54. Viviana

Sending Raoul to the bar without me was a strong choice. Especially because I actually really wanted to go.

A night celebrating with Mikhail on some glitzy rooftop somewhere? Yes, please. Sign me up. Even if the closest I can get to a drink right now is juice and soda water, I want to go out. I want to stop feeling like a mole person and spend a fun night with my husband.

But not like this.

The only time I get to be with Mikhail is on his terms. He's too busy to show up for me, but I'm supposed to strap my bloated, pregnant body into a dress and heels the moment he snaps his fingers? It's not exactly the give-and-take relationship I always dreamed of.

Which is why, when I finally hear the front door open at two in the morning, I'm sitting in bed with a book I don't care about in my lap and one hell of a bone to pick with my other half.

I can hear muffled voices and footsteps. I'm itching to jump out of bed and charge downstairs, but I don't want to look even half as desperate as I feel. So I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Naively, I imagined Mikhail would see that I wasn't with Raoul, hop in his car, and be back at the mansion to drag me out of bed within an hour. We'd scream and fight at first, sure. But by the time we made it to the bar, we'd have made up. Preferably in the backseat of his car. Twice.

Now, he's in the mansion—and he still isn't coming to find me.

"What the hell?" I mutter, tossing my book to the end of the bed.

By the time I hear him coming down the hallway, I have our entire argument mapped out in my head. Every point he could make, I can counter it. I'm ready.

It takes all the restraint I have left to wait until the door has just barely cracked open to start talking.

"You're finally home," I note coolly. "I almost didn't bother waiting up for?—"

My planned speech careens off the rails when Mikhail steps into the room… covered from head to toe in blood.

"Oh my God." I throw the comforter back and slide my legs to the edge of the bed. "Where have you been?"

Are you okay? Are you safe? Those are the questions I'm too upset to ask.

"Busy."

He peels his bloody shirt over his head and I don't see any wounds or bruises on his body. So the blood isn't his, which should be nothing but good news. But in the back of my head, I wonder who he killed and why they were more important than me.

"I had a scan this morning."

"I know." He kicks his pants off and tosses them in the ruined pile with his shirt. It's been months of living with Mikhail and seeing him every day, but I'll never get over the way he moves. The strength that ripples through him. Even with nothing on except a pair of black briefs, he's a weapon.

"If you knew about it, that means you chose not to show up, then. Don't you even want to know how it went?"

He's covered in a dead man's blood and we're talking about my doctor's appointment. It's weird, but this is our life, apparently.

He shakes his head. "I know how it went. Dr. Rossi texted me as soon as you left his office."

"I have a phone, too. You could have texted me."

"I wanted it straight from the source." If that's his way of saying he doesn't trust me, it's as subtle as a chainsaw.

"You promised me I wasn't going to be one of those Bratva wives whose only purpose is to birth your children."

"Not tonight, Viviana."

The strain in his voice is impossible to miss. I should let this go. I should—"It has to be tonight," I snap. "Because I never know when I'll see you again."

He turns to me, his bloody hands in tight fists at his sides. "We're at war."

"And we're having a baby. You and me. The two of us. If it's bad timing for you, you have no one to blame but yourself. You did this. You didn't have any trouble clearing your schedule when you wanted to ‘fuck a baby into me.' The war didn't stop you then."

His eyes narrow. "Things have escalated since then and you know it. If I wait until all my enemies are dead to fuck my wife, we'd never have a family."

He's right.

There will always be more enemies. Another war. An ever-growing list of things to be scared of. The enormity of what exactly I've signed up for hits me all at once.

"Maybe that would have been a good idea," I hiss. "Maybe our original arrangement was smart all along: we're business partners. I handle the house and you handle the Bratva."

"You never wanted that." He snorts and turns towards the bathroom. "These pregnancy hormones are making you crazy."

Without thinking, I grab the book from the end of the bed and fling it at him. My throw goes wide and the book clatters against the wall.

He turns towards me slowly, his jaw clenched. "Not tonight."

But it's too late to walk away now. The space in my heart where I've tucked every fear and doubt and concern for the last few months is overflowing. There's no more room to stuff it down. It has to come out.

"This life—the one with us and Dante and our baby—isn't less important than the Bratva."

"I never said it was!" he bellows. There's blood drying on his neck. It shifts as he swallows, as tension radiates through him.

"You don't have to say it, Mikhail. You show it every single day. Every day that you aren't here. Every day that Dante isn't here."

His eyes flare, a warning written on his face. "I didn't make that decision alone."

"No, but you've done everything else alone!" I cry out. "I thought sending Dante away was for the best at the time, but now… Now, I wonder if you weren't trying to get him out of the way."

He's across the room between one blink and the next. He leans in close enough that my nose fills with the copper tang of someone else's blood.

"Look at me, Viviana," he snarls. "If I wanted to get rid of you and Dante, I could. I would have done it already. Months ago. Years ago."

My heart is racing and I flash back to the night all of this started. To Mikhail storming into my bridal suite, this dark, vengeful presence. I didn't know anything about him then. As grateful as I was that he'd saved me from a lifetime married to Trofim, I was terrified. I had no idea what he would do or what he was capable of.

I'm just as terrified of him now.

I swallow past the fear. "Why don't you? You clearly aren't interested in having a family. If you were, you'd bother to show up when?—"

He wraps his sticky hands around my throat and drives me back against the wall. I'm so shocked, I don't even scream. I could. His hold on my neck is loose enough. But his hand is shaking. He's working hard not to hurt me, and I have no clue when that control will snap. I don't want to push him.

We stare at each other for a few seconds or minutes. I'm not sure. Time slips and morphs and I see too many emotions to count shutter across Mikhail's face.

Then, just as fast as he crossed the room, he's gone.

I can still feel the warmth of his hand around my throat when the bathroom door clicks closed and the shower starts.