Page 118 of Hey, Daddy

“You’re not going to win this one, bro,” Dima replied from the back seat.

Nastya whipped her head around and narrowed her eyes at him. “No comments from the peanut gallery.”

“I would assume I’m in the room because you told me to be there…” I paused, deliberating. “Am I choosing because I want to have sex with them? Or am I choosing them to protect my back?” I hesitated. “Or maybe I’m in a room full of women, and I have to choose one to sacrifice?”

Dima snorted out a laugh.

Nastya turned to survey me.

Today was my forty-fifth birthday.

Forty. Five.

“I now knew what ‘aging like fine wine’ means,” Nastya said after a while.

I turned to look at her. “What?”

“Why do you age so sexy, and I age like I’m a bag of potatoes?” she asked.

I grinned wickedly at her and said, “I don’t think that you can really count yourself as a sack of potatoes when you’ve been pregnant with my children for the last few years, Mama.”

“Gag,” Dima said. “Can we not talk about my sister being pregnant?”

“Dima,” Milena snorted. “For the love of God, grow up.”

Dima narrowed his eyes at Milena, then said, “I’m not talking to you!”

Dima was home, and Milena had been tasked with picking him up yesterday, but had forgotten.

I’d picked him up on the way home from work, and he’d complained non-stop about being left behind.

Dima hadn’t let Milena forget that she’d forgotten, either. He’d brought it up at least fifteen times now.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Dima asked.

“Grabbing our packages from the Amazon Locker,” Nastya answered. “I needed two strapping men to get it.”

“What is it?” Dima asked as we arrived at the Locker.

“You’ll see.” She smiled. “You got that pallet jack, honey?”

I got out, pulled the pallet jack out of the back of the truck, and rolled it to the back of the trailer.

The box didn’t even fit into one of the lockers.

One of the men manning the place had to direct us to grab it from the back. Which we did.

Once it was situated and on the trailer, I got back into the truck.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

“A small car, by the feel of it,” Dima joked. “Hey, what did they say about your ex?”

Nastya grinned but refused to tell me what it was until we were at home.

She did give the update on Julia.

“Apparently, she has feeling in her left foot now. She can sit up, but she still can’t use anything below her hips,” Nastya explained. “Oh, and Rich got moved to a more secure prison because he tried to escape. Strangled a guard to try to do it, too.”

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