47. Viviana

I love you. Get Nat.

What does that mean?

I mean, I know what it means, but it doesn't do anything to quiet the torrential downpour of questions flooding my brain.

I'm frozen on the doorstep as scrawny, dour men that Mikhail could knock out in a second drag him down the front steps of the mansion. He's a head taller than all of them. There's no way they could keep him down if he wanted to resist.

Hell, maybe I'll charge down there and take a few swings. With the adrenaline pumping through me, it might be a fair fight.

A bald agent puts his hand on the back of Mikhail's head and I want to break his wrist. How dare they? He's mine.

They shove him into the backseat.

"I love you, too!" I yell back just as the door closes.

I don't know if Mikhail heard me. The dark car slips down the driveway as quietly as it arrived. I'd still be frozen in the doorway if a large hand didn't land on my shoulder.

I scream and spin around into a solid wall of muscle.

"It's me," Anatoly says evenly, grabbing my shoulders to steady me.

I lean back to look up at him. There's a tight frown on his face. He knows.

I pound my fist into his chest. "Where in the hell were you? They just arrested Mikhail! Why weren't you here?"

He gently grabs my wrists, keeping distance between us. "I thought you might like to have at least one person here to guard you and your son while Mikhail is away. If I had come out to rubberneck, they would have taken me in for questioning, too."

He's making a good point, but I struggle against his hold anyway. I twist and fight and yank on my wrists because I have no idea what else to do.

Mikhail is gone.

The FBI took him.

And I don't know when he's coming back.

Slowly, my fight drains away. I don't realize I'm crying until Anatoly drops my wrists and pulls me in for a hug.

"Don't cry, Viv. He'll be back."

"When?" I sob into his shoulder. "And what'll happen when he does?"

Anatoly doesn't answer either question.

The mansion becomes Free Mikhail HQ within the hour.

Anatoly calls Raoul and he races here. He got the heads up that Mikhail was being arrested thirty seconds before the FBI knocked on the door. There wouldn't have been enough time to warn Mikhail even if he tried.

They pace around the kitchen, circling each other and tossing out ideas, and the two of them have never looked more like brothers. They are opposites in every conceivable way except for the most important one: they love Mikhail.

"This is about Cerberus," Raoul says when he hangs up with one of a dozen phone calls he has made to contacts all around the city. "He's being brought in for financial fraud. They think he started the fire to get the insurance and hide evidence."

"He wasn't even there!" I argue. My skin flushes when I remember where Mikhail was instead.

He was on the private balcony with me. It was the night he told me he loved me. The night he bought me a star and apologized. The night we had makeup sex so good that I had no choice but to bare my soul and tell him I was pregnant.

Fuck… maybe I should stop telling him I'm pregnant. Bad things happen when I make pregnancy announcements.

"Mikhail wasn't at Cerberus Industries, but you were," Anatoly jabs a finger at Raoul. "If anyone in our family is responsible, it would be you."

Raoul narrows his eyes. "Unless you want me to go turn myself in, that isn't helpful."

Anatoly holds up both hands. "I'm just saying. These feds don't even have their facts straight."

"They also don't have any evidence. If they did, there would be formal charges."

I sit up. "Does that mean he's coming home?"

Anatoly grimaces. "They can hold him for three days without charges."

Three days. It doesn't sound like a long time. Then again, the last hour has felt like a century.

I bolt out of my chair and run across the kitchen. I barely make it to the trash can before every measly thing I managed to eat in the last hour comes back up.

Anatoly is there, rubbing my back, when I stand up. "It's going to be okay, Viv."

I spit and rinse my mouth out with water from the sink. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine. The stress can't be good for the baby." Raoul is watching me carefully.

I want to ask him how he knows about the baby, but there's no point. Raoul knows everything. And as soon as he found out, he told Mikhail.

I'm not even mad at him. He did what I should have done.

Anatoly leads me back to a chair and pushes a plate of crackers towards me. "You need to eat something, Viv. Mikhail will kill me if he gets home and you're a wreck."

Deep down, I know Mikhail didn't really think Anatoly was the father. From the moment Anatoly and I met, he has been a friend. More than that, he's loyal to Mikhail. The only reason Mikhail accused me of sleeping with Anatoly is because he was surprised and angry. I don't even blame him.

"You were right, Nat. I should have told Mikhail about the baby as soon as I found out. I should have told him when we got to his office. I should have?—"

"None of that would have changed this," Raoul interrupts. "The feds were going to arrest him either way."

"At least I'd know how he feels about it all," I mutter. Then I shake my head. "I'm sorry. Mikhail is being tortured for all we know and I'm thinking about myself."

"He's at the police station, not Guantanamo." Anatoly slides my plate closer, giving me a firm look until I grab a cracker and nibble on the edge. "Mikhail can handle himself."

"What does Daddy need to handle?"

I didn't hear the small footsteps padding down the stairs, but I turn around and find Dante standing in the doorway. His sweats are rolled twice at the ankle because they're a size too big and he's holding a stuffed pterodactyl under his arm.

He's so small and his dad is being detained by the FBI and all of that plus pregnancy hormones makes me want to curl into a ball and weep.

Thankfully, Anatoly jumps up before I can fall apart.

"Nothing, kiddo!" Anatoly snatches the pterodactyl out of his hand and pretends to fly it around Dante's head, booping the end of his nose with it. "Did your movie get over?"

Dante shakes his head. "No. I'm hungry."

"Amazing. A problem I can solve!" Anatoly scoops Dante onto his shoulders and marches him towards the kitchen. Then he stops and turns around. "It's okay if he has a bowl of cereal for dinner, right?"

I swipe the tears out of my eyes and stand up. "How about I solve this problem?" It'll be nice to have something useful to do.

Dante is much less excited at the prospect of seared chicken and roasted carrots, which means I'm doing my job as his mother.

Right now, getting Dante a well-rounded meal and not falling apart is the only thing I know how to do.

The rest of it is a complete and total disaster.