Page 150 of Bratva Knight

I turned right and drove down a dirt driveway, passing slowly through the gates. My heart sped up at the sign, a wave of sadness washing over me. I pulled the car over and turned off the engine.

“You can take the blindfold off now.”

“Thank God.” He removed it and his whole body went rigid beside me as he took in our surroundings. “Tatiana, what are we doing here?”

The smile I gave him was one filled with sadness, pain and despair. “Come on.” I opened the door and stepped out of the car. The cool breeze blew my hair off my shoulders and rustled leaves across the ground. It swirled all around me, bringing with it the scents of freshly dug soil, damp moss and rain.

I made sure to grab my handbag before shutting the door and walking around the side of the car to come face to face with Nikolai.

“I don’t want to be here, Tati,” he whispered, so softly that I barely heard him. Tension rolled off him, his mesmerizing blue eyes filled with anxiety. With loss. With grief.

My heart broke and I felt bad for putting him in such distress, but it was something I felt we both needed to move forward. To take the next step. To finally put the past behind us.

“I know, my love.” I held out my hand in offering and waited. If he really didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t force him. It had to be a choice he made without any prompting from me.

He exhaled heavily, his breath coming out shaky, and placed his hand in mine. I squeezed it tightly in support and then led him down the stone pathway onto the grass. I didn’t need to see where I was going. If I wanted to, I could close my eyes and still get to where I needed to go without a single misstep, because I’d been coming here once a week for the last two years.

I stopped walking and dropped to my knees, running a finger lovingly down the headstone. “Hi baby, Mama’s here.”

Nikolai stood like a statue behind me, his face passive, hands clasped together in front of him. He avoided looking at the grave, his eyes roaming over everything except what was right in front of him. Like he couldn’t bear to look at it, couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge what we were doing in this place.

I pulled out the little bouquet of flowers from my purse and placed them on his tiny grave, tears blurring my vision. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it last week. Mama was dealing with some things. But I brought your dad to come and visit you.”

Glancing over my shoulder, I urged Nikolai to come closer with a small wave of my hand.

He hesitated, face contorted with a mixture of pain and anguish. “Why are you doing this to me?” he whispered sadly. “Are you trying to hurt me?”

Sympathy washed over me. “No, Nikolai. Of course not.” I hooked my fingers around his and pulled him down. He reluctantly slunk down beside me, watching our son's grave with trepidation, the pain in his eyes as clear as day.

“Do you know I come here almost every week?”

He didn’t respond, but I had a feeling he did.

“At first, I avoided it.” I looked at the headstone, the words “NIKOLAS IVAN VOLKOV” like a dagger to the chest. “After we buried him, I couldn’t bring myself to come here. To allow myself to think of him gone. But then I realised this was the only place I could go to be with him. To be close to him. To talk to him. So I started coming once a week. I’d just sit here for hours, telling him how much I missed him, the giant hole his absence left in my heart.”

Tears welled in his eyes. He didn’t respond, staring numbly at the headstone.

“I wanted to apologise to you.”

His head snapped to me, eyes full of confusion. “What the fuck do you have to apologise tomefor?” The ludicrousness layered in his voice made me chuckle softly, like he couldn’t fathom the idea ofmeapologising tohimfor something.

“After Nikolas died, I was so…angry.” I readjusted my position, sitting down to cross my legs. “Angry at what happened. Angry at life. Angry at…you.”

Anguish flashed across his face. “I’m so sorry—”

“No, stop.” I gripped his face with both hands and forced him to look at me. “You’ve said sorry a million times now, over and over again. Now it’smyturn to say sorry to you.” I smoothed out the frown in his brows my words had caused with my thumb, admiring all the small little details of his face. The slight crook of his nose. That strong jaw. Eyes that sparkled like the ocean. “I was so blinded by my anger and grief, I never realised what I was doing to you was the exact same thing I was punishingyoufor doing tome. I abandoned you. I left you to grieve his death all on your own. I never gave you the chance to mourn properly because I made you promise not to say a word to anyone. Then I just disappeared. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you, Nikolai, but I’m here now. I’m here now if you want to say goodbye to our son.”

He closed his eyes, tears rolling down his cheeks and then he leant forward, burying his head into my chest. His whole body shook as he sobbed quietly, and I soothingly rubbed a hand up and down his back.

I wasn’t sure how I knew. Call it intuition, or maybe it was just the fact that I knew him better than anyone else in the world, but Iknewhe hadn’t really allowed himself to grieve Nikolas. That instead, all that time, he’d just kept those emotions buried deep in his mind and pretended they weren’t there.

That was partly my fault. I understood that and I felt horrible for it. My insistence on ignoring what happened and refusing to acknowledge it had made him feel like he couldn’t mourn, because there was no one else he could talk about it with except me.

The guilt of that decision would stay with me for a long time.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Nikolai finally leant back, his eyes bloodshot. I placed a soft kiss on each eye, first the right, then the left, before finally giving him a kiss on the lips, one filled with all the love and care I felt for him.

He kissed me back, wrapping me up in his big, strong arms and holding me tight. “I love you. I love you so much.”

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