She wanted to create what she had lost. A family, belonging, and unconditional love. She wanted to prove that the cycle could be broken, that love could triumph over power. She wanted...
“I want my children to be free,” she breathed instead, not yet ready to admit all her deepest needs to him. “Free to choose, to love, and to live without shadows of the past. Free from debts, obligations, and family criminal legacies.”
“Then perhaps,” he said quietly, “that’s where we start.”
She looked at him, really scrutinized him, and like the moment inside, she saw past the Dark One to the father who had lost everything. In his eyes, she saw her own reflection—scarred, afraid, but still hoping. They were both desperately seeking the dream of paper birds taking flight.
Maybe there was hope after all...