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I hesitate in the doorway. I glance over my shoulder at Nikolai, already focused on his work. “You promise that you will tell me later?”
Nikolai glances up with a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. “Of course.”
Horus places a hand between my shoulders and pushes me gently out of the room so that the door falls shut heavily behind us - and that is that.
I don’t so much as look at the man trailing behind me as I stew in my irritation.
I know what I would see if I were to look into Horus’ dark features right about now. He’s not likely to tell me much more than Nikolai. He is loyal to a fault.
I can’t shake the feeling that Nikolai just lied to me. Right to my face. If he doesn’t explain himself tonight, what am I going to do?
“You should not speak to him like that.” Horus speaks softly to me in his mother tongue. It was just a fluke that we both happened to speak Arabic. A rusty language that I knew in my childhood that I had dusted off quite often since Horus had moved up in the ranks. It was a bond, it had forged a friendship that I don’t think Nikolai even knows about.
“I will not be just another woman who is afraid of making him angry. I can handle it.” I say back with the same accented anger that I had used on Nikolai, albeit in another language.
“You should be.”
“If you are so worried, then perhaps you ought to stop pretending that you don’t know a hell of a lot more than you are letting on,” I retort as I turn into my bedroom. I stand in the doorway to the massive room that Nikolai decorated without my input with my arms crossed over my chest. “Because I can tell that you know more than you’re saying.”
Horus is conflicted. He and I have forged a close friendship, there is no denying that. However, his loyalty is first and foremost to my husband. He would be betraying him if he answered my question. I understand, and I care… mostly.
After a long moment of tension, I can see the flicker of resignation in his eyes. “If he does not… then I shall.”
I give him a look that clearly says “you better” and close the door in his face.
The moment I’m alone, sadness takes hold of me for reasons that I can’t fully explain, cold, icy fingers wrapping around me and holding me tight. I pass the day in bed for lack of anything else to do. Does Nikolai truly not understand that, by moving us all the way across the country like this, he’s effectively isolated me? He’s all that I have here and if he removes that… what am I even doing here?
Nikolai doesn’t come to dinner.
It’s not until I’m changed for bed that I wander through the house in my satin pajama in search of my husband to come to bed with me that I finally find him.
He’s in the gym, training. It’s something that he prides himself on. He keeps his body in top shape and is ready for a fight at a moment’s notice. He always has been. I know how disciplined he is but I thought that with the way things had been left between us in the afternoon, he would have been ready to fix things. I feel like an second thought and I don’t fucking like it. I stand in the door to the gym with my arms crossed over my chest. With his headphones on he doesn’t even notice me.
Gone are the days where he worshipped the ground that I walked on, apparently.
Well, fine. If I’m going to stand directly in front of him without him even noticing me, I’m going to get my answers elsewhere.
It doesn’t take me long to find Horus.
Sitting in the kitchen watching a rugby game on one of the many sports channels with a sandwich on a white plate in front of him. Messy, but a surprising favorite, I guess. He looks surprised to see me as I ease into the seat beside him and take half of his sandwich without asking.
“Talk.” I say around a mouth full of food.
“He did not tell you?” Horus asks in Arabic as he cleans his hands.
“No, he does not even see me apparently.”
“Fine… but you will not like the answer.” Horus answers ominously.
“I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
Horus gives me a look that hints that no, I won’t be able to handle it. But he speaks anyway.
“The man in the basement is Helena Ivankov’s brother. We have it on very good authority that she is pregnant.”
Just like ripping off a bandage, the news is laid bare in front of us so suddenly that I can’t speak. I’m speechless. I don’t even know where to begin with that bomb that he’s just dropped on me. Pregnant? My first instinct is to question whether or not it’s Nikolai’s - but that’s foolish. We have been married for long enough now that if Helena had been pregnant with a child of Nikolai’s, she would have already had it by now. No, having his children will be my right and mine alone.
My brow furrows. “No, wait - what does that have to do with Lilian? That’s not what… there’s more to this…”
