Page 65 of Marrying the Pakhan

“She’s thirty-four weeks pregnant.”

“I’m aware. Which is exactly why this needs to happen now, while she’s still capable of making informed decisions about her own safety, instead of after something happens that takes that choice away from her entirely.” Dimitri’s jaw tightens. “I like her, Viktor. I liked her before I trusted her, which frankly surprised me more than it should have. I like Ginger enough that I’ve started letting her win at cards, which anyone who actually knows me will tell you never happens. I’m not pushing you on this because I think you’re weak for hesitating. I’m pushing you because I think you’re wrong, and because I care what happens to both of them almost as much as you do.”

I don’t have any good argument left. I’ve been running the same one in my head for weeks, certainty before honesty, protection through silence, and every version of it has gotten thinner with every new piece of intelligence Dimitri’s brought me.

“You’re right,” I say finally, the words costing me more than I expect them to. “I’ve been protecting myself from her reaction more than protecting her from the truth.”

“Glad we agree. Took you long enough.”

“I’ll tell her tonight. Everything. The club, my father, Pavel, the Ivanovs, all of it.”

“Good.” Dimitri stands, gathering the folder, some of his usual ease returning now that he’s actually gotten through to me. “For what it’s worth, she’s tougher than you’re giving her credit for. She proposed marriage to a stranger in a strip club and then talked her way through a custody case, a pregnancy, and months of you being cryptic about your entire double life. I think she can handle the truth about a rival family, Viktor. I think she’s been ready for it longer than you have.”

“Since when did you become the expert on my wife’s emotional resilience?”

“Since I started actually paying attention, unlike some people in this room.” He grins, brief and genuine, the tension of the last ten minutes finally breaking. “Also, since she beat me at poker last month and didn’t even gloat about it properly. I respect restraint like that. It’s rare.”

“You let her win. I was there.”

“I did not let her win. I was distracted by strategy on multiple fronts, one of which happened to be your entire life falling apart in real time.” He heads for the door, pausing with his hand on the frame the way he always does when he wants the last word to land. “Tell her tonight. And Viktor, for once, don’t make it about managing her reaction. Just tell her the truth and let her decide what to do with it herself.”

He leaves before I can respond.

30

HARPER

I sign myself in at the front office for an early pickup, thirty-five weeks and craving exactly one thing today, the specific soup from the place near Ginger’s school that apparently only tastes right eaten together at a corner table before her afternoon classes even start.

It’s a small thing. A ridiculous thing, probably, leaving work early for soup and an hour with my niece on an ordinary Tuesday. But the last few weeks have taught me to grab ordinary wherever I can find it, and today felt like a day that needed one.

The office assistant buzzes Ginger’s classroom, and I wait in the small lobby, watching kids file past on their way to recess, until her teacher walks her out personally instead of just sending her alone, which strikes me as slightly unusual before I decide it’s probably just standard procedure I never noticed before.

“There she is,” I say, and Ginger’s whole face lights up the way it always does now, no hesitation at all, running the last few steps to wrap her arms around my waist as far as they’ll reach around the belly currently making hugs increasingly complicated.

“Are we really getting soup?”

“We’re really getting soup.”

She chatters the whole way down the hallway, backpack bouncing, already narrating the classroom hamster crisis in exhaustive detail, and I sign us both out at the front desk with the receptionist who’s started recognizing my face enough to wave us through without much fuss.

One of Viktor’s men nods at me from near the entrance as we pass, a face I’ve started recognizing over these last weeks, part of the quiet architecture of security that’s become just another feature of our lives. I nod back, unbothered by now, the way you stop noticing a smoke detector once you’ve lived under one long enough.

We’re halfway across the parking lot, Ginger’s hand in mine, chattering about a classroom hamster that apparently had a dramatic morning, when I notice the car.

Not the gray sedan. Different, dark, parked at an angle that puts it closer to the pedestrian walkway than any normal parking job would allow, engine already running.

Two men get out.

They move fast, faster than my mind can fully process before my body reacts on pure instinct, and I pull Ginger behind me a half second before the first man reaches for her, close enough now that I can see he’s not hesitating at all, not questioning, just executing something he’s clearly rehearsed.

“Ginger, run!” My voice comes out sharper than I’ve ever heard it, pure animal fear stripped of anything else. “Back to the building, now!”

She freezes for one terrible second, too shocked to move, and the man closes the last few feet between us. I do the only thing I can think to do, throwing myself between him and her despite thirty-five weeks of pregnancy screaming every possible reason this is a terrible idea.

His hand closes around my arm instead of Ginger’s, wrenching hard enough that pain shoots up into my shoulder, and I scream, more out of fury than pain, twisting away with everything I have while shoving Ginger toward the school doors with my free hand.

“Run, baby, run to the office, now!”