She freezes the image on a view of them next to each other, the outlines of both of their tiny heads visible.
“Oh my God.” Marianna exhales, and squeezes my hand tighter. I look between the screen and her face, unsure which sight is more magnificent to me. Her eyes go glassy, and I have to blink because the same can be said for my own.
“Twins do run in families,” the doctor chimes. She smiles as Marianna laughs.
It is profound, watching the ultrasound, getting up close to the little blobs that are the not one buttwotiny fetuses that we made.
I could watch it all day, but after the doctor has all the scans she needs, she has Marianna get all cleaned up and dressed again. As soon as Dr. Judd leaves, I kiss her half a dozen times, both of us astonished at the surprise.
“We made a baby?” I ask, though obviously we did.
“Two of them,” she says, and gives no protest when I pull her against me, peppering her mouth and face with more kisses.
“Careful, you look a bit too happy about this,” I murmur with my lips still against hers. “Someone is going to think you like me.”
“Didn’t you hear?” she asks, and rests her forehead against mine. “I don’t just like you, I’m terribly in love with you. Disastrous, really.”
“Say it again,” I say, and she smiles against my mouth.
“I love you, Maxim.”
I let out a long, wistful sigh. “I know,” I say.
When she pinches my arm, we both laugh.
43
MAXIM
Five Months Later
My very pregnantwife gives testimony before a court room full of people. Her hair is pulled into a braid, tied with a ribbon, and she wears a pale pink maternity dress. She was styled by Willa to look as innocent and lovely as possible. The image she paints is so sweet that even I would be hard pressed to believe she’d killed anyone out of anything other than self-defense.
Marianna was charged for the voluntary murder of Colton Tenneson, to which she pleaded not guilty. Willa, unconcerned by any conflict of interests, represents Marianna in an attempt to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was self defense, not premeditated.
Marianna didn’t know this when she shot him, but it turned out that in his hand as he crawled away from his vehicle, Colton Tenneson held a gun. Fortuitous. Middle of the night as it was, it wasn’t a stretch to say that he was going to shoot her with it, and both Nikolai and Samuel swore up and down that they saw him about to do it with their own eyes. Testified under oath, even. Key witnesses.
Whether this was true is not for me to say, since I was half-unconscious at the time.
Their testimonies aren’t enough to forgive either of them for what they did, but nonetheless, their loyalties in this trial have been firmly with Marianna and me. It’s a start, I suppose, and I can’t kill them now, not with all the press.
When the paramedics took Nikolai to the hospital the night of it all, gunshot wound in his arm, he demanded to talk to the police straight away. He wanted to give his statement.
So, while Marianna was in a jail cell, being questioned, and waiting overnight to see a judge, Nikolai told them everything about Tenneson’s operation. He told them about how he’d captured me, tortured me, and even had plans tosellMary.
I don’t know if Nikolai was afraid of what I would do to him or genuinely repentant, but by the time my wife was able to stand before the judge the next morning, there was a solid enough case for self defense that they were willing to release her pre-trial. It wasn’t enough to get the charges dropped entirely—this is homicide after all, but there was enough evidence that the judge didn’t deem her a terrible danger.
Being pregnant helped, I’m sure.
Marianna chews on her lower lip while her sister asks one rehearsed question after another in front of the jury. Her face is rounder thanks to the pregnancy, less sharp edges all around. She remains the most beautiful woman I have ever had the great joy of laying eyes on.
“I had just found out I was pregnant and I was really excited to tell Maxim, but he hadn’t come home. I have his location shared to my phone, so I thought I’d go see where he was, and wound up at the old clothing factory by the shipyard.”
“And you didn’t think to call the police?”
Marianna shrugs, and then rubs a palm absent-mindedly over her stomach. It’s not actually mindless, but insteadcarefully planned. “Well, I knew he was thinking about developing it, so it wasn’t raising any red flags. I was with Alexei, Maxim’s younger brother, and we just thought we’d check it out to see if he was still there.”
“And did you see any signs of trouble when you got there?”
