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Folding my hands over the hairbrush, I rub my thumb over the smooth handle absently. “It was wrong how you snapped at me. But …” I take a deep breath. “I admit that keeping Ruslan’s existence a secret was wrong too. And I owe you an apology for that.” I smile hopefully. “Are we even?”
Letting his shoulders loosen, he visibly relaxes. “Yes, very even.” Two more steps of his powerful legs and he’s standing over me. His eyes are half-lidded as he observes me in his thoughtful way. “I can’t imagine how hard it was for you to keep that secret to yourself.”
A resigned laugh that sounds more like a scoff tumbles from my lips. Clutching my stomach, I toss my hairbrush aside, where it lands soundlessly on the mattress by the headboard. “Well, if I gave myself an ulcer, I’m going to blame you.”
Arsen doesn’t answer my lame attempt at a joke. Instead, he stares hard at the bed, seeming to be debating with himself. He eventually sits, his legs spread, hands clasped in between. “I love you, Galina. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do.” Warm ripples swim through me like small fish on their way to a bigger pond. “But Arsen … I didn’t hide Ruslan because I didn’t think you loved me. It had nothing to do with that. I just wanted to protect a scared child.” Tugging at my bottom lip with my teeth, I scoot closer to him. Our hips are almost touching, but not quite. “How was he?”
“Scared. He thought I was going to hurt him.”
“Did you?”
He snaps his head around, eyeing me with uncertainty. “No.” His eyebrows unfurl and his frown becomes a soft shape. “But I did kick down the front door. That would scare anybody. Galina … he kept mentioning you and Katya, like he’d known you his whole life.”
“Blame Yevgeniy,” I grumble. “That asshole has deprived Ruslan of any form of stability since the day he was born.” Recalling how Ruslan brightened up when talking about my mother and me returning, my voice grows tender. “He seemed to think that us showing up meant his life would change for the better, that we’d all become one big happy family. Yevgeniy probably told him that’s how it would be.” That monster was using us for his own purposes before we even knew.
“You said before that Katya didn’t know he was alive.”
“That’s right.”
“How can that be?”
I fidget, pressing my hands between my knees to halt the movements. “It’s … hard to say out loud.”
“Please try,” he urges me. “It’s important.”
I glance upward, finding that he’s looking at me. I want there to be some softness, some understanding, in his silvery blue eyes, but they’re flat and cold.
He’s not thinking about the deeper implications of what I just told him. My heart shudders as I realize that in this moment, I’m not talking to the man who loves me, but to the head of the Grachev Bratva.
Shutting my eyes, I fight back a harrowing wave of sadness. I’ve wanted to avoid this conversation since the day I learned the truth. It hits too close to my own past. But there’s no avoiding it now. Arsen’s eyes drill into mine, and though he doesn’t say anything, I know I’m expected to answer.
The fresh wound breaks open as I begin to talk, my tone hoarse and gritty.
“Yevgeniy raped her,” my voice cracks as the words are dragged out from the depths of my soul, “the same way he did when she got pregnant with me. But unlike how he left me with my parents?—”
I catch myself with every intent to correct it to my mother and Stepan but decide not to. That monster has taken everything from me already. He can’t take the man who raised me. He can’t take my dad.
Arsen’s hand reaches out to cover mine, pouring his warmth into me as he gives my hand a soft squeeze. The gentleness of his gesture gives me enough strength to continue.
“When Ruslan was born,” I tell him, “Yevgeniy stole him away. Mom convinced herself he was dead because it was easier that way than to picture her child somewhere out in the world, existing without her.”
Arsen sits in silence for a long minute, never letting go of my hand. “How did she react when she met him?”
“Shocked,” I say. “But she knew right away that he was her son.” Opening my eyes, I look at him, imploring him to understand. “She loves him. It doesn’t matter to her that Yevgeniy is his father any more than it matters that he’s also mine. Ruslan is her baby.”
“And he loves her?”
“God, yes.” I chuckle lightly. “He’s obsessed, like he’s making up for lost time.”
Arsen’s mouth moves as he mulls over everything I’ve told him. “Obsessed … That’s an odd way to describe it.”
“No, it isn’t. He’s a boy who has only heard stories of his mom, and one day she’s finally in front of him. It’s natural.” I hesitate, reliving the moment Ruslan lashed out when I beat him at a video game. There was something different about him—a hint of the darkness that lives in his heart, similar to Yevgeniy’s.
“Galina?”
I shake myself quickly. “It’s nothing. Trust me, he’s just an innocent kid. He’s not like his father.”
