Page 14 of Forgotten Vows
I swallowed hard, uncomfortable to amend my story from last night. We’d talked at length, but I hadn’t offered this detail then.
“I know she is alive. I looked up medical records on her after I walked away. And from the records at a hospital in LA, I know that she lost a baby she must have been carrying at the time I left.”
“What the fuck?” He gasped. “You left her when she was carrying your child?”
I shook my head. “I never could have left her knowing I’d knocked her up. I couldn’t leave my child.”
“Damn.” He rubbed his jaw, looking stunned.
“I didn’t know. She never told me. I never suspected. We did use protection, so when I came upon that record, I was surprised.”
“Could it have been…” He winced. “Could it have been someone else’s?”
I glared at him for even insinuating she’d been with someone else. She’d given me her virginity, and I couldn’t see how she’d been apart from me long enough in those four months to have strayed. “No.”
“Not a chance?”
“No,” I growled. “The timing wouldn’t have worked. The baby she lost was the one we’d made.”
My son or daughter.The agony of what was lost would never fade. The loss of my love. The loss of what could have been.
“I had to find her somehow. I asked an independent agent to track her down. I just needed to know she was okay.” I gave himan honest look. “Just like you said. Konstantin could’ve found out she was with me and wanted to hurt her.” I fought back the memories of that idea crossing my mind back then. “And I had to know that she was all right.”
“You didn’t say anything.” He shook his head. “Not to me, my father, Alexsei…”
“No one. I didn’t want to take the chance that anyone in the family could’ve found out. I had to seek the information, but due to the nature of the fucked-up family politics and how Konstantin wasn’t in Luka’s favor anymore, I kept my distance from her. I hired someone to track her and made sure nothing would lead back to me. I had to stay away and keep everything off the records like that because if anyone knew I was at all interested in her, it would reveal that we’d been together. To keep her safe.”
He patted my back as we both turned to face the landscape stretching out below us as far as the eye could see.
“That does make sense.” He let out a long sigh that sounded like pity and sorrow. “Like we said last night, Konstantin was always old-fashioned about the women in his family. Not just for the sake of determining who he’d want them to align with for more wealth for himself, but also to avoid an heir between the Dubinin and Petrov lines.”
I hung my head, dropping my chin to my chest. “I know.”
“Because he wasn’t pleased with how Luka handled their arguments back then,” he added.
“Yes. Having an heir between me and Raisa would’ve been a show of weakness on his part.” I lifted my head again. “I suspect if I told Luka about Raisa, he would’ve been the first one to warn me not to pursue any lasting route with her. But it doesn’t matter now.”
In hindsight, to an outsider looking in, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit. Our illicit affair was short-lived and was now over with anyway.
With the unreliable news that Konstantin might have been killed years ago, there was still no point to pursue Raisa after all this time away. I’d only cause her more pain to rehash what we’d once had.
And I had to one day come to terms with that.
But that day is not today.
6
RAISA
Ireached the busier street that would lead back to the hotel. That was when I realized I’d left my key fob clipped to my other uniform.
Dammit.
I cringed, slowing my steps as I moved out of the faster stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk.
Dammit!
How could I have been so stupid?
