Page 186 of Nine Months to Bear
Olivia’s voice cuts through everything. She’s at the top of the stairs now, still in the same clothes from earlier. Her face is pale but her chin is up. Babushka hovers behind her, looking ready to beat federal agents with her cane if push comes to shove.
“Dr. Aster,” Agent Medina calls up, “we need you to come with us.”
“No.” I move to block the stairs. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“Stefan, stop.” Olivia’s voice is quiet. Tired. “Just stop.”
She starts down the stairs. I reach for her arm as she passes, but she pulls away and keeps descending without looking at me.
“Olivia, don’t do this. Let me call my lawyer. This is Mikayla’s fault. She fed them lies?—”
“Did she?” Olivia finally looks at me, and what I see there guts me. Not fear. Not panic. Just resignation. Like she expected this. Like she knew this was coming the moment she found my journal. “Or did she just tell them the truth?”
“You know that’s not?—”
“I don’t know anything.” She keeps going. Elegant, graceful, proud. “Apparently, I never did.”
Agent Medina watches our exchange with interest. “Dr. Aster, we’ll need to restrain you. Protocol, you know?”
“I understand.”
She reaches the bottom of the stairs. An agent approaches with handcuffs. The sight of them makes something primal roar to life in my chest.
“Don’t fucking touch her!”
The agent hesitates and looks for guidance. Medina nods and he proceeds anyway, reaching for Olivia’s wrists.
“I said don’t?—”
I’m moving before I can think. One second, I’m on the stairs; the next, I’m lunging for the agent. I’m so close to breaking his smug fucking face, to spilling blood that needs so badly to be spilled?—
Then Taras is there, his arms around me, dragging me backward before I can hit anyone or anything.
“Stefan, no,” he warns in my ear. “Not like this.”
“Get off me!”
“You assault a federal agent, you’re done,” he hisses. “Think, man! Use your fucking head!”
Every agent has their weapon drawn and leveled at me. Medina watches the whole thing with cold calculation.
“Mr. Safonov, I suggest you control yourself. Unless you’d like to join Dr. Aster in cuffs?”
Taras’s grip tightens. “He’s good. He’s calm. Right, Stefan?”
I’m not calm. I’m the opposite of calm. But Olivia… she’s just standing there, wrists out, letting them pat her down and cuff her like she’s already given up.
“Olivia,” I beg, “look at me.”
She doesn’t.
“Olivia, please.”
The agent finishes with the cuffs. They look obscene on her wrists. Too big, too heavy for someone who saves lives instead of taking them.
They belong on me, not her.
“This is my fault,” I tell her. “All of it. Let me fix it.”
