Sometimes life wasn’t fair. The Chinese villagers who lived along the Amur River could attest to that. She would probably never know why Silas was so resentful of her, but he obviously wasn’t a happy man. Punishing him might bring a quick rush of satisfaction, but it would never bring her the lasting peace that forgiveness could provide. In the grand scheme of the huge, weighty issues of the universe, what had happened to her was no more than a mosquito bite.
“I will leave vengeance to God,” she said simply. “Please don’t pursue this. At least, not in my name. I want to move forward to create an honorable and productive life, not wallow in resentment of the past.”
The baby grabbed something from the table to shove in his mouth. It was the firebird Dimitri had given her in San Francisco.
She pulled the cheap trinket away. “Don’t eat that, sweetheart.”
Dimitri had warned that the firebird was either a blessing or a harbinger of doom. It certainly wasn’t suitable for a child’s toy.Natalia didn’t mind walking toward uncertainty and danger, but she’d protect Alexander to the death.
He started fussing and reached for the firebird again, but she stood to pace the floor with him, hugging him tighter. How she loved this child! She and her father both probably spoiled him, but she didn’t care. Oscar had gone decades waiting for a son to carry on his legacy, and now, in his middle age, he finally had one.
She turned to look at her father. “Before Alexander came along, did you and Mama ever think about adopting a son?”
“We never considered it.”
“Why not?” Suddenly the answer was very important.
Oscar looked a little taken aback. “I’m not sure I could love a stranger’s baby. One can never be sure what sort of people the parents are.”
Natalia pondered the answer as she patted Alexander’s back. She’d loved Alexander from the moment she saw him despite her dislike of Poppy. He was a blessing from God. All babies were.
Allbabies. She loved Alexander regardless of who his mother was, and she could do so for another child. Why had she been so obsessed with having a child from her own body? Dimitri would someday marry and adopt children, and those children would be lucky to have such a loving and generous father.
She patted Alexander’s back and wondered what kind of fool she had been to let a man like Dimitri Sokolov slip away.
It was Friday afternoon, and the U.S. Steel board meeting should have concluded an hour ago, but something must be wrong. Natalia paced the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria, the grandest hotel in the city, where the board members deliberated in a conference room down the hall. Powerful men from all over the nation had gathered for this meeting, and she prayed Liam could hold his own among the business tycoons who’d never wanted him on the board.
A toast was planned for the conclusion of the three-day meeting, and a cart loaded with buckets of iced champagne had been parked outside the room for over an hour. What on earth was taking so long? She battled the temptation to press her ear against the crack in the door to eavesdrop, desperate to learn if Liam had managed to present his proposal for raising the workers’ wages without making a complete fool of himself.
At long last, a trio of waiters arrived to wheel the champagne into the conference room.
The meeting was over. For better or worse, all the decisions had been made and worrying wouldn’t help. Now she just had to wait another twenty or thirty minutes until the toasts were concluded and the board members finally left the room. Liam wouldn’t drink, of course. His ulcer had been so bad this morning that he could eat nothing except bread and milk, but good manners dictated he would stay for the toasts.
She began another lap around the marble lobby, but before she could get far, Liam came storming down the hall, his face a thundercloud.
“Liam?”
He ignored her and kept striding toward the front doors. She hurried after him. His entire body looked tense as he barged through the doors and onto the street. The sidewalk was thick with pedestrians, which slowed him down enough that she was able to catch up to him.
“Liam, what happened?”
He didn’t answer, but they arrived at a busy intersection, forcing him to stop. He turned to a bench and braced his hands on the back of it, staring down at the concrete sidewalk.
“They voted a fifteen-percent raise,” he bit out.
She gasped in surprise. “They did? But that’s wonderful!”
“It’s half of what I asked for. Half what the men deserve.”
“It’s more than I thought possible. Liam, this is a victory.” Maybe there was something to be said for Liam’s brash demeanor, because he had just accomplished the impossible.
A muscle ticked in Liam’s jaw as he stared across the street,where a half-built skyscraper towered above. The fourteen-story building already had its elegant stone cladding on the lower floors, but higher up, the exposed steel frame crawled with construction workers.
Liam pointed up at the men welding beams into place. “Thoseare the guys who are building this city. Not men in suits who sit in fancy offices and drink champagne.”
“And thanks to you, men like that will be enjoying a healthy raise because you fought for them. I still can’t believe you pulled it off. Tell me what happened.”
She took a seat on the bench and listened as Liam described the meeting. Just as Natalia predicted, Liam’s chief rival on the board, Charles Morse, threw up arguments to block any increase in wages, but Liam pushed back hard. The two men almost came to blows before the chairman proposed a compromise.
