Page 182 of Nine Months to Bear
“I can fucking try!”
“No.” She shakes her head. “You don’t get to create the problem and then position yourself as the solution.”
“Call it whatever you want. You’re not leaving.”
“You can’t keep me here.”
“I can. I will.”
“For how long? Forever?”
“For as long as it takes to eliminate the threat.”
She steps closer, and I can see tears gathering in her eyes but not falling. Not yet. “You want to know what the real threat is? It’s not Zakharov or Mikayla or whoever else is on your enemy list this week. It’syou.” Her throat bobs as she swallows. “You’re the threat, Stefan. You’ve been the threat this whole time.”
I feel a strange pain crawling up my throat. “I would never hurt you.”
The tears spill over now, streaming down her cheeks. “You’ve done nothingbuthurt me. My clinic, my body, my future… There’s nothing left that you haven’t ruined.”
The pain expands, heats up, grows fangs. It’s hard to talk. It’s hard to breathe. What the hell is happening to me?
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I can’t look at my clinic without thinking about your money. I can’t touch my stomach without thinking about your plan. I can’t even…” She stops, swallows hard. “I can’t even remember anymore what it felt like to be happy without wondering if you were just pulling strings to make me feel that way.”
“Please,” I say, loathing how desperate I sound. “Just stay. Let me protect you and the baby. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
She looks at me with those amber eyes, still shiny with tears. “You have already hurt me, Stefan. You have hurt me in ways I didn’t know I could be hurt.” Her voice drops to almost a whisper. “Who’s going to protect me from you?”
I have no answer. No defense. No pretty words to make this better.
Because she’s right.
I am the danger. I am the threat. I am the thing she needs protection from.
And we both know it.
65
STEFAN
I stand in the hallway outside Olivia’s room, my hand raised to knock for the third time. The door stays locked. Silent.
“Stefushka,mudak!”
I turn just in time to dodge Babushka’s open palm. It whooshes past my ear.
“What did you do?” She swings again. I duck. “What did you do to that poor girl?”
“Babushka—”
Her cane comes up to take a crack at me. I step back to avoid it taking off a chunk of my temple.
“She’s been crying for hours.Hours, Stefan. The walls are thin. I can hear everything.”
Another swing. This one catches my shoulder.
“Ow, goddammit!”
