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And yet here I was, confronting him, doing everything I could in my power to wound him, and it only felt like I was wounding myself.
Of course, Ruth’s spear had found its mark instantly.
I shouldn’t have let her in so close to me. Should never have underestimated the daughter of my enemy.
“Did Gerald put you up to this?” I demanded roughly, seeing red. “Tell me! Did he tell you to trap me like this? Whore out his daughter to fuck me over?”
“Maxim, that’s enough.” Alexei was suddenly at my side, pulling me away from the table. “We’re done here. You’re done.”
“You don’t get to tell me that,” I snapped at him. “Everything you have done is because of me. I have funded all of your pursuits — not giving a shit what they were. You get to fucking sit here and witness me coming into my own, now. I am owed this moment.”
“Brother, the woman you love is weeping,” Alexei said softly in Russian. “Unless you said that falsely. Hell, maybe you did. But I know the way you’ve been acting — you do love her. I just can’t understand why you’re doing this if you really do.”
I looked over. Sure enough, enormous tears rolled down Ruth’s cheeks. She’d been crying a lot lately. Emotional. Not taking care of herself properly. She needed someo
ne to tell her to eat, to take care of her. And she — oh, fuck.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” I asked her quietly. “You are pregnant.”
She nodded. “I took a test. It was positive.”
There were so many things I could’ve said. Even more that I should’ve. “Is it mine?” That wasn’t what I had wanted to say at all, but it spilled out. Her father had almost caused my downfall with his treachery. I couldn’t put it past his daughter that she would be cut from the same cloth. She would likely know how to play the game even better than him.
Ruth hiccupped a breath, not bothering to halt the tears. There was no reason to. They just kept falling. “You know it’s yours.”
“Unless that’s a lie, too.”
“What have I lied to you about?” she asked, utterly broken. “I love you. You scare me. It scares me how much I love you. How different we are. And this terrifies me. I didn’t want to get pregnant.”
“That much we can agree on,” I said, ignoring my brother’s muttered curse and the way Becca stood from the table. “You will end it. I will pay for everything. And we will end everything else, while we’re at it.”
“That’s all I’m going to sit here and watch,” Becca announced, stalking around the table to gather Ruth into her arms. “Let’s go, Ruth. This is over.”
I should’ve stopped them. Didn’t. Would regret it for the rest of my life.
Watched them walk out the door without so much as lifting a finger to keep it from happening.
“For fuck’s sake, brother,” Alexei murmured to me. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Get the fuck out of my house,” Gerald Miracle said, pointing toward the door. “Immediately, you unbelievable asshole.”
“It’s for the best, Max,” Alexei said, taking me by the elbow and escorting me out. Becca and Ruth had already gone, even if I looked hungrily for Ruth’s form along the cold pavement illuminated by the bleak streetlights. “Let’s just get out of here. Let them go, for now. We’ll circle back around. Figure it out.”
The driver pulled up, and my brother more or less shoved me into the backseat of the car.
“There’s nothing more to figure out,” I said. “Continue seeing the redhead if that’s what you’re interested in. But everything else is at its natural conclusion.” Even if not a goddamn thing felt natural. I didn’t even feel like myself in my own fucking skin. I wished I could claw it off.
“Did you achieve what you hoped to, brother?” Alexei asked me as I poured a very tall vodka for myself in the back of the car. “The closure you were seeking? Revenge? What was it that you wanted?”
“Whatever we’re doing right now? We’re not doing it. Fuck off.” I downed half of the vodka and coughed before throwing back the rest.
“We’re talking, Max. Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“You knew what was going to happen if we went to that dinner tonight,” I said. “You knew Gerald Miracle would be there.”
“Sure, I knew,” Alexei reasoned, spreading his hands. “But I thought whatever confrontation you had in mind would be conducted like a human being. Or a gentleman, at the very least. Politely.”
I roared with laughter even though there was nothing funny about any of this. “How could I be polite to someone who almost ruined everything?”
