“How’s Nina?” he asks me. His voice is hard to read, and I guess I should have expected that—not like he’s going to be overflowing with warmth and comfort given what just happened.
I nod cautiously. “Uh, yeah, she seems to be doing about as well as I could hope,” I reply, running a hand through my hair. “And she... she’s sleeping now. I guess we’ll talk a bit more about it in the morning, but....” I pause, shaking my head. “How’s Max?”
“With Marsha,” he replies. “I wanted to give you the day off. To rest.”
“Okay, but I’d like to see him tomorrow,” I reason. “He needs some kind of continuity, and I don’t want to leave him?—”
“Can I trust you with him this time?”
I blink, staring at him in surprise. “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”
He presses his hands to the counter, eyeing me for a long moment. “You’re the one who took him outside,” he reminds me. “Both of them, actually. And if you hadn’t been out of yourquarters when Vinski’s men attacked, none of this would have happened.”
My stomach sinks.So, he blames me.I guess he has his reasons. But it’s the last thing I need to hear right now, given everything that’s happened. I thought I might have to pay for my mistakes with my life, and even if I survived, that it would come with the weight of the world on my shoulders. And now, with the way he is looking at me, I’m getting the feeling that survival might not be as simple as I imagined, whether I’m willing to admit it or not.
“They were the ones who broke into this place, not me,” I retort sharply. “And they?—”
“I never had a threat against this place until you arrived,” he replies. “That’s not a coincidence.”
“What, you’re back to accusing me of working for your enemies again?” I reply, tossing my hands in the air. “Haven’t I proven to you by now that you can trust me?”
“I don’t think you work for them,” he reasons. “But you’re reckless enough with the children’s safety that it gave them an in.”
My eyes widen. “Don’t youdaretalk about my mothering,” I warn him. “I’ve taken care of Nina for years and nothing like this has happened, you’re the reason that changed.”
“And you’re the one who won’t catch up with reality,” he shoots back, voice low. “The one who thinks that she is going to be able to get away with living a normal life in a place like this, when you need to remember what kind of risk you are under.”
“No, I just want something that resembles a normal life for Max and Nina,” I point out sharply. “And that’s not going to happen as long as we keep them locked up.”
“As long as I’m keeping them safe, you mean?” he fills in the blanks for me.
I plant my hands on my hips, the exhaustion from the last couple of days lifting as anger takes me over. “You think it’s protecting them, keeping them away from the world like that?” I reply. “Because it’s not. You’re only going to make it harder for them when they actually want to go out there and live their lives.”
“They need to stay here. Where they’re safe. At least for now.”
“And how long does that now stretch out for, hmm?” I press. “Because I know how quickly it can go from just looking out for them to keeping a grip on every single fucking thing they do. I know that I should have been more careful, Alexei, but that doesn’t mean that you’re in the right just because you…”
“Just because I what?” he demands, taking a step towards me. He is fresh from the shower, skin still glistening with dampness, and I try not to let my gaze linger on the hollow of his throat, the way it pulses as the blood rushes around my veins.
“Because you don’t want your children to live a normal life!”
“Because I want them to be safe,” he growls, his eyes darkening. “And I can’t risk having someone around them who doesn’t want the same thing!”
“You think that I would ever have done what I did if I thought that it would lead to that?” I gasp, hardly able to wrap my head around what he is saying to me. “You… You hired me to lookafter Max. And I’m just trying to give him a chance to live a life outside the walls you’ve built up around him!”
“The walls that keep him safe!”
“The walls that keep him trapped!”
He stands there before me for a second, breathing hard, not taking his eyes off me. You could cut the tension in here with a fucking knife, and I know he can feel it just as clearly as I can. I don’t know what to say, what to do, what he expects from me right now, but I know I’m not going to pull back, not when he is accusing me of not caring when that’s all I damn well do.
I’m breathing hard as I stare back at him, daring him to go on, to push further, to show me where he is willing to take this.
“That’s how you feel? Trapped in this place?”
“It’s different for me,” I reply, shaking my head. “I–I chose to be here, I had some idea of what I was getting in to, at least. It’s not the same thing.”
“So what is it, then?” he demands sharply. “You want to leave? Take Nina and get out of here? Shit, take Max too, since you think I can’t take care of him either?”
