Page 83

“You almost killed my family,” I blurt out.

The word family comes out of my mouth naturally, without any effort at all, for the first time in my whole life. It used to tangle and sit heavy in my throat, a word for other men. Now it fits me like a hand in a glove.

Yelena stares at me as though she is seeing a stranger wearing my face, and then she turns and flees. Her practiced elegance, all that opulence, finally cracks apart at the seams as she goes.

Yuri sends a photo and an address in Philadelphia. He’s found her. The lead is solid this time, a lease signed two days ago in looping script under a name that is not quite hers. I stare at the photo of the building until the numbers blur, and I think of Milo somewhere inside it, and the child growing quietly under all of it.

I board the private jet to Philadelphia within the hour, all its splendor wasted on me, and the flight is the longest of my life. Every time I picture Delaney carrying my child, alone in some rented room in a city I chased her to, my chest clenches down hard on itself. I have crossed oceans for less and felt nothing.

This time I count every minute.

I’ll wait for her forgiveness as long as it takes, for years if I have to, so long as she and the baby are safe. I’d do absolutely anything to earn it, a quiet, vulnerable promise I make to no one but myself.

I land and nearly walk straight into the two of them coming back in from outside through the muted swish of a glass door. Delaney is holding a hot drink cradled between both of her hands, and even now a twinge of want goes through me at the sight of her.

Maksim strolls casually, hands in his pockets, on the outside of her, shielding her body from the street, and the two of them move together with an ease that seems to leave no room at all for a third person, and the gulf between us yawns wider.

Then Maksim tucks a loose strand of hair behind Delaney’s ear, the same small gesture I have made a hundred times myself, and the last thread of my sanity dissolves. He is wearing my face and touching my woman and standing between me and my child, and every one of those things wakes the atavistic need to end it with my hands around his throat.

I grab my brother by the collar and haul him off her. “Don’t touch her.”

Maksim shoves me off and steps squarely in front of her to block me from reaching her. A month ago, he cowered when I looked at him too long. He doesn’t cower now, and I understand why. He has something worth standing his ground for, and it is the one thing I threw away.

His protective gesture only stokes the fire in me higher. “Move,” I tell him.

“You only remember she exists now,” Maksim sneers. “How’s your first love doing, brother?” His grin turns downright vulpine.

Delaney steps out from behind him, and her smile is gone completely, vanished as though it was never there. The change in her face stings my eyes.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, perfectly calm, and she doesn’t flinch from me. I would rather she hit me across the face than speak to me in that voice.

“I know what Yelena did,” I say, getting straight to the matter at hand. “I sent her away for good. I ended the whole relationship between the Volkovs and the Lebedevs tonight.”

“None of that matters now, it is pointless,” Maksim cuts in, crossing his arms.

“I’m talking to her, not you,” I say.

Delaney lets me speak, and Maksim reluctantly steps back, though he stays close enough to reach out and touch her, which I hate with everything in me, when all I hunger for is to kiss her until she cannot breathe.

“I was wrong,” I say. “I believed Yelena over you. I swam past you in the water. I left you alone in that hospital.” My voice stops before I can finish, the last of it left carved and raw and unspoken in my throat.

There is no warmth left anywhere in her eyes, none of the fire she used to throw at me, none of the reluctant softness that came after it. There is only a tired, finished stillness. A helpless panic crawls up the length of my spine, because I have faced former Spetsnaz with guns and felt steadier than I do under that quiet stare.

I’ve never once in my life begged for a single thing. I made men beg me. “I’m sorry,” I say, and her lashes tremble, faintly, and nothing more than that. “I loved a past that I misremembered,” I say. “The woman I love is you.”

Her mouth twitches, but it doesn’t become a smile, and my heart aches with how much I love her. “Did you come here because you found out I’m pregnant?” she asks, biting her lip.

“Yes,” I say, and my breath catches hard on the single word. It’s the truth, and it’s the worst possible truth to be caught in, because she’s already done the arithmetic and landed exactly where it leads.

“You ignored me for two full days in that hospital, right up until I was discharged and you heard about the baby,” she says, and she glances at me over the rim of her cup. “And now, suddenly, you love me.”

“I searched for you before I ever knew about the baby, but you had already moved,” I say.

“You still spent those two days at Yelena’s side first.”

I cannot argue with that, because the plain facts make every excuse sound ridiculous the second I open my mouth to offer one.

“Come back with me,” I say. “Let a doctor see you, and let yourself rest properly for once in your life. Let me do what I do best and keep you and Milo safe from all of it.”