Page 44 of The Payment

Mila’s eyes glimmered as she smiled coyly at Tatiana.“I know you just got married, but neither of you is young anymore.When can we expect our first grandchild?”

The air sucked from Tatiana’s lungs as she looked up to find Jarek lounging against the door.As usual, he had materialized like a phantom, his presence filling the room soundlessly.His silvery eyes traced the rising color in her cheeks with evident amusement, and beneath it, a possessive hunger flashed that made her pulse skip treacherously.His words that night at the club rang through her mind.

“You wanted this, my dear wife, and now you got it.You are mine, and I am yours...and that’s never going to change.Not now...and sure as hell not in five years.”

Perfect.Did he have to appear at this exact moment?The question of children, his children, sent conflicting waves of panic and an unexpected longing through her.A desire she refused to examine too closely as his eyebrow pitched upward in that familiar mocking salute to her discomfort.

“Well, my lovely wife, aren’t you going to answer your mother?”

Tatiana flashed him a searing look, silently warning him that she refused to be intimidated.He knew exactly her take on the matter.Hell would freeze over before she gave him a child.Yet even as she clung to that resolution, an unwelcome image flashed through her mind of a little boy with his father’s silver eyes and her blonde hair.She shoved the thought away, disturbed by how easily it had formed and by how it made her heart contract in ways she couldn't comprehend.

“As my mother rightfully said, we just got married,” Tatiana offered with a saccharine smile and aimed a deliberate barb at Jarek.“Besides, I always maintained that five years is a good time for a couple to fully settle with each other before they have children.”

“Five years!”Mila’s face paled.The intentional jab at Jarek’s expense had no impact on her mother.“You’ll be forty, darling, and Jarek...I don’t know, forty-five?”

“Fifty,” Tatiana smirked, watching Jarek for any reaction.His face remained impassive with that infuriating half-smile playing at the corners of his mouth.Her attempt to mock his age slid off him like water.“He’ll be ancient, and by then, he would agree our lives are perfect without adding a baby to the mix.”

Mila’s face crumpled as tears welled up in her eyes.“You don’t want children?”Her voice was raw with anguish.“It’s because of us, isn’t it?”She gripped Tatiana’s hand.“Leaving left you feeling deserted, and now you don’t want a family of your own.Oh, no, it’s our fault.”

“Mom, stop.”Tatiana's words came out as a growl, directed more at Jarek than her mother.As usual, his presence invited the defensive and combative bitch to the surface.“In all honesty, I have never given much thought to having children.”The lie tasted bitter on her tongue.“All I ever wanted was to stand on my own two feet.To find a way to get out from under Gregor Polov’s control.My career, my business gave me that.TAP is what molded me into who and what I am today.”

She swallowed hard, refusing to complete her thought.The truth burned in her chest.She had always wanted children.Many times, she had imagined cradling a newborn and watching it grow by creating the family she had lost.But not like this.Not as payment for a debt.Not with a man who saw her as property to be owned.

“I can understand that, my dear child, but don’t let your grandfather take away such joy from your life.”Maxim’s voice carried quiet authority.“We only had five years with you, but to this day, we still remember every single one of those days spent as a family.It will break my heart if you never get to experience the joy of being a parent.”

The transformation in Jarek’s face at those words stopped her cold.Gone was the perpetual amusement and the calculated darkness she had grown accustomed to.Raw grief etched deep lines around his mouth as haunted shadows darkened his eyes.Twenty years hadn’t dulled the agony of losing his daughter and his wife or the memories they had created.The mask he wore daily cracked, revealing a father who still mourned and a man whose heart had been ripped apart.

For the first time, she truly witnessed the depth of devastation Gregor had wrought.The memory of a four-year-old’s laughter silenced forever and a family destroyed in an instant must be torture.No wonder revenge burned so hot in his veins even now.The realization rattled her carefully constructed wall as she was forced to see beyond the Dark One to the broken man beneath.

“I need some air,” Tatiana excused herself to the balcony, desperately needing space from the suffocating weight of unspoken truths.The wind whipped her hair, matching the turbulence in her chest.Behind her, through the glass doors, she could hear her parents’ voices mingling with Jarek’s deeper tone.It was a domestic scene that scraped raw nerves she had thought long cauterized.

“A child.”Her throat constricted around the words.

In her darkest hours, in the privacy of her own thoughts, she had imagined it countless times as she crafted those dreams in secret, like origami birds hidden in drawers, too fragile to show anyone.

“Dreams are dangerous,” she murmured as she pressed a palm against her stomach, remembering the hollow ache she had carried since childhood in yearning for her mother’s touch and her father’s protection.The scars Gregor had left weren’t just physical.They were coded into her DNA and whispered warnings of history’s tendency to repeat.

“What if I become likeBabushka?”she whimpered softly.

Cold, distant, and viewing her child as nothing more than a pawn in a greater game.Or worse.What if she had to make the same choice her parents had?Run and leave everything behind, or stay and watch her children wither under a continued war between their father and Gregor’s influence.

The glass door slid open behind her.Jarek’s presence filled the space, but he didn’t speak.He didn’t need to.The grief she had glimpsed earlier still lingered in the air between them in a shared understanding of loss that made her usual defenses useless.

“I refuse to bring a child into this world as payment for a debt,” she finally said in a raw whisper.“I won’t have them grow up knowing they exist because of a contract.”

“Is that truly what you think I want?”His question came in a soft and dangerous tone.

She turned to face him with her chin inching higher.“Isn’t it?Another piece in your revenge against my grandfather?A Farrel heir with Polov blood?”

“Your grandfather took my daughter from me.”The words fell like stones between them.“I had to watch as my world burned to ashes around me.Do you honestly believe I would use a child, especially my own, as a weapon?”

The truth in his voice shook her.She had seen him ruthless in business, knew from firsthand experience how merciless he was with enemies, but never cruel to the innocent...except for her.Yet, somehow, she knew that even in their worst moments, he would never raise a hand to her or use force where words would suffice.

“That’s what you said that day, Jarek.You made your conditions for payment abundantly clear.A wife and a child for a debt owed.”

“That was for the benefit of Polov, Tatiana.Everything changed...I told you that night at the club...everything changed.”

Her heart started hammering.“Then what do you want?”she whispered as she stared at him with bated breath.

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