Page 43 of The Breath Before Forever

Mira had managed to keep quite a few photographs of and newspaper clippings about Natalia Pashkova over the years. The album was almost entirely full. A lot were from when the woman was a young girl with the later, adult years focusing more on what Mira had been able to cut out of the papers.

One, near the middle of the album, was one Vera considered asking for. Not a clipping from a newspaper, the photograph that had been folded in the middle one too many times had also been scribbled on in the corner.

With a date and names.

Vaslav, and his mother.

She looked barely older than mid-teens—maybe—and the newborn, swaddled in white in the grayscale image, didn’t look to be happy with the way his teenage mother held him as he openly squalled. Of course, Natalia smiled for the photo.

Not nicely.

Forced, mostly.

And the way her arm clung to the swaddled infant, almost like she’d rather not be doing it at all, cut at Vera’s heart in a way she couldn’t explain. Which was why Vera had the strangest urge to rip the image out of the album and destroy it.

No wonder Vaslav hated his mother—from the start, it looked like she hadn’t even wanted him, as if even holding him was more than she could stand to do. Who needed a physical reminder of that kind of pain?

“What is this?” Vaslav demanded from behind Vera.

She closed the photo album with a snap, although he simply opted to ignore it for the most part, and turned on the cushion where she sat next to the fireplace to face Vaslav in the entry to their suites. Only giving him part of her attention as she reached over to put the photo album on the coffee table, she couldn’t see what he held in his hand as he approached the back of the chesterfield.

“I asked you a question,” he said.

The tone did it for her.

Nasty and mean.

He had all of her attention now. Whether he wanted it or not.

“What is your problem?” Vera asked, simply turning around on the cushion instead of standing like he might want her to. “Hannah’s gone, Mira’s making something to eat, and even the dog is outside now.”

Each of those things were something he had either taken offense to over the past couple of days, or found a reason to bitch about when he was in a mood, and not coping well. She didn’t see where his issue remained when he currently had every reason to be pleased.

All things considered.

Vera sniffed the air, and smirked at the familiar smell she found lingering there. Skunky and unmistakable, with or without the bloodshot eyes of her husband trying to stare her down, she knew damn well what that smell meant by now. No doubt, the weed was also the reason for his quick disappearance while she said her goodbyes to Hannah downstairs. “You smell like you had a good time down the hall—”

Vaslav wasn’t impressed. He didn’t even blink an eye at her comment. “Vera, what in the hell is this?”

The second time he asked that question, it came out a lot more forceful—but also panicked—than the first. He also lifted his arm high enough for her to see what the chesterfield had been keeping hidden, and the sight of the white plastic thrusting toward her in mid-air sucked the breath from her lungs.

All at once, everything made sense. From his reaction to the overreaction. Maybe she hadn’t explained Hannah’s reason for showing up out of the blue, but to be fair, her friend practically begged Vera to keep it a secret for the time being.

For a few reasons.

Not all were good.

Nonetheless, she intended to keep that promise to Hannah. Unless it caused a bigger issue, and clearly it had.

“Vas,” she tried to say.

He wouldn’t give her a chance to, though. He gave her no time to speak.

“Net—what the fuck is this?” His gaze narrowed on her with every word he spat, but she refused to shrink under the weight of it. “Get to the bathroom. Now.”

Vera blinked, but didn’t move. “Excuse me?”

“Did I stutter?” Vaslav rounded the arm of the chesterfield before Vera had a chance to reply, let alone think of one, and in the next second, he yanked her up from the floor with a rough grip that had her stumbling over the cushion left behind. He shoved her ahead of him, toward the doorway of their bedroom and the master’s en suite bathroom with a muttered, “Get going, right now.”