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“Hey, someone keeps calling you,” I say, nudging him awake as gently as I can.
“Huh?” he replies, still delirious from the ten hours of sleep that we’ve had.
“Your phone, it keeps going off. Someone really needs to talk with you,” I reply. I want to give him the chance to react to the calls before I made a judgment about what they really are. I’d hate to go through his phone and violate his trust like that. I feel like I’m making the right choice by not interfering. Besides, the idea of what would happen if I found somethingunexpectedscares me too much to face right now.
He turns over slowly, unbothered and without any urgency at all. He’s been able to slow down a little since we moved in here, and for that I’ve been grateful. He’s usually very rushed and concerned with the pace that he completes tasks, but after I announced my pregnancy, he chose to take things in smaller pieces.
When he grabs his phone, I realize that his disconnection from the outside world might not be a good thing at all.
“Oh, fuck,” he says under his breath as he unlocks his phone, scrolling through a list of multiple messages and missed calls.
“What? What happened?” I say, suddenly able to feel his panic as if through osmosis. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a shipment of the drug I’m after coming into Tokyo in forty-eight hours. We might actually be able to recoup our losses with this one, since it’s twice what got seized by the DEA. This could be a really, really big deal for us. Anthony is pissed that I missed all these calls though,” he says as he gets out of bed and reaches for a sweatshirt on a chair nearby.
“Wait, this is good news, isn’t it?” I ask, confused about the context versus the way he delivered it. He sounds distressed, but the information itself seems like something he should feel relieved by.
“Yes and no. If it’s coming to Tokyo, that means that it might be coming for Grisha. I have to find out more info about it, but you’ll be staying behind, so don’t worry about it.”
Suddenly, I’m fuming.
“What do you mean I’ll be staying behind? Tokyo is hours away and you don’t speak any Japanese at all. Don’t you need me?” I ask, feeling a little pathetic at the way I phrased my question. “I mean, you’ve never just left me alone before. This is weird to me.”
He sighs deeply. “Yes, I know, but it’s far too dangerous to have you there. You just aren’t trained for that kind of high-risk criminal involvement. Everyone who is going to be at this meeting is someone I trained myself over the course of years to handle whatever situations might arise. Not to mention, you’re a woman, so anyone who disrespects you would be causing problems that I don’t have time for.”
I’m a little hurt that he considers the possibility of me getting harassed to be an inconvenience to him, but I’m more upset about the fact that he still considers me a liability. After everything we’ve been through together, I thought that by now, he would at least understand that I can keep my damn mouth shut when I’m told to. He doesn’t even have the ability to travel throughout Japan without a translator, it might as well be someone he trusts.
I watch him leave the bedroom to call Anthony back, feeling my heart hurting all over again.
Every day is such a rollercoaster with him. One moment, I feel like we’re destined to be together forever, and the next it's like he's never seen me as anything more than a burden to him. I never mean to hold him back, and it’s not like I’ve ever had any say in the matter to begin with. I’ve tried so hard to be perfect for him, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything I can to do make him trust me. How am I supposed to just sit here at home like a bored housewife while he goes on a mission he might never return from?
It’s not like he would be able to leave a will for me. I don’t know how anything works in the mafia when it comes to the next of kin, but I doubt any of his men would be able to identify me as his lover and the mother of his child. I’m certain that they’ve seen him with plenty of women before, so what would make me so special? God forbid another woman emerges from the shadows to claim herself as his former lover. It would be even worse if she had a kid to prove it.
Maybe this is another reason why I shouldn’t have gotten involved with him at all. He’s significantly older than me, and there’s a vast possibility that he has a stray kid or two around his city. He’s a very attractive, wealthy, dangerous man. There’s no doubt in my mind that he at least attracts women in droves. It would be easy for one of them to claim that she was his last before he died.
The fact that I’m even thinking this hard about his death preemptively makes me want to vomit. Who wants to think that much about their lover being gunned down? From what it sounds like with Grisha, being shot to death sounds like it would be an act of mercy.
I stay in bed until he returns from the phone call, and I’m irritated as ever. I just want to have a consistent relationship with Aleksander, just for a little while. This baby is going to add so much extra pressure to our relationship, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m being naïve by expecting things to change. Is this just the kind of person that he is? Disregarding my position in his life when it comes to the mundane? It’s easy to be passionate in the middle of sex, even if you don’t like the person that you’re with.
When he returns, he begins packing immediately. “I’m going to leave in an hour, I’ve already bought a train ticket online so you don’t have to worry about it,” he says as he rushes to throw a combination of different clothing items into a duffel bag.
“You can’t just leave me here! I’m not your fucking housewife! We haven’t been apart for one second since we met, and now you’re going to leave me by myself in a country that I’m not from? Tokyo is like two hours away from here!” I protest.
“We don’t need to keep having this conversation, damn it! I thought you were beginning to come around to my philosophy on keeping you safe, but I guess we have to go over it again and again until you get it. Quite honestly, you’re a liability to me in situations like this. You’re a grown woman, you can figure out what to do with yourself while I’m gone,” he spits, flipping through the blankets for a watch he lost last night.
“Aleksander, if you leave me here by myself, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be here when you come back. It’s not like I’m so terrified that I can’t be on my own for two nights. I went to college in Seattle for fuck’s sake!”
He stops rummaging through blankets and drawers, turning around to look me dead in the eyes.
“Are you threatening to run away?”
I get up out of bed, feeling a little too exposed in my white tank top and silk shorts for a serious conversation. “Yes, I am. There are only so many times that you can buy me flowers before I start to disengage. I’m a whole entire person with needs, you can’t treat me like a porcelain doll no matter how good it feels for your masculinity.”
He seems upset at my last comment, like I’m questioning his manhood by asking him to treat me like a human. However, he doesn’t respond, so I feel like I might actually be making some progress with him.
“You need to start viewing me as a flesh-and-blood human being instead of just a thing that fills a void in your life. I have the power to take this baby away forever, and rightfully so. You’ve shown me how violent your lifestyle is, and without possessing the will to change, our child will be exposed to it,” I continue.
“You can’t take my fucking kid away from me,” he replies with more sadness than anger, which surprises me.
