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She laughs merrily. The light is back in her eyes now that we’re not talking about her father anymore. “She got clingy on me the other night. I’m not looking for anything serious right now. I want fun and casual and la-di-freaking-da, you know?”
“Mm. And have you thought about what you’ll do when that changes?”
She shrugs and tosses a flippant hand in the air as she starts to walk away. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For right now, I’m happy playing the field.” She pauses in the archway and glances down the hall towards Wren’s room. “You’ll make sure she’s comfortable?”
“Yes. For your sake, though—not hers.”
She winks at me. “That’s love if I’ve ever seen it. See you tomorrow, lover boy.”
The moment she disappears, my half-smile drops. Make sure she’s comfortable? How the hell do I do that? My idea of making a woman “comfortable” involves plying her with good food, great booze, and a handful of mind-blowing orgasms before I send her on her way.
That strategy, foolproof as it’s been thus far in my life, won’t work here.
Which is why I call the only woman I can actually count on for advice in a situation like this—Rogan. She was married to one of my closest vors before he died in a confrontation with the Irish. The O’Gadhras have a lot to pay for and Misha’s death is high on the list.
All in good time.
“Dmitri!” Rogan chirps when I answer. “To what do I owe the pleasure? You don’t usually call at this hour of the night.”
I drop down on the leather chaise and cut right to the chase. “You’ve had two children.”
“Thanks for the reminder. Or was that a question? If so, yes. Keiron and Anya. You attended both their graduations, remember?”
I clear my throat uncomfortably. “Yes, of course. I’m calling to ask about your… pregnancies.” I cringe at the sound of my own voice asking questions I never thought I’d have to ask.
There’s a beat of awkward silence. “Is this about…?”
Sighing, I say, “Things have taken an unexpected turn.”
I have trusted Rogan implicitly from the moment I stepped into her home to tell her that she was a Bratva widow. She sat opposite me in her living room, sheet-white and trembling in her hands. But she didn’t shed a tear. Nor did she blame me for her husband’s death.
“He knew the life he signed up for,” was all she said. “As did I.”
When I’d offered her a monthly stipend in perpetuity, her nostrils flared and her lips had pressed together in a thin, offended line. “I don’t accept charity, Mr. Egorov. If you’re giving me money, I expect to earn it. So if you’re not offering me a job, then you and your stipend can get the fuck out of my house.”
Which is how Rogan Stanislav had entered my payroll as a fifty-seven-year-old woman and veteran of nearly three decades of stay-at-home-motherhood. How she came to be so essential to my operation is still a bit of a mystery, but I don’t bother second-guessing it now.
Case in point: she was the one who made appointments for Bee and myself at the fertility clinic. She is—or, given recent events, was—the one working on finding us a surrogate who was, for lack of a better term, “Bratva-adjacent.” Someone who understood on some level the risks of carrying a pahkan’s child.
“‘Unexpected turn’? What does that mean?” Rogan asks in her trademark, no-nonsense manner.
“It means that the clinic botched the whole fucking thing and my sample was used on the wrong person.”
As usual, it doesn’t take long for her to understand the gist of things. “So some poor, unsuspecting woman is pregnant with your baby and she has no idea what she’s gotten herself into?”
“She knows now.”
“Well—fuck.”
“That about sums it up,” I agree. Rogan’s bluntness can be abrasive sometimes, but the last thing I need is more people bullshitting me. I get enough of that as it is. “She’s at the Muse with Bee and me. I need to make sure she’s comfortable.”
“And you called the only woman you know who’s been pregnant to ask? How flattering.”
“That’s why you’re indispensable to me, Ro.”
She sighs like I exhaust her, probably because I do. I can just picture her taking off her granny glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “I’ll purchase everything she might need and send it over. Until then, make sure she sleeps well, gets lots of rest, and most importantly, give her a stress-free environment. I’ll say that one more time for your benefit: stress-free. Now, tell me—what does she like?”
“What do you mean?”
