“I haven’t been there since…” She trails off, deep in thought.
Since what? I want to demand, but Nina already looks like she’s about to faint.
I shrug off my suit jacket and wrap it over her shoulders. She snuggles into it, pulling the collar up and inhaling deeply. The sight of her wrapped in my jacket is enough to satisfy the demands of the possessive beast inside me, for now.
Then she fixes me with those soft brown eyes and nods her head. “You’re right,” she admits, her voice quiet and faint. “Your place willbe safer.”
Thank God.
I was prepared to argue with her, I was even prepared to take her against her will, kicking and screaming, like I had to in the parking garage.
But instead, she’s thinking of her own safety. For once.
“For Ava,” she specifies, and that’s when it hits me.
Everything Nina is doing, every risk-averse, protective instinct that she already had as a young woman recovering from her abusive family, it’s all been amplified because of Ava. Because now she has someone to protect from the world, the way that no one did for her.
“Of course. For Ava,” I reply, and Nina gives me that wistful look again. Her amber eyes flare with something like hope, before it dies down, and she lets me lead her quietly into the car.
When Ava crawls onto her lap, excited about the journey to a new place, Nina finally seems to relax a little. She lets me loop an arm around her shoulders in the backseat of the car, as we ride home.
Even as I hold her, safe, in my arms, and make arrangements for my guest room to be guarded with the Estate’s best security guards, I question whether I’m putting her in more danger simply by wanting her.
“Your spitting image.”
I jump at the intrusion, but I recognize the voice. I should stand and offer her my chair out of respect, but after the night I’ve had, I can only bring myself to raise my glass.
I wish it was whiskey, but I turned away from alcohol when Nina left the first time. After tonight I half-wonder if I am bad for her. If I’m only going to bring more pain into her life.
“What is?”
Vanya appears from the dark doorway, stepping into the light of the desk lamp where I’m slumped in front of a spreadsheet.
“The child.”
I choke out a mirthless laugh and slam back my glass of sparkling water.
This is the study where I first met her. Where I saw my future in that constellation on her left cheek.
“Ava is not mine.”
I enunciate each word slowly and clearly, even though every syllable sends a needling pain into my chest.
Vanya just shakes her head at me as though I’m being obtuse. “Anyone with eyes would know it.”
She rummages in the desk drawers for a second before finding the photo album she’s looking for.
I don’t have many family photos as a child, because Polina was too busy scheming to get her hands on power to care whether I was walking or talking, but there are a few of me with Vanya.
In this one, I’m dressed in overalls, my blonde hair fluffy and my eyes wide. I look at the camera with curiosity and a head tilt that immediately brings back my play session with Ava the other day. She had exactly the same expression on her face when she saw me standing next to Nina outside the preschool.
But all children look like that.
“Go back to sleep, Babushka. You’re dreaming.”
Vanya takes the photo from me and strokes her thumb over the paper. “You were such a curious, intelligent little boy. Did you see her eyes?”
“Of course, I saw her eyes. They’re… Unusual.”
