Page 148 of Cruel Demands

I ask, “Do you think of all people as territories you must control or is there anyone safe from you?”

“That is absurd,” he says.

“Is it?”

“I asked for nothing in return.”

“Just our undying gratitude, of course.” I step toward him now. “You make people owe you, and then you stand there acting like you did them a kindness.”

“I did do them a kindness. You would have struggled for months to accomplish what I did in a phone call.”

“My hero.”

He stares at me. “I protected your family.”

“You took them.”

His face changes. The anger returns, but beneath it is pain. “I have taken nothing from you.”

“You don’t know the difference between helping and taking.”

Pain and fear intermingle on his face. They hollow his expression and make him look suddenly older.

“Okay,” he concedes. The word catches me off guard. He looks down for a moment, jaw tight, then back at me. “Maybe I do not.” For once, there is no argument attached immediately afterward. No correction. No explanation for why I am wrong. Then his eyes drop to my stomach again. “But you do not understand what this means.”

He steps toward me, then stops himself before I can retreat. There is such naked wonder in his face that my chest aches despite everything.

“I understand pregnancy.”

“No. You understand the child. You do not understand what other people will see.” His voice lowers. “They already know you matter to me. If they learn you are pregnant, there is no question. No uncertainty. You become leverage against me, and our child becomes leverage against both of us. I cannot protect you in America. You think people will not travel there to kill you just to hurt me, and you are wrong.” He repeats it quietly to himself. “Our child.”

Not ownership. Disbelief. Something precious and terrifying he has not yet figured out how to hold. His hand lifts slightly. He wants to touch me. I know he does.

But he lets it fall and leaves me there with his mother in the glass he shattered.

38

MIKHAIL

I lie in the hallway outside the guest room Taylor has retreated to instead of our bed.

She is making it clear to me that she has no desire to lie with me tonight, but I cannot leave her alone. Not when I know she carries a life so precious inside her. Not when I have only just learned that everything has changed.

And that she wants to leave me.

That she has been skulking around checking flights and talking to my mother about it. I oscillate between fury and fear. I know it is fear. I hate to name fear, but seeing that open on her screen and then hearing those words from her⁠—

Losing her was never an option. Now it is an impossibility. She will have to be torn from me with claw marks left behind. She can be angry with me. She cannot get rid of me.

My back rests against the wall opposite her room. I have rolled my jacket into a makeshift pillow beside me and loosened my tie, though it does nothing to ease the pressure around my throat.

The house is silent. Taylor is not.

I hear her moving occasionally. A drawer opening. The creak of the bed. Once, the quiet sound of water running in the bathroom.

Each noise reassures me. She is still here. It is a pathetic thought.

I have men searching for Orlov across the city. I have calls waiting from ministers, police officials, and three members of my own organization who would prefer to know whether I intend to start a war.