12. Becca

12

BECCA

I lowered my head toward the freshly ladled bowl of soup, inhaling the warmth and delicate fragrances until my skin felt damp from the steam tickling my cheeks and lips.

Oh. So, so good. It wasn’t a foolproof solution for this nagging sinus pressure, but it felt heavenly. And so different. New. No one had ever cooked a meal for me. Not since my mother died in a car accident when I was seven. I supposed the hospital food I received when I was there for all forty-seven hours of labor for Emily’s birth could count as warm food someone else had prepared for me, though. My standards were low. I’d learned to lower the bar.

“How is that?” Margie asked.

I smiled up at her, open and trusting of her generosity.

Or more like Ivan’s generosity. It was hard to remember that I was supposed to be a hostage here. I felt like a pampered princess. The man secured a long-term housekeeper to “help me out” with Emily. That was the single sweetest and most thoughtful thing a human had ever done for me.

Procuring me hired help.

Margie was a godsend. When I woke from my nap, I was a bit startled to hear the portly woman humming and dusting. She’d identified herself as the Valkovs’ favorite housekeeper and soon-to-be godmother, and I wondered if she was a figment of my imagination.

“He asked me to help you out, you poor girl. How long have you been sniffling like that?” That was how she’d explained her presence, and I knew better than to protest.

With her company, bustling around, cleaning the kitchen and generally being helpful, she showed me what I’d been missing all my life.

Support. Companionship. Something a lot like motherly love that I’d gone without for almost my whole life.

“The soup?” I asked, holding my necklace pendant back so it didn’t hang low as it slipped out from under my shirt and knocked against the bowl I hunched over. “It’s perfect , Miss Romanov, just perfect.”

She tsked. “Nonsense. I’m not a Romanov,” she playfully scolded. “The second Ivan’s grandfather saved me from the abusive man I’d been arranged to marry, I considered myself a Valkov.”

The pride in her protest was strong.

“Just call me Margie. I insist.”

I grinned, breathing in another deep inhale of the scented steam from the most decadent chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had. She’d whipped it up in seemingly no time at all, chatting with me in the kitchen all the while.

She didn’t interrogate me. Her questions were casual and calm, for no other reason than making me feel comfortable with her sudden presence here at this huge, expensive house.

“I can’t believe you’ve been trying to clean this all yourself,” she commented. “Those boys don’t vacation out here often. This place has been sitting here collecting dust for months and you’re putting your all into it.”

“Well, between naps…” I shrugged. “I’ve never liked being idle. There’s money to be made. Things to clean and fix.”

She laughed once, cooing at Emily as she gnawed on an iced piece of celery. The woman was right. My daughter wasn’t great at tearing off chunks to choke on, just mushing it and keeping it attached with the strings to soothe her gums.

I’d only gotten a catnap earlier, but with this comfort and peace Margie instilled in me, with her magical touch of calming Emily and not letting me be frazzled with her fussiness, I felt tired again—in a good way. I could recognize the difference now. Instead of feeling exhausted and at my wit’s end, I was content.

Since I learned I was expecting Emily, I’d worked. And worked. And worked some more. As a single mother handling sixty-hour workweeks, piecing in teeny slips of time for my art, and being a solo parent, I was overdue for a break.

Under Margie’s urging, I lay back on the couch and watched Emily play and babble to herself within the collapsible playpen Ivan had purchased just for her.

She never had this much space to crawl and play at our apartment. She could practice pulling herself up and falling without worrying about landing on our hard floor but on plush carpet instead.

Seeing her happy and calm eased my mind, and I slipped into another nap, wondering if I had to wake up from what felt like a dream.

Before long, I was woken. Beeps pulled me from the nap, and I blinked my eyes as I felt for my phone. I’d kept it nearby, anxious in case Ivan would want to contact me when he left for “business” matters. He was a Mafia man. I didn’t want to know what “business” meant to him. The less I knew, the better. Yet, I couldn’t give up on this hope that he’d want to contact me. That he’d miss hearing my voice.

“Oh, stop dreaming already.” He’d captured me and held me as a hostage, but he wasn’t a heartless brute. He’d made me come. He brought my daughter to me. He provided baby things without question, replenishing clothes and necessities for me. Arranged for a housekeeper to assist me.

If a man ever wanted the quickest way to impress a single mother and find the easiest way into her heart, it was in the action of providing a capable woman like a grandmotherly fairy as backup.

No one could fault me for forgetting that I was a hostage here.

Still, the anxiety of wondering if and when Murphy would reveal himself ate away at me. Because if and when he did come out of hiding… I would have to leave. Ivan hadn’t lied. He’d told me that I was sticking with him for only one reason.

Which doesn’t explain why he’d fucked me…

I grabbed my phone, blinking at the screen. The number that read out snapped me awake, and I sat up, alert.

Dmitri had called this number “interesting” that first night. He’d led me to believe the call came from a Rossini address, but I had yet to be convinced that the caller was someone affiliated with Dom.

The beeps signaled a blank text. “Huh?”

I lacked the time to set the phone down. It rang again, the same number, but this time as an actual call.

“Hello?”

“Becca.”

I grimaced at his voice. Every day, I woke up wishing I never had to deal with him ever again.

“What do you want, Steven?” He wasn’t disguising his voice this time. Knowing he was calling from that same number as before, I now understood that he’d been the one identifying as a Rossini. Falsely.

“Where are you?” Of course, he didn’t answer my question. He never did. Any communication with me was for his benefit, not mine.

“What?”

“Where. Are. You?” He sighed, like I was the problem here.

I narrowed my eyes. I hadn’t spoken with him since that time he called when I was at the gallery, when he wanted me to get that envelope at some club.

“Where?” he shouted, and I cringed at the decibel of his order. A glance at Emily napping on the floor calmed me. His shout wasn’t that loud beyond the reach of my phone’s speaker hole, but it felt like a bellow.

“Why do you want to know where I am? What’s it to you?”

“Stop playing games. Tell me where.”

Narrowing my eyes, I stood and walked away from the spacious living room with the play pen. I stepped further from Emily, unable to shed this hunch that he wasn’t calling to ask where I was or where Emily was, but to learn the location of Ivan. I didn’t need to be told in a lecture or dissertation about how the Valkovs were enemies of my father. I got it. I understood the rules from what Ivan had expressed in wanting to capture me as bait to make Steven come out of hiding.

Maybe this is the moment he will.

“Becca!” He grew impatient with my silence.

“I’m not telling you anything.”

But maybe you will. As I considered how smart it would be to record this call, I hurried toward the kitchen.

Margie raised her brow as I hurried there, but she didn’t scare easily. She waited patiently as I gestured at my phone as I set it to speaker, mouthing, where is your phone?

She handed her phone over without question. After she unlocked it, I quickly went to the video app to record.

“I’m not telling you anything, Steven,” I repeated as the video rolled.

Doing this showed my loyalty. It felt strange to align with Ivan, but at the same time, it felt too right. Ivan was a stranger. I’d been in his company for three weeks now, but I knew with an instinctive strength that I would side with him.

Ivan was more caring for me than my father had ever been. Ivan wasn’t conning me. He’d told me upfront that I was a hostage in this situation, that he needed me here because he was after my father.

Ivan was more considerate than Dom, too. This Mafia man was honest about his plans, and he was caring, deep down, when he pleasured me.

I wanted to help Ivan and his family, not Steven. No guilt struck me at the thought of throwing my parent under the bus like this. Steven would deserve anything and everything coming his way for his choices, for his mistakes. That was how karma worked. I wasn’t in the wrong, and I felt nothing but wise to lean on Ivan for security despite his claiming I was a thing with a purpose.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, you stupid whore. I know you’re with Ivan. You’ve been taken by the Valkovs.”

I licked my lips, eager to keep him on the line. “Why would you think that?”

He laughed darkly. “I don’t think it. I know it. You never called for help. That was the first clue that tipped me off.”

Margie pressed her lips together, watching me as I rubbed the clay pendant on my necklace. I felt it, grounded by the familiar smooth surface as I listened to Steven.

“I know because the Valkovs killed the man I tasked with taking your bastard baby.”

I stiffened, and Margie narrowed her eyes, not seeming to like the sound of that.

He had arranged for Emily to be snatched away? I’d never, ever forgive him. He could die a slow death and rot in hell for ever daring to compromise my daughter in anything dangerous.

“I know because I saw you through the windows of his fucking apartment.” He laughed once again. “Never forget that I have many friends with eyes and ears all through the city.”

But not here? Outside of it? “And just as many enemies,” I snarled.

“Tell me where, Becca.”

I glanced at the device attached to my phone. Dmitri had done something to it, and I wondered if it disabled my location.

“Tell me where you are.”

I owed him nothing. I felt indebted to Ivan, not him. I didn’t care what Steven wanted. It had nothing to do with me. My only goal was to provide for my baby the best I could, and only my association with Ivan enabled me to feel like I was doing a decent job of it.

“Fuck off.” I crossed my arms. Damned if he thought I would ever give him a chance to screw with me or my child again. Now, more than ever before, he was dead to me, a threat, an adversary to keep far away.

“What?” He chuckled without humor, teasing me. “What is it? You think you’re falling in love with this guy now too?”

I bit my lip, tense with rage. He thought it was so hilarious, mocking how I’d thought I had a real relationship with Dom. I didn’t have “anything” with Ivan, either. I was his pawn, his hostage, but unlike Dom, I wanted a very real commitment with Ivan.

“Are you trying to protect him?” Steven taunted. “You want to be a good girl for Ivan and hope he likes you more than Dom ever did?”

I clenched my teeth together so hard that it hurt my jaw.

“Just tell me where you are!”

Emily’s cries cut through the quiet. She’d woken in the other room, and I bet she was scared, not seeing me and being in a still-unfamiliar place alone.

Margie frowned, going for her, but I held my hand up and stopped her.

“Fuck you, Steven.” I would never tire of echoing my truest, most heartfelt sentiment with him.

He growled. “I’m warning you, you stupid cunt. Do not try to cross me.”

He hung up, and I turned with Margie to hurry to Emily and comfort her.

And seek her little arms wrapped around me for a semblance of comfort I needed after hearing from the man who called himself my father.

What I wanted, though, was to see Ivan and know if he would appreciate my decision to try to help his cause.

I would do anything to escape Steven’s role in my life. Even deliver him to the Mafia men hell-bent on killing him.