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“You can’t possibly expect me to be with you after what I just saw,” I breathe, the knot in my throat making it almost impossible to speak.
Because it kills me to say that to the father of my unborn child. I was so close to telling him, too. That’s why I asked him to find me after he finished speaking with my father… before I followed him into the basement.
After hearing Mishka loves me, knowing he would run away with me, I thought we might truly find a way to be happy together. I wanted to tell him about the baby. But now, how can I? I can’t even trust him to keep my family alive.
“Please, Alina,” he rasps, coming to his knees before me as he grasps my fingers.
When he presses his forehead to my abdomen, I can’t stop the sob that rips from my chest. Because he’s right there, so close to our baby that they’re as good as touching. He doesn’t even know it. And maybe now, he never will.
“Please, give me another chance,” he begs, lifting his head to peer up at me, his strong, callused thumbs brushing across the backs of my knuckles as he refuses to release my hands. “I’ll give up my need for revenge if you’ll forgive me.”
My heart stops, his words tempting me beyond my limitations as I try to resist his plea.
“After Sascha died, all I had to live for was the thought of vengeance,” he confesses, his blue eyes fathomless wells of pain and misery. “It’s the only thing that kept me breathing… until I met you.”
“And now?” I ask, my voice wobbling uncontrollably through my tears.
“Now, nothing matters to me more than you do,” he rasps, rising to his feet and cupping my face.
His touch is so agonizingly sweet, his thumbs softly brushing the moisture from my cheeks. I want to forgive him—God, I do. But I can’t stop thinking about how many times he looked into my eyes, how he kissed me, held me, made me believe he loved me, and still knew he was going to kill my family.
Right up until the moment he had to pull the trigger, he must have been sure he could do it. That he could live with the pain it would cause me.
And if I hadn’t happened to be there, if I hadn’t drawn his attention, I can’t help wondering if he would have finished the job. Could he have killed my family and been willing to deal with the consequences later?
I can’t confidently say no to that.
Mishka releases me, granting me a modicum of space without backing up, and I feel the energy radiating from him, that magnetic pull that draws me to him again and again—even when I shouldn’t want him.
“I have to think about it,” I murmur, shaking my head to reassure myself that I’m doing the right thing.
“Okay,” he agrees, low and steady, his patience endless in his blue-eyed gaze, though the sadness that lingers in their depths nearly breaks me. “I get it. Take all the time you need.”
I nod, unable to speak around the fresh tears threatening to strangle me.
“Just know,” he rasps, his eyes devastating, “I won’t be going anywhere—whatever your decision. My life is in your hands, Alina, because if you don’t want to be with me—if you can’t trust me or don’t want to keep my secret—I would rather be put out of my misery than leave. And if I’m going to die, it might as well be at the hands of the man who killed my brother.”
His voice is so soft and low, reassuring even as he whispers the horrible possibility.
The truth of the matter is, I don’t want my father to kill Mishka any more than I want Mishka to kill my family.
But I don’t know that I can carry the burden of my family’s safety without saying anything. Because if I’m wrong, if Mishka proves untrustworthy a second time, then when my dad dies, that will be on me.
“You should go,” I whisper, though my heart pleads for him to stay.
Mishka nods, but his body language says he’s as reluctant to leave as I am to let him.
How have things fallen apart so completely in such a short time?
My lips part, threatening to betray me, to tell him I forgive him, but before I can, Mishka closes the distance between us completely. His fingers comb into my hair as he cradles the back of my head. He tips my chin up, bringing my lips to the angle he wants them.
And before I can refuse him, he kisses me passionately.
My composure shatters at the ferocity with which he claims my lips. Like this might just be the last time he ever gets to.
God, but it kills me to think that might be true.
Emotions well up inside me as my body wars with my mind. And my heart, caught in the middle, feels as though it might just split in two.
