25. Viviana

Push the board meeting from 10 to 2.

When I saw Mikhail's name light up my screen two minutes before six this morning, my stupid heart leapt. A more imaginative person might've said it frolicked, even, hopeful that whatever the hell happened at the end of our "definitely not a date" the other night was an emotional glitch Mikhail was going to apologize for.

Apparently not.

I mentally add a third tally under my Days Since Mikhail Has Apologized for Being An Asshole column. Then I text back. Can do. I even put a period at the end instead of an exclamation point. Like the no-nonsense hardass I am.

Mikhail isn't texting me as Viviana, the mother of his child and woman he nearly kissed before unceremoniously dumping her in a car and sending her away—he's texting me as Viviana, the assistant he inherited after a hostile takeover of Cerberus Industries.

It's getting hard to keep track of what and who we are to each other.

I'm his wife, but not really.

We're attracted to each other, but not together.

I'm the mother of his child, but we aren't a family.

So me being Mikhail's personal assistant is just another level of confusion on top of this seven-layer shit dip.

Today is my second day back at work since moving in with Mikhail, so my internal clock is still adjusting back to my work schedule. I have to drag myself out of bed and into the shower. Afterward, I twist my hair into a clip and toss my makeup bag in my purse.

Yesterday, I curled my hair and put on a full face assuming I'd be riding to work with Mikhail. But when I got downstairs, it was just Pyotr waiting for me in the driveway.

Today, I'll do my makeup on the drive.

My shopping spree with Stella and Anatoly included new work clothes, so I slip into a gray pencil skirt and cashmere sweater. This outfit alone is more expensive than the entirety of my combined work- and non-work wardrobe before meeting Mikhail. The cashmere feels like being cuddled by a flock of adorable baby sheep. It's so comfortable that it takes a concerted effort to not feel any gratitude towards Mikhail as I walk across the hall to wake up Dante.

But thoughts of Mikhail and baby sheep fly out of my head when I open Dante's door…

And find his bed empty.

"Dante?" I call, pulling back the blankets even though I know he isn't there.

I check the closet, but it's empty.

Shoving down gnawing panic, I check the sitting room and the kitchen, but they're empty, too. I don't see Stella or Anatoly. Dante's tutor, Mrs. Steinman, won't be here for another hour, at least. Out of desperation, I ask a maid I don't recognize if she's seen Dante, but she says something in Russian that lets me know neither of us are going to understand each other.

I sprint down the hallway back towards his room. "Dante! Where are you?"

Did Mikhail take him? Are they gone? Am I ever going to see him again?

I'm blinking back tears—seconds away from calling Mikhail for help or to scream at him, depending on if he's kidnapped my child or not—when I hear a muffled shout from the end of the hall.

From Mikhail's room.

I throw open the door and step inside.

The shades are drawn and the room is dim, but I can still see the rumpled, king-sized bed where Mikhail slept last night. Fully against my will, I breathe in the mint and cedar scent of him. It's stronger here than anywhere else in the house.

"Dante…?" I whisper as if Mikhail is going to lunge at me from behind a door.

"I'm in here," a little voice says tearily.

I turn towards the closet. The door is cracked open and I see a small, socked foot poking out of the shadows beyond.

Getting to my knees in my pencil skirt is an ordeal-and-a-half, but I manage it and crawl into the closet with him. Thankfully, Mikhail's closet could fit our previous apartment two times over. Claustrophobia won't be an issue.

"What are you doing in here, bud?" I ask softly. "Are you okay?"

Dante swipes a pajama sleeve across his nose. "I was looking for Mikhail."

"I think he's already at work." If his text at the buttcrack of dawn was any indication, he starts work in the middle of the night. "Did you need something?"

You could have come to me. You can always come to me.

The jealousy taking root in my chest is ripped up the moment Dante lifts his face and I see his chin wobbling. His blue eyes are glassy with tears.

"What's the matter, honey?" I wipe away his tears with the baby-sheep-soft sleeve. "Did something happen?"

"Is he leaving again?" he wails, throwing his arms around my middle. His face is buried in my stomach. "He came back, but he's leaving us again."

"No. He isn't going anywhere. He didn't—When did he leave us before?"

"When I was a baby," he cries. "That's why he wasn't there. It was me and you, but I… I want it to be Mikhail, too. But he's gone. He wasn't here before bedtime or when I woke up. He's nowhere."

When I stroke his cheek, I can't help but see his father in every inch of him.

"He's been away." I stroke his cheek and can't help but see his father in every inch of him. "But he'll be back soon. I'll make sure of it."

Pyotr walks around to help me out once we pull up to Cerberus Industries, but I'm already out of the car and wrenching open the glass double doors by my damn self.

Jackie waves and says something nice about my sweater, but I'm too angry to engage in small talk today. My heels click down the tile hallway towards Mikhail's office like a war drum. When I reach his office, the only warning of my arrival is when the door bangs off the interior office wall.

"We need to talk," I bark.

Of course, Mikhail doesn't flinch.

He doesn't even look up, actually. He's signing some contract—probably his NDA with Satan. I swear not to tell anyone you inhabit my body for your evil bidding eighty percent of the time in exchange for dangerously good looks and more money than any human has a right to.

Whatever it is for, I swipe it off his desk with a violent sweep of my arm.

"I said we need to talk," I repeat icily. "It's important."

Mikhail clicks his pen, lays it perfectly parallel to the edge of his desk, and finally looks up at me. "What do you need, Viviana?"

"From you? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I never needed anything from you."

"Is that why you came in here today? To tell me you don't need anything?" His eyes slide down and back up my body slowly. "Or is there something else?"

His old words ring in an obnoxiously horny part of my brain. You know I like what I see. I've never denied that.

The need twisting low in my gut despite everything this man has done to me and my son only fuels my anger. It's gasoline to my righteous rage.

"I don't need a damn thing from you. Your son, however, was crying on your closet floor this morning because he's scared you're leaving him again."

Mikhail's eyes darken. "I never left him. You took him away. I'm sure you cleared that up with him."

"You've been in his life for less than a week and you're already disappointing him. If you want to make me feel bad about keeping him from you, being a halfway decent father would do the trick. Right now, you're proving me right."

Anger bubbles just under his surface. I feel it like an electric charge in the air. But Mikhail's face stays calm. Impassive. Like it's carved out of a goddamn glacier with an avoidant attachment style and repressive emotional tendencies. "The kid was crying because he missed me. Sounds like he thinks I'm a little more than ‘halfway decent.'"

I gasp. "You cannot be serious. Are you trying to spin him crying into a good thing?"

"I never cried when my father wasn't around and that definitely wasn't a good thing. You know what I think?"

"That the world revolves around you?" I guess. "Yeah, you've made that painfully obvious."

He continues on like I didn't say anything. "I don't think you're here because Dante misses me. I think you're here because you miss me."

"That is not true!"

It's not entirely true, anyway.

If this was just about what happened between us the other night, I'd carry on in silence. I would fight back by responding to his work texts with increasingly aggressive punctuation until he was forced to clear the air.

"Dante is the reason I'm standing here. Dante is the reason I agreed to marry you in the first place. Dante is the only reason you and I are in the same room right now."

"What about when you spread your legs for me and begged me to come inside you?"

In the silence that follows, I could hear a pin drop from a mile away.

Mikhail's face is unreadable. Anyone walking by probably thinks we're discussing schedules and upcoming meetings. But, oh boy, if they could hear… HR would have a field day with this conversation—with our entire relationship, actually.

Though the thought of Judith with the beehive hairdo from the nineteenth floor telling Mikhail what he can and can't do almost makes me laugh.

I hitch in a breath to try to respond, but Mikhail charges on ahead.

"Dante didn't exist yet, so I know that wasn't about him. Is it possible, Viviana, that you did want something from me that night?" His voice lowers, smoothing over my skin like velvet. "Do you still want it?"

Yes. Yes. Which is the entire fucking problem.

My cheeks burn. I throw his words from the night on the roof back at him. "You know I like what I see, Mikhail. I've never denied that."

He wags a finger in the air. "Except you are, Viviana. You're denying it right now. You're standing here because I'm following your rules. We got married and you said no sex. This is a business arrangement, remember? But the first time I don't walk you to the front door and kiss you under the porch light, you storm into my office and start making demands."

"For Dante!" I scream. "I'm making demands for Dante!"

"Using your son to get closer to me." He clicks his tongue in disapproval. "It's a dirty trick, even by my standards."

"I'm not—I would never—" Angry tears burn behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.

Thisis what Mikhail wants.

He wants me to hate him. To yell and scream and give him an excuse to keep me at arm's length.

If that's what he wants, why should I fight to bring him closer?

I let that tiny seed of hope sprout in my chest, convincing me that maybe there could be more between us, if only because I like the symmetry of his face and the way his body feels against mine. But a relationship is built on more than that.

It's built on things I can't give him.

Like the whole truth. Every seedy detail of how exactly I was able to disappear for so long.

And things he can't give me.

Like his heart.

I take a deep breath and square my shoulders. "I don't care if you and I never speak again from this moment forward. But you can't do that to Dante. He knows you are his father. He figured it out. And just because you don't deserve a son like him, that doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to have his father in his life. Business is all you seem to understand, so try treating our son like a job. You need to show up for him every day. If you can't, you let me know so I can pick up that slack. He deserves better than either of us—but you and I are all he has."

Before Mikhail can say anything, I turn and leave.

I make it to the bathroom at the end of the hall before the tears start to fall.