Chapter 58
Vadim
It happened so fast.
One moment Iskra was on her knees shielding the baby with her body, the next she was on the floor. The baby was screaming—a sound that filled the small apartment and found every wall simultaneously. Konstantin moved before I could speak, dropping to the floor, trying to reach the baby, but she was still tangled in the sling against Iskra’s chest.
“You fucking moron,” I roared at Bogdan, rounding on him with the specific fury of a man who had given no such order.“Who told you to touch her?”
He raised his hands and backed away, the colour leaving his face.
“Sorry, Pakhan. I thought you wanted—”
“Get out of my sight before I toss you off the fucking balcony,” I said, my voice dropping to something quieter and considerably more dangerous than the roar.
He turned and left at speed.
Konstantin had managed to free the baby from the sling.
Runa.
Her cheeks were red and blotched from screaming. A pink mark sat on the side of her head where she had gone down with her mother. I stared at it.
I would castrate thatmudakbefore the week was out.
I took my daughter from Konstantin—my daughter, the words still arriving with the distinct weight of something not yet fully processed—and tried to cradle her. She was squirming, all four limbs moving at once with the furious energy of someone who had opinions about the situation and intended to express all of them simultaneously. I tightened my grip so she wouldn’t fall and began to walk the small length of the apartment, humming low under my breath.
It took a moment to find the right note. Then another.
Her cries began to wane.
“Check the suitcase for Runa’s things,” I said quietly to Konstantin, keeping my voice level so as not to disturb the fragile progress.“Dump anything of Iskra’s. Take the suitcase.”
He moved to check Iskra first—fingers to her pulse, rolling her carefully onto her back—before crossing to the suitcase. The cries had reduced to hiccups now, small and involuntary, racking through her tiny body with the complete exhaustion of a baby who had screamed everything she had.
Nikolai had done well. Even accounting for the three grown men who had somehow managed to lose a woman with an infant for the better part of an hour.
“Got it,” Konstantin said, zipping the case.
I glanced down at the woman by my feet. Blood had matted into her hair above the back of her neck, dark against the gold of it.
“Brat?” Konstantin’s voice, carefully neutral.
“Leave her,” I said, and moved toward the door, stepping over her without looking down again.
Then Runa shifted.
She leaned into my chest—a small, exhausted weight—and rested her head there with one final hiccup, her eyes drooping, her fist finding the lapel of my jacket and gripping it.
I stilled for a moment.
Then I gently stroked the back of her head and walked out of the apartment.
??????
Runa had fat tears running down her cheeks as she stared at us. I realised, somewhere at forty thousand feet, how spectacularly ill-equipped three grown men were to care for a baby. The aeroplane ride couldn’t have been comfortable for her either. Bogdan held her on his lap with the careful rigidity of a man handling something he was terrified of dropping. I tried to entertain her. Konstantin had his phone out and was reading with the focused concentration of a man cramming for an examination he had not known he was taking.
I glanced at Bogdan.
