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“Do you need us?”
“Not yet,” Mikhail says tightly. “Stand by.” And then hangs up the phone.
“He’s so fucking uptight.”
Harper squeezes her lips together.
“What?”
“It sort of runs in the family, don’t you think?”
I toss the phone onto the bedside table as she scoots out of bed.
“I would not say it runs in the family.”
“You and I have a very different definition of uptight then,” she says, quickly evading my palm swinging toward her ass, which is barely covered by a white lace thong.
“Don’t think for a minute you got away with that!” I’m yelling at an empty room.
She mumbles something unintelligible back to me through the closed door of the adjacent bathroom. Sassy as fuck.
God, I love it.
I scroll through the messages on my phone, alert the others that Aria’s in labor, and assign guards to head to the hospital to bewith them. This isn’t the first time Mikhail’s been at the hospital, and I know how he is. In his absence, I step in as lead.
“My mother wants to meet you,” I tell Harper when she comes back into the room. “Like, visit. You know how things were pretty crazy at the wedding.”
She nods. “Okay. So... when do you want to go see Ivy?”
“See her?” I ask, tossing the covers down and standing up. “We’re not going to see her, Harper. We’re bringing her home. Today, of course.”
It’s still dark outside these windows, a blue tinge revealing how early it still is.
Her eyes widen. “Today? You want to go today?” I can’t quite read her expression.
“Of course I do.” That’s herdaughter.I won’t leave her with strangers for another second. “She should be here, with you, under your protection and mine.”
“We don’t even have a bed for her!”
“Seriously, that’s what you’re worried about? We’ll get what we need. I’ll get Auntie Polina on it.”
She blinks and looks around the room, as if trying to figure out where to put the bed.
“I…I wasn’t really ready for this. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to have her here with us, it’s just?—”
Her voice seizes and her lower lip trembles. I walk over to her, concerned. “What is it? Are you alright?”
Her nose wrinkles and she bursts into tears. I reach for her, a bit stunned by the sudden torrent of tears. “I cried like my heart was breaking when I had to leave her. When I couldn’t take her home. And every time I ran away to go see her and was caught, my parents would be so furious with me. But I had to. I had to, Aleks.”
Khristos, I will kill her parents.
“Of course you did. She’s your child. I’d level heaven and earth for my child if I needed to.”
“I know,” she sobs. “Which is why I’m excited about her coming here with us. I’ll figure out the mother thing. And the bed thing.”
“And I’ll help you. We can do this, alright? We’ve got this.”
She swipes at her eyes and sniffles into a tissue I hand her. “You just might win me over if you keep being so nice.”
