Page 183 of Nine Months to Bear
“Good. You deserve worse!” She jabs the cane at my chest. “That girl loves you. And you…” She shakes her head. “You broke her heart.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Then what happened?”
I open my mouth. Close it. How do I explain the journal, the plans, the systematic destruction of everything she built her life on?
“ … I fucked up.”
“Obviously.” She hits me again with the cane. “The question is how badly.”
“Bad.”
“Howbad?”
“She found some documents. Plans I made before… before I knew her.”
Babushka’s eyes narrow. “What kind of plans?”
“Business plans. About her clinic.”
“Ah.” She lowers the cane. “You were going to take it from her.”
She knows me too well.
“It was before?—”
“Stop with the ‘before’! Before you fell in love with her? Pah!Tupitsa!”The cane comes up once more to whack me. I shut up, but it doesn’t stop her from smacking me across the shoulders. “You think I’m blind? Deaf? You think I don’t see how you look at her? You love that girl. And she loves you. And now, you’veruined it with your schemes and your compulsive need to control everything.”
“I had reasons,” I rasp. “I’m trying to protect her.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t protect people from life, Stefushka. You can only live it with them.”
Through the door, I hear something. A muffled sob. My chest tightens.
“She won’t even talk to me.”
“Would you? If someone you trusted showed you papers proving they planned to destroy you?”
I slide to a seat on the floor, back against the wall, eyes closed. “I need to fix this.”
“Yes, you do.”
“But first, I need to deal with Mikayla. She knows about the baby. About Olivia. If she’s really working with Zakharov?—”
“Then you handle it. But Stefan…” She taps my shin with her cane. “If you don’t fix this with Olivia, if you let that girl walk away with your child, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
“I know. I just need to handle Mikayla first. Make sure Olivia’s safe.”
“Fine. Go. Play your games. Hunt your traitors.” She turns toward Olivia’s door. “I’ll stay with her. Make sure she eats something and that she doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Like leave?”
“Like give up on you entirely.” She looks back at me. “You have one chance to fix this, Stefushka.One. Don’t waste it.”
I nod, rise to my feet, and head for the stairs. Behind me, I hear Babushka knock gently on Olivia’s door. “Olivia, dear? I have tea. And cookies. The chocolate ones you like.”
The door doesn’t open, but I hear Olivia’s voice, small and broken. “I’m not hungry.”
