They’re alive. They’re alive.
My eyes aren’t just showing me what I want to see. It’s really them.
The strength goes out of my knees when I’m close enough to see Yuri’s sleeping face and smell Xander’s head. The chain-link still separates us, but they’re breathing, and that’s all that matters. Hot liquid pours from my eyes as I fall to my knees and clutch the cold metal wire.
Mom drops to her knees on the other side, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I knew you’d come.”
One of Roman’s men cuts through the lock on the gate, and the door swings wide as the women escape their captivity. Two of them carry my babies to me, and it’s all I can do not to squeeze the life right out of them. I can’t stop kissing their heads until they fuss. Can’t stop breathing them in either. Mom’s arm is on my shoulders, and I didn’t even see her move.
Roman kneels with me and plants kisses on their heads too. His eyes glisten with tears. “Let’s go home.”
30
ROMAN
Cover-ups are often moretrouble than they’re worth. Not this time, though.
The man from the crematory spoke in the tone people use for weather. He did not know my son. He did not need to. The ash would not be buried. It would not be scattered in some place with a name that meant anything to me.
Vitaly Ekimov would not receive a place of honor simply because he was my son. Instead, I scattered his ashes where his mother’s family buries their dead. He was her creature in life. She can deal with him in death.
At Rope, the story we gave was simple. A structural failure behind the throne wall. A hidden service cavity that collapsed. Dust. Concussion. A freak acoustic echo that made it sound like more. Security repeated the lines because I wrote them short and plain.
No one argued. No one wants to win an argument that would cost them their membership to my club.
All evidence of that night has been processed or destroyed. Nothing will connect us to his death. Those who know what happened are relieved. No one mourns the wicked.
My only regret is I cannot give peace of mind to his victims’ families. But I have reached out to them, financially speaking. Anonymous donations have been made to those my people were able to track down. It doesn’t make up for what he did, for the lives lost, none of it. But at least it’s something.
When I think back on the past month, it’s hard to put into words how I feel about him and what he did to my family and anyone fool enough to get in his way. To this day, I don’t know why he didn’t kill Jennifer, Yuri, Xander, or the guards I’d given them. Such things go against what I know of him. Or rather, what I thought I knew.
Was it mercy? Leverage? What drove him to keep them alive? Perhaps he saw a little of himself in his half brothers. But that would have required him to still hold a shred of humanity in his bones, and the night I executed him, I saw no humanity in his eyes. I’m not sure if I ever did, even when he was a child.
Some questions never get answered.
Regardless, Mina has begun to sleep again, and I am grateful for it. She has had too many sleepless nights in her young life. My wife—it still boggles me that I can call her that—doesn’t twist and turn in her sleep anymore either. A miracle. These days, she curls up on her side, usually with me behind her, and sleeps through the night.
I know this, because I do not sleep much. When the hour will not be argued with, I let it do what it came to do. I get up. I walk thehall. I stand in the nursery door. The need to watch them is like the need to watch Mina. Unending and undeniable.
Every conscious moment, I need to know they’re safe.
The twins sleep like boys who already decided the world is theirs. Xander sprawls. Yuri tucks. They trade positions without waking. It is a language they speak to each other without words.
I hope whatever kept Mina alive is in them. Not just her stubbornness. Her mercy. Her ability to be afraid without being stolen by fear. She doesn’t freeze. I want that for my sons. I want them to have her steadiness.
I used to worry that what was wrong in Vitaly came from both sides. Bridgette’s rage knew no bounds. My father’s callousness was wielded against friend and foe alike. Blood isn’t everything—I know that. I scrub my hands at the sink some nights and think about the men I have been and the men I refuse to be. I am not my father. I never will be. But it’s hard not to believe his cruelty and Bridgette’s rage are what made Vitaly into the man he was.
So, I worry for Yuri and Xander. But they are half Mina’s, and that may be their saving grace, if blood has an impact.
The monitor on the dresser clicks and whispers. Not a cry. Just the small sound a body makes when it remembers it is alive. I stand and lean over the crib. Yuri’s mouth works and settles. Xander kicks once and surrenders.
“They won’t be like him,” Mina says softly from the doorway.
I turn and she stands in the pool of hall light, hair loose, one hand on the frame. The shirt she sleeps in hits her mid-thigh. Bare legs. Bare feet. A goddess.
“How did you know?”
Her smile is wan. “Because I know you.”
