Page 111 of Crowned

“You couldn’t just sayI’m sorrylike I asked you to do months ago? Two goddamn words, Konstantin? No, you had to make a great big secret out of it when I could have helped you.”

“And if Number Ten’s sister was dead? I was supposed to watch the mother of my child cry?”

I make a face at him. He’s got an answer for everything. “Of the three of you, you had me the most worried. That you would want to be aPakhanto this child, not a father.”

Konstantin smiles slowly. “When have I ever behaved like a normalPakhan? I share my woman. I let you tell me what to do. I let these assholes tell me what to do. I am at your feet,malyshka, and I always will be.”

He reaches up to touch my cheek, his gray eyes softer than I have ever seen them before. “Lilia Aranova, you are my beloved, and you always will be.”

“Thank you for what you did,” I whisper fiercely. “You did it for me?”

He nods at Viktoria. “I did it for her, so she can love her fathers, not fear them.”

I close my eyes, relief pouring through me and loosening my tense muscles. That’s the answer I’ve been hoping for from him, and I didn’t even realize it.

“That is even better than your love,” I tell him.

“You have that, too,” he tells me, and kisses my mouth.

Elyah comes forward and takes my face in his hands. “Once, this idiot told lie,” he murmurs, nodding at Konstantin. “He told us that you are not bewitching goddess. That there was nothing special about Number Eleven, and we believed him. Then we watched you prove us all wrong.” He kisses me softly. “I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you, Lilia Aranova. This home will always be safety for you. I swear it.”

Elyah has always seemed boyish to me, sometimes sweet, sometimes terrifying, but now he’s looking at me as a man who knows what he wants and trusts in my heart as well as his own.

He presses his forehead against mine and closes his eyes.

“I love you, too,” I whisper fiercely.

Kirill saunters toward me and jerks his chin in a way that tells me he wants me to turn my lips up to his, and I do.

As Elyah moves aside, Kirill says in a low voice, “Every time you and this baby are out of my sight for more than one second, I lose my fucking mind. If it were possible, I would tie you to me. Both of you.” His jaw clenches and he swallows hard. “But that is not possible, so instead, every time you leave and come back to me, I will feel more joy than a piece of shit like me deserves to feel even once.”

With his arms full of me and the baby, he kisses me hard.

“Always come back to me,detka.”

I nod, my heart bleeding with the memory of all the blood that’s been spilled in his past. The little boy who was beaten by his father. The baby who never got to live. The mother and grandparents who died brutal deaths. They’re all ghosts, but the man who has endured it all is here.

If I run, what will he have?

“I promise,” I whisper.

I turn to the house and walk up the steps, calling casually over my shoulder, “By the way, Olivia, Beatrix, and I figured out which of you is the father.”

“Lilia! Is she mine? I know she is mine,” Elyah says.

“Don’t be stupid, Elyah. I was first.”

“First doesn’t mean anything,” Konstantin reminds them.

I grin and walk across the threshold, grinning to myself as they continue arguing behind me. Maybe I’ll tell them, or maybe I won’t. They are all Viktoria’s father in their hearts, and that’s where it matters.

I step into the hall and turn back to look at the four of them. Here I am with all my beautiful men and my daughter. Full of love.

Finally home.

17

Lilia

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