Page 138 of Nine Months to Bear
“Or what? You’ll fire me? Kill me?” She laughs, bitter and sharp. “You won’t. Because you’re not that man anymore. She’s defanged you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” She backs toward the club door. “The old Stefan would have fucked me against this wall just to prove a point. This version?” She looks me up and down with disgust. “This version slinks home to play house with his ditzy little girlfriend.”
“Mikayla—”
“Save it.” She yanks the door open. “When she destroys you—and she will—don’t come crying to me.”
The door slams behind her.
I finish my cigarette in silence, watching smoke float into the night sky. Mikayla’s wrong about one thing—Olivia hasn’t defanged me.
She’s done something worse.
She’s made me want to be better.
And for a man like me, that might be the most dangerous thing of all.
I flick the cigarette into the gutter and head back inside. Taras is exactly where I left him, working through the bottle with methodical determination.
“Mikayla just stormed through here like someone pissed on her Louboutins,” he observes. “What’d you do?”
“Turned her down.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh?”
“Things change,” I say in answer to the questions he didn’t really ask.
“No shit.” He pours us both another drink. “You know what your problem is?”
“Enlighten me.”
“You’re in love with Olivia.”
I shake my head. “I don’t do love.”
“Neither did your pops.” Taras raises his glass in a mock toast. “Look how that turned out.”
“My father was weak.”
“Your father was a man,” he corrects. He downs his drink and stands up. “And so are you, whether you want to admit it or not.”
He leaves me alone with the bottle and the truth I don’t want to face.
I’ve been telling myself this is about the heir. About legitimacy. About business. But when I close my eyes, I don’t see a surrogate or a business acquisition.
I see a future I can’t stop craving.
52
STEFAN
The bottle’s empty and I’m still too fucking sober for what comes next.
I push up from the VIP table. Try to, at least, but the leather is sticking to my skin like it’s trying to hold me back.
Maybe it knows better than I do. Maybe I should stay put.
