Chapter 32

32

GWEN

I haven't moved since Nik barked at me to go up the stairs. Hours have passed, and the morning sun beats at my exposed back, but I can't bring myself to change my outfit or do anything besides stare down at this door, mentally urging him to come back and tell me everything's okay even if I can feel that something is wrong. Even if I feel ill just thinking about the look in his eyes.

What changed? One moment his hands were gripping my hips, pulling me into the curve of his body, and then I was running up the stairs stumbling over my feet, locking my door, and then sitting here.

What if he discovered the truth about Mason, Gio, and Mia before I had a chance to tell him? What if someone has already exposed me, and Nik is just dragging out my inevitable downfall? Anxiety floods my senses and now this dress that had Nik on his knees for me feels like sandpaper against my skin. I yank at the dress, trying to pull it off of me even if it means ripping the seams.

In my panic, I walk over to the wardrobe, my fingers brushing against the cool walls as I pull out one of his pristine white t-shirts. As I slip on the soft fabric, I am immediately overwhelmed by the scent of cedar and leather that clings to it, flooding my senses with memories of him. I find myself pulling at the fabric as if trying to bring him closer to me.

I sink to the floor, pulling my knees into my chest, tears burning in the back of my eyes. If I drowned here surrounded by the phantom embrace of him, it would be too soon. The vibrations of my phone break me out of my spiral, and I find myself crawling over to my bed and pulling my phone into my hand.

Kelsey's name flashes across the screen, and I choke back a sob. Mia's sweet face shines over my screen. She has chocolate on her face and a huge smile as she screams, "Mommy! Mommy, Mommy!"

"Hello, sweetheart," I coo as she positions the phone farther from her face. Gio pokes his head in the camera, his black hair flopping over his eyes. "Gio, buddy you need a haircut."

"Uncle David tried but he looks scary with scissors." Gio grimaces as he bumps into Mia and shoves himself into the camera a little better.

"Mommy, when are you coming?" Mia interjects, her bottom lip poking out as she pouts.

"Soon, baby," I lie, giving her a soft smile as I push a strand of my hair behind my ear. "How's home schooling?"

"Aunt Kelsey doesn't know how chimps develop friendships," Gio complains and the echo of teeth sucking invades the speaker.

"They did not teach us that in elementary school!" Kelsey yells off camera and I giggle.

Gio rolls his eyes, huffing, "Mom, please come back."

Kelsey crawls up behind the twins, noogieing Gio and kissing Mia on the cheek. Kelsey bats her eyelashes in the camera and uses a baby voice that sounds very close to Gio's. "Yeah, Mommy, when are you coming home?"

"Very soon, babies," I coo, an unexpected gust of laughter leaving my lips as I play along.

Guilt twists and tightens in my chest; the weight of my secrets gets heavier by the minute and threatens to crush me the more I gaze at their faces. Mia's tousled dirty blonde locks frame her face in these wild, loose curls that remind me of Nik early in the morning when no one is paying attention. And Gio's piercing oceanic eyes seem to hold the entire world in them, just like his father's. It's as if you can drown in him, or float to the heavens.

Nausea rises in my throat because despite my children never meeting their father, they possess so much of him to the point that I can't help but feel guilt the more I realize I am the only thing keeping them away from him. Mason is a threat, sure, but I could have told Nik before someone else did, and now he hates me. Now, I am sitting in this room waiting for him to scream at me, because what else could have him not talk to me for going on 13 hours now, besides that he knows and he is trying not to hate me.

A knock at the door jolts me out of my thoughts and I brighten my smile as I look at my children and Kelsey one more time. "I love you and I will see you all very soon, my loves."

They all say "Love you, bye", in unison, waving frantically in the camera as I hang up. The knocking increases and my back is bone straight as I look at the pale door, prepared to meet my fate.

I clear my throat, yet my voice comes out broken and shaky as I say, "Come in."

The door opens, revealing a disheveled Nikolai. His hair is no longer in his professional slick back with a stubborn curl on his forehead; rather it is a mess, thrown about on his head like he just got into a fight. He is still wearing the clothes from last night, his black button up wrinkled and untucked with buttons missing. His jacket is tossed over his shoulders, and he has a gray filter over his face that almost makes him look sickly.

When he enters the room at first, he doesn't speak. It doesn't even look like he breathes. Instead, he just stares at me, his eyes roaming over my body from head to toe as if he was scared he wasn't going to see me again. I take a cautious step forward, my hand reaching out to touch his face and he flinches from me. His eyes immediately dart to his muddy loafers.

A choked breath gets caught in my chest and the ball of salt rotates in my throat, begging for me to spill my secrets, beg for forgiveness and tell this man that I think I may love him, that I want him. That I need him. I whisper his name, "Nikolai."

"Kotik," he responds in a drunken whisper. "Let me just look at you."

I freeze, my eyes darting back to his, unable to make any sense of the words that just left his mouth or the way he looks at me. I feel like he can see through me, or like he is looking at me for the first time, but his gaze on my body makes my stomach roll. I want to give him this. I want to allow him to take his fill of me before he kicks me out onto the street, but I can't stand his eyes burning me to a crisp like this. The intense heat of his glare makes me want to itch, scream, cry, but instead I blurt out the only thing I know to say.

"Nik, I love you." The words escape before I truly know what I'm saying and even then, I keep the word vomit coming. My eyes avoid his widened gaze, and I look at my bare feet, in front of his muddy loafers. "I have for a while, and I know it has taken me so long to say this. But I mean it when I-"

His hands fly over my mouth. He stops my rambling and my eyes widen as they lock on his. And now that he is so close I can see how haunted he looks. He looks like he met with the grim reaper and barely made it out alive.

"Gwen," he sighs, and a layer of despair spreads across my skin, thick and unmoving. "Please, just stop."

The tears I've been holding onto sizzle and spill down my face, mixing in with the metallic and dirt taste on his palm. "Gwen," he whispers. "Before you pour your heart out to me, we need to talk." A choked sob leaves my lips, muffled by his hand, and my tears are falling so hard down my face that his face is blurred. "Because after I tell you about what was in that box, you may not want to deal with me anymore, and I couldn't blame you."

My eyebrows knot as he releases my mouth and brings his other hand up to cup my face. His thumbs wipe the tears as they stream down like rivers. My voice comes out as a hiccup as I ask him, "What do you mean?"

His breath is unsteady as he holds my face tighter and he takes a deep breath through his nostrils. "We need to hide you, okay? You can't work at the club, or travel without bodyguards or me."

"Wait a minute. I tell you I love you and you lock me away in a fucking tower, are you serious?" I jerk back from him, anger flying through my body like a grenade without a pin. "No, I refuse to let you run my life, Nik."

"Kotik," he pleads, and I jerk away from him, shaking my head the tears threatening to fall again.

"No, Nik," I growl. "Fucking no, I don't care what you found out. You cannot fucking do this to me."

"Listen to me. You're not safe," he snarls, his hand reaching out to me, but I dodge it, wanting all the space between us I can create.

"Bullshit," I snap. "You know, I thought we were past this. That you knew I was my own person, that you knew that you couldn't keep me locked up."

"Gwendolyn," he barks, and I seethe at my full government name, at the way he yells, at the heat in his eyes, and something in me fucking snaps.

"No, I don't care how much I love you. I'm not doing this." I stare at him with hardened eyes, and I grab my phone off of the floor and growl out my next words. "I'm leaving."

"No, you're not." He matches my anger, his eyes wild and crazed. A sharp, hard exhale leaves his lips as he runs his hand roughly through his hair. "If you want to leave, you're going to have to kill me to do so." I jerk back at his words, not wanting to show him any more weakness than I have, but unwilling to commit such a crime, especially to him. "Now sit down and listen. "

Against my better judgment, my back straightens and I am sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at the open wardrobe door, the law books scattered on the floor, the sun fully rising outside of my window, anywhere but at him.

After a moment, he sighs, and the bed dips and creaks next to me. I feel his body shift as he leans forward and places his elbows on his knees, taking a deep breath before speaking the words that make my stomach drop. "My father wants to kill you."

I always knew loving Nik would feel like drowning, but this feels like a tidal wave pulling me under. I suck in a sharp breath, but I don't speak and he continues in a low, hushed voice.

"Yesterday in that lavender box was a piece of my mother."

I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, my lungs burning as the waves draw me further into the sea. "What do you mean, a piece of your mother?" I whisper back, looking at his tense frame from the corner of my eye.

"I mean my mother's right hand and wrist with her limited edition Tiffany watch still on it." Nik states everything so matter of fact that I forget I am supposed to be angry and turn to him. A part of me wants to see a smile on his face, because he has to be joking, because no one would be cruel enough to send him pieces of his mother.

But there is no smile. Instead, his eyes drop and a small tremor runs through his body. I snake my hand between his clasped palms and scoot closer to him, our knees touching and my arm brushing against his chest.

"You can't go anywhere because I don't know where he is, and he will kill you to get to me. To destroy the one good thing I have left in this world." Nik's voice comes out like this is some manic dream he can't will himself out of.

"Why would he do this to you?" The minute the question comes out I feel stupid, inconsiderate because what child knows why their parents are so cruel? There is no father in their right mind who would ever do this to their child. I could never imagine tormenting Gio and Mia with throwing away one of their millions of drawings, let alone sending them pieces of their father.

"I am not Boris's biological child." He rushes out the words as if this is the first time he has ever said them.

"So this random man is tormenting you?" My ears are so hot, I can feel them burning my skin, and my hands itch with the need to rip Boris to pieces.

"No, Boris is my mother's debt collector of sorts."

"Well then, pay him off, Nik, you have the funds, don't let him do this to you!" I grip his hand tighter, pulling it into my chest, my voice a strangled plea as I try to catch his eyes on mine, but he just bites his bottom lip and looks away.

"My mother was in debt trying to keep her club open and Boris took advantage of that. He told her that he would pay off all of the debt she acquired, and back then my mother would've done anything to keep the club open; it was her dream." He licks his lips slowly and squeezes my hand tighter.

"So she agreed?" I urge him along and he lets out a laugh that sounds humorless and almost mocking.

"Agreed is an understatement," he murmurs. "The deal was that she provided him with children to be the heir to the mafia. They would have a marriage of convenience rather than love, but Boris was still so territorial of my mother, used to treat her like property and beat her so badly she was in the hospital a couple of times."

"So he was an abusive prick? Now instead of paying him off, I vote to kill him."

"When I was younger, I used to try to fight him off of her, but I was a kid and he was a grown man, so I did nothing but get a busted lip and a broken arm." Nik scoffs, and one hand releases mine so he can rub down his face, before he hunches back over and continues.

My heart beats painfully in my chest, and I can't help picturing a younger, helpless version of Nik, trapped under the weight of a monster whose only way to make him a man was to beat it into him. If I ever get my hands on Boris, I want to make him feel the fear Nik did as a child. I want him to suffer and bleed.

"What the fuck?" I twist my face, wanting to stare into Nik's eyes but he avoids me, and stares at his split knuckles. "He broke your arm? How could he? You were a fucking child."

"He was priming me into the next head of the mafia. It didn't matter that I was a child."

"Yes, it did. Nik, how could your mother put you in danger like this?"

"Don't blame her. My mother didn't have many ways to fight against him. Her only strategy was to shame him by ensuring that none of his children were actually his." He bites his bottom lip and then looks at me with a broken, lazy smile. "So my father is psychotic, and he knows I am not his, and he is pissed that I am the head of the mafia."

I look away from him, pulling my bottom lip into my mouth and nibbling on the dead skin there. He makes so much sense now, his obsessive need to hold on to what he claims as his, to control every piece of his world because everything was ripped out from under him back then.

"Look, that's a crazy story, but how does that end up with you getting your mother's hand in a box?" I snap, my anger at Boris cresting, and I feel like I want to strangle that man to death for hurting Nik when he was too young to fight back.

He speaks in a hushed tone as he says, "If I resign from my position, I can give my mother a proper burial before she decomposes beyond recognition." He continues, "There's a question if Nadia and my other siblings are actually Boris's children. If Nadia is his, he wants to arrange her marriage to another Russian in order to keep the Petrov name alive. And if Aleksander turns out to be his child, he wants him to kill me and take over the throne, just as Boris did to his own brother years ago."

I feel numb, and all I can see is Mia and Gio, our children, smiling, laughing and then dead, killed for the sins of a grandmother they would never meet. My body aches with guilt, and panic gnaws at me. I am forcing him to be in the dark about his children because of Mason who seems like child's play compared to the monster Boris is.

The world feels like it's closing in on me; my fear suffocates me and my chest tightens with every breath. The thought of Boris harming our children as a way to punish their grandmother, a woman they will never know, fills me with unfiltered rage.

If I tell Nik about our kids and their potential danger, it could destroy him. He would never forgive me because now he has to think about protecting himself, his siblings, me and two unknown children. And yet, if I keep this secret from him, perhaps he won't be able to protect them from Boris at all .

Fuck, I waited too long and now Nik can't know about the twins until Boris is dealt with, and even then, it may be too late; Nik may already be dead.

"Shit," I comment, because that's the only thing I know how to say besides you have secret children we need to protect. I look down at our feet again. I bite my inner cheek hard enough for the copper taste to invade my mouth and give me a different pain to focus on, one I can soothe.

"Either outcome where Boris doesn't die before telling my siblings the truth, I am dead. You cannot let the previous leader of the mafia live. So, either Boris, or Aleksander, or Nadia's new husband will kill me and become leader of the Russian mafia."

"Don't say it like it's that simple," I choke out a gravelly sound from my throat.

"But it is that simple." He takes a deep breath, shifting away from me. "There was a time I thought I could just let Boris kill me and save everyone the grief."

He lets go of my hand and stands, his back towards me as he continues to speak, "But then I met you and I had someone to live for. After you, I became selfish."

"Nik, look at me," I whisper and he turns slowly, his eyes look like hot glass on the edge of shattering.

"So no, you can't leave, because if you die, I die." His voice is firm as he speaks and my heart flutters so hard, I can't breathe. Instead, I stand, run into his arms and give him the best kiss of my life.