He looks at his knuckles. They're swelling. He flexes them again and winces and the wince is so human, so completely unlike the man who has spent the last three months being ice and iron, that something loosens in my chest.
"You should put ice on that," I say.
"Probably."
He flags the waiter. The waiter approaches with the expression of someone who has witnessed something he will be telling his grandchildren about.
"Could we get some ice?" Dom says. "And the menu. We haven't ordered."
The waiter nods and retreats. Nikolai picks up the wine list and opens it as if the last ten minutes didn't happen. Viktor returns to his position at the bar.
Under the table, Dom's uninjured hand finds my knee. His palm is warm through the fabric of my pants. He doesn't squeeze. He just rests it there.
The baby kicks. Hard enough that I feel it in my ribs.
"It’s awake," I say.
Dom's hand moves from my knee to the bump. His fingers spread. The kick comes again, right under his palm, and he grins.
"We should order," Nikolai says. He hasn't looked up from the wine list. "The veal here is outstanding."
23. Dom
The bag has been packed for three weeks.
It sits by the front door of the penthouse, a black duffel bag with a change of clothes for Theo, a change of clothes for the baby, diapers, a blanket, toiletries, and a list of phone numbers printed on a card in case either of our phones dies. Viktor suggested the printed card. I didn't argue.
I check the bag every morning. I checked it twice today.
Theo is thirty-eight weeks. The obstetrician said any time now and she said it the way doctors say things, calm and measured, as if "any time now" is a neutral piece of information and not a phrase that has turned me into a man who can't sleep.
I have run a casino empire. I have sat across a table from Luca Castellano and kept my voice level. I have watched my father walk into my building uninvited and dismantle my authority and I have absorbed it without flinching. I have fired dozens of people in a single night, negotiated with a rival crime family, and coordinated the extraction of my pregnant omega from a concrete cell in a farmhouse sixty miles from the city.
None of this has prepared me for the fact that a baby is going to come out of Theo's body and I am supposed to be present for it.
Theo finds this amusing. He doesn't say so. He doesn't need to. I can see it in the way he watches me check the bag, the way his mouth twitches when I ask the obstetrician the samequestion for the third time, the way he goes quiet and still when I put my hand on the bump and count the kicks because the book says you should count the kicks.
I have read four books. Theo has read none. He says the baby hasn't read them either so it seems like wasted effort.
It's a Tuesday morning in late June when it starts.
I'm in the kitchen making coffee. Theo is on the sofa with his laptop, working on the consulting proposal he's been putting together for the new security system. He hasn't worked for me since the rescue. He works for himself now, freelance, and the first client he pitched was me. I paid his invoice without negotiating, which Viktor said was a terrible business decision. I don't care.
Theo shifts on the sofa. I hear the laptop close.
"Novikov."
He still calls me that. Not always. In bed, when his guard is down, it's Dom. In the kitchen, in front of Viktor, it's Novikov. I've stopped minding. The name in his mouth has changed. It used to be a wall. Now it's something else. A habit he keeps because it's his and he's not giving it up.
"What."
"My water just broke."
The mug in my hand keeps moving toward my mouth. My brain hears the words. My body hasn't caught up. I take a sip of coffee. I set the mug down.
"When you say just—"
"I mean just. As in right now. As in the sofa is wet."
