My eyes trace over to the little girl on her other side.
These are my children. There is absolutely no way she can deny this.
“You didn’t meet someone and have kids with him, Selene… We both know that.”
“I, I, I did. He’s waiting.”
She shifts nervously, pulling the children closer to her body.
“They’re twins,” I remark. “My family has twinned every second generation. My generation.”
“Simon, you’re wrong, they aren’t what you think,” she says forcefully.
“They are exactly what I think, though. The timeline adds up. They look… they look just like…”
“They aren’t!” she snaps, interrupting me.
The children are staring at me with as much fascination as I am looking at them. The little boy, especially, looks like he understands what I’m arguing with Selene about. I reach my hand out, absentmindedly wanting to touch his hair. He steps back shyly, ducking behind his mother.
“What’s your name?” I ask him.
“Don’t speak to my son,” Selene snarls protectively.
“Yourson?” I mutter darkly, losing my patience with her.
Her eyes, impossibly greener than I remember them and more beautiful, pierce into me with the warning a lioness might give someone approaching her cubs.
I sigh, pushing my hand through my hair and shaking my head. Arguing isn’t getting me anywhere. But still—I have no intention of letting her walk out of here without telling me the truth.
“Look, Selene, let’s just…” Movement catches my eye, and my gaze darts to a bench on the side of the park where two men sit. Black suits. Horribly out of place. When did they get here?
I swallow hard when one of the men looks up at me, and the scar down the left side of his face jolts my memory.
A few weeks ago, our warehouse was attacked, and that was the face that appeared on the security camera before the person ran from the scene. That man has already attacked my family. And now he is at the park where I happened to be spending the day with my family again.
Raya is safe. Matvei’s kids are safe.
Butmychildren aren’t. They’re still here.
I draw my gaze back to Selene and notice that her entire body has gone rigid with fear, and her eyes are on the men at the bench. She’s seen them, too, and for some reason, they have shaken her.
“Selene, we need to get out of here,” I tell her.
She nods, swallowing hard. “I… we came here in a taxi,” she says quietly, purposefully not looking at the men anymore.
“I’ll give you a ride. Let’s get to my car. It’s the black SUV parked at the end of the street behind me. Can you see it?”
She nods. “Alright. Walk in front of me.”
Her twins,our twins,move obediently at their mother’s side, not uttering a word as their little feet carry them quickly towards my car.
I glance once over my shoulder at the men who are now standing and beginning to move towards us.
“Faster,” I command, leaning down to scoop the little girl up into my arms. Selene picks up our son, and I tug the car door open for them as we reach it.
She pushes the children into the back seat. “Strap in. Hurry. Stop that, Solenne,” she huffs. Then she climbs in behind them, and I run to the driver’s side and get in too.
The men don’t follow. It’s not like they don’t know where I live anyway. The Volkovs are well known throughout the city. They are already targeting my family, clearly, so they don’t need to follow.
