59. Viviana

My heels ache from pounding into the tile over and over again, but I can't sit down. When I stop moving, my brain turns on. And when my brain turns on, things get dark. Fast.

Anatoly waves at me from the dining room, what he has deemed to be a "safe distance" away from my manic pacing and prowling. "You do remember that Mikhail found Dante, right? He saved your son's life? You heard that part."

"I heard it," I grit out.

Raoul is the one who called to deliver the news. I'm not sure I'll ever get the sound of Dante weeping in the background out of my head. It will haunt my nightmares until I'm dead.

But he is alive.

He's coming home.

And Mikhail wasn't with him.

My husband didn't even bother to call me to tell me the news. No, he sent our son home with Raoul and then called Anatoly to tell him not to let me out of his sight.

I want to be in Mikhail's sight! The only thing I want in the world right now is to be with my family, but Mikhail is still working.

"This is how it's always going to be," I whisper hoarsely to myself.

"Things are tense right now. They'll get better." Anatoly does his best to sound certain, but when I look over at him, all he can manage is a sympathetic grimace.

Once upon a lifetime ago, I would have believed him. I thought love could fix everything. My father wanted me to marry a filthy rich, influential man—but once he saw how much I loved our maid's son, he'd change his mind, right? He wasn't heartless; he just didn't understand how I felt about Matteo. Once he saw that, he'd let us be together. After all, he wanted me to be happy, didn't he?

I got the answer to that question when my father slaughtered Matteo in front of me. Along with a lifetime supply of trauma, that moment taught me a valuable lesson.

Love can change you, but it can't change the world.

As much as I want Mikhail to put our family first, we will always come second to the Bratva. Because that's who Mikhail is. It's who he was raised to be.

No amount of loving him will change that if he doesn't want to change.

"Just give him time," Anatoly urges softly.

He's watching me like he can see what I'm thinking. I give him a tight smile.

Then the door opens.

I don't think. I don't make a single conscious decision. On pure instinct, I run for the open door. I run for my son.

Dante is so small and frail, curled against Raoul's chest. But as soon as he sees me, he starts wriggling and writhing, trying to get free.

"You shouldn't pick him up," Anatoly reminds me. "You're supposed to rest."

His voice is a million miles away. It's not in this room; not in this reality. The only thing that exists is me and my son.

"Dante!" I sob, dropping to my knees just as Raoul sets him on the ground.

He leaps for me and I fold him against my body. I bury my face in his golden brown hair and I rock with him, back and forth, back and forth. It's the way I held him as a baby. I would hold him all night, rocking him in the dark, terrified that I would lose him.

I can't believe I ever let him out of my sight. What was I thinking?

He's shaking in my arms, so I stroke his back. "You're okay, baby. I'm here. I'm not letting you go."

And I don't.

I hold Dante until he stops crying. Then, I carry him upstairs—despite Anatoly protesting the entire way—and give him a bath. While I rinse the dust and sweat out of his hair and wipe off his pink cheeks, he holds my hand over the lip of the tub. He keeps hold of it while I read him books in bed. Every so often, he gives my fingers a squeeze like he wants to remind himself I'm still here. Even as his eyes drift closed, he doesn't let go.

I almost lost him.

Something about lying here with him is driving it all home. He's safe and I now know with painful clarity that that isn't a guarantee. We got so lucky, and I can't count on that again.

I won't leave his life up to chance.

He's still breathing deeply when I slip away from him and tiptoe out of his room. I have no idea what time it is, but the house is dark. There are no voices coming from downstairs.

So I move silently down the hall and into my old bedroom.

When Mikhail first brought us here, I stashed a duffel bag under my bed, filled with everything I'd need if Dante and I had to get gone fast. It was my emergency exit plan. I almost forgot about it.

There's a fine layer of dust on the top of the bag when I pull it out from under the bed. I sweep it off and unzip it.

There are a few changes of clothes, a roll of cash that could get us three or four nights in a cheap motel—but only if we're okay sharing with bedbugs—and toothbrushes. The bare necessities.

Except, Dante needs more than this. For years, I thought as long as Dante and I had each other, we had everything we needed. It's a romantic idea, but things have changed.

He needs his father. He needs stability.

"But he won't have that here, will he?" I whisper to myself.

The truth hurts, but it's still the truth.

I blink back tears and zip the bag closed. I hike it over my shoulder and stand up…

Just as the door behind me opens.

Mikhail is a dark shadow against the hallway light, but I'd recognize the shape of him anywhere. "What the fuck are you doing?" he growls.

The anger is back in a second. It was buried under relief for a few hours, but it has clawed its way back. My hands shake on the straps of the bag. "Sounds like you already know."

"No, I don't." He steps into the room. "Because there's no way you would be stupid enough to be packing a bag after the night we just had."

"You're right. Let's just pretend I'm getting ready for bed," I snap. "I can't wait to wake up alone tomorrow and wonder who is coming after my family next. Why don't you disappear to take care of something again so I can get back to it?"

His eyes narrow. "I saved Dante."

"After you put him at risk in the first place!"

It's the first time I've said it out loud. The first time I've admitted to myself how much I blame Mikhail for what happened today.

Pain ricochets across his face before it hardens into the mask I know so well. It has slipped a few times—when he took us to Costa Rica, to the cabin—but it took me a while to realize that I wasn't slowly softening him. I wasn't going to swoop in and change the big, bad pakhan.

He wasn't opening up to me gradually until, one day, there would be no secrets. The sweet, tender, vulnerable moments we had were exceptions to the rule. Once we got home, it was always right back to the status quo.

I.

Can't.

Fix.

Him.

"Do you want me to tell you I fucked up?" His shoulders rise and fall in an angry shrug. "Because I know I fucked up. It's why Dante is back here with you instead of back at that school."

"He's here because Raoul drove him home."

"I gave the order."

"There! That." I snap my fingers and point. "That is the problem, Mikhail. Our son was kidnapped and you gave the order for him to be driven home by someone else. He was kidnapped and?—"

"I know he was kidnapped!" he roars. "I realized that when bullets were whizzing past my head as I rescued him."

I almost lost them both.

Tears burn in the backs of my eyes, but I hold my chin high. "He was kidnapped and you still couldn't come home to us."

"Because Christos is coming after you." He flings his arm towards the door like our enemies are waiting their turn in the hall. "I had to make sure they couldn't get to you. I'm going to keep you all safe."

I sigh. "That's great, Mikhail. But it doesn't mean anything if you are never here."

"How can you say it doesn't mean anything?"

"Because Dante may be safe in this mansion, but he's going to grow up terrified of the outside world. He's going to feel like his father cares more about the Bratva than him. I can't let him live like that." I lay a hand over my stomach. "I can't let either of our kids live like that."

Mikhail's blue eyes are wild. He looks like a caged animal, scanning the bars of this conversation, looking for the way out. "If you have it your way, our kids won't live at all. You all would be killed out there."

"Only because you won't make a choice."

"What choice?" He moves closer. He looks down the end of his nose at me and it's crazy how much I want to fall against his chest. It would be so easy to push this fight aside, to push it to the backburner once again and let him hold me.

But I can't do that.

Not anymore.

"The choice you need to make between me and the Bratva. Between the family we're building and the one you were born into." I meet his eyes and I hope he can see how serious I am. This isn't my pregnancy hormones or stress. This isn't some heat-of-the-moment ultimatum.

This is real.

"You knew what you were signing up for when you agreed to marry me, Viviana. This isn't a surprise to you. You knew who I was."

"I thought I did," I admit. "But then our son was kidnapped because you can't give the Bratva up. You don't know when to let go."

He raises a hand like he's going to grab me, but he tugs it through his hair instead. "I don't need to give anything up. I'm going to kill Christos and your father and?—"

"And then someone will take their place. There will always be another threat and it's killing our family. Don't you see that?" I take a deep breath. "You have to choose, Mikhail: the Bratva or our family. You can't have both."

He closes the distance between us. His chest brushes against mine with every ragged breath. "Or what?" he growls.

I swallow down my nerves and the bone-deep instinct to curl against his chest. "Or I'm leaving. We're leaving—me and Dante."

"You'll die out there," he breathes.

I nod. "We might die in here, too."

He traces my face. Really looks at me for the first time since he walked in the room, and he knows I'm serious. I can see it dawn on him that I'm going to leave.

He's going to choose us.

No other man in my life has chosen me, but Mikhail will. He loves me the way I love him. I'm sure of it. I've seen it.

Maybe I can fix him.

"You think you're going to die if you stay here?" he asks softly.

I nod.

He takes one step back and another. He moves with purpose, his eyes never leaving mine. "I say we test that theory."

By the time I understand what he's saying, he's pulling the door closed between us.

The duffel bag slips off my shoulder and I lunge for the narrowing gap, but the chance for escape clicks closed. The bolt slides home.

"You can't keep me here forever!" I pound on the door, but it's solid.

I'm sure Mikhail is already gone, but then his muffled voice reaches me through the wood. "I don't need to keep you here forever, Viviana. I just need to keep you long enough that you don't go out and get yourself killed."

"There's always going to be another threat. It's never going to end, Mikhail. We can't keep going like this." I press my forehead to the wood as my voice wavers and breaks. "I can't keep going like this. I won't. I've wasted enough years of my life running and hiding. I'm done with that. You have to choose. If you don't… you'll lose me either way."

I wait for a response, but it doesn't come.

Mikhail has made his choice.

He's gone.