Page 68 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

“After I asked you not to retaliate.”

He doesn’t look away. “It wasn’t retaliation.”

“Ivan.”

“What he did required a response. That is different from retaliation.”

“That’s a distinction you made up.”

“It’s a distinction that exists.”

“In your head.”

“In every organization like mine. There’s a difference between revenge and consequence. You don’t want revenge. What happened to Hugo was a consequence.”

I look at him. He looks back at me with those dark eyes that are entirely sincere, and that’s the thing that makes this hard—he’s not manipulating me. Not entirely. It would be easier if he was just manipulating me.

But he genuinely believes what he’s saying. He has built a whole internal logic around it that is coherent inside his world and makes no sense inside mine, and he is sitting in my kitchen applying that logic to my life, and he did it without asking.

He gently says, “You are too soft for what my life requires.” His voice is even when he says it, which means he believes it and is not trying to wound me. That almost makes it worse. “I didn’t tell you the truth about what I was going to do because I didn’t want you to have to carry it.”

I sit with that for a moment. “I know you believe that. I know you think you were protecting me.”

“I was.”

“You lied to me.”

“Yes.”

The word lands in the kitchen, and neither of us moves. Nothing moves, except the ratty bitch in my chest.

“I’m too soft for your world. You’re not wrong about that. I know what I am. I built a shop that sells candles because I wanted to put light in the world, and that’s not an accident, that’s a value, and it doesn’t fit with—” I stop. I press my hand flat on the table.

Breathe.

“I’m going to have a baby. I can’t be someone who looks the other way when the person I love lies to me about violence done on my behalf, and I can’t raise a kid in the middle of that, and I can’t—” My voice does something I don’t want it to do, and I stop talking for a second and wait for it to stop.

Ivan’s very still.

“I don’t want to do this. I want you to know that. I’m not doing this because I want to.”

“Luna—”

“I need you to go.”

He looks at me for a long time. I look back at him, and I will the tears to go away. His taped hand is still on the table, and I want very badly to take it, but I don’t, because if I do, I won’t go through with this.

I have a baby on the way and a shop and a life that I built to mean something. I cannot risk that. I cannot have that taken from me, just because of who I love.

Even if he is everything to me.

He looks at me for a long moment after I say it. His jaw sets, and I think he might say something, but he doesn’t.

He just picks up his jacket from the back of the chair and puts it on slowly, the way he does everything, like he has all the time in the world and the time is not currently breaking my heart. He crosses to the door, and I follow him, which I don’t have to do but can’t seem to stop myself from doing. He opens it and stops in the doorway with his back to me for a moment, one hand on the frame.

Then he goes.

Some adolescent part of my heart wants him to stop. To turn around, tell me he will give up being a Bratva boss, that he loves me enough to stop being a violent criminal.