Page 78 of Shattered Cradle (Makarova Bratva Duet)

He clears his throat and tries again. “Why?” he rasps.

“Why?” I repeat. “Why are we enemies now?”

He tilts his head forward. It barely moves, but I understand it as a nod. “Well, I guess the short version is because of your son. I chose him. Or, I chose my baby, I guess,” I say, putting my hand over my abdomen. “But they’re one and the same, I think.”

When I look up, he’s staring at me with wide eyes.Oh, shit.

“Oh. You didn’t know about the baby, huh?” I stammer. “I’m sorry. I just assumed that Aleks would have told you. Then again, now that I think about it, he’s not really the sharing type, is he?” I wince. “Sorry. I’m such an idiot. I should have thought. I just…”

When I realize I’m rambling incoherently, I force myself to stop so that I can take a breath. “Well, I’m pregnant,” I say with a self-conscious smile. “You’re going to be a grandfather.”

He doesn’t really react to that, but I figure he’s still processing the news.

“I don’t actually know if Yulia knows either,” I say, thinking out loud. “I haven’t seen her since I came back here. It hasn’t been that long, but still, she was always around before… Sorry, I’m rambling again. I have a tendency to do that when I’m nervous.”

I sit in silence for a moment, waiting for him to bark out some pearl of wisdom that will magically make me feel better.

But this isn’t a fairy tale and he isn’t some wise old wizard ready to point me down the right path towards my destination. This is the real world, and in this one, he just sits there and stares at me. He doesn’t make a sound.

“Have you ever lost someone you loved?”

A discernible shake of the head.

“Wow,” I breathe. “How do you get to your age and not experience a loss?”

“Loss, yes… Love, no…”

I raise my eyebrows. “I don’t believe that.”

“It’s… true.”

I smile. “So Aleks takes after you then?”

He can’t really smile, but his eyes twinkle.

I pat the back of his hand fondly. “My siblings are convinced that Aleks did something he didn’t. And they think he brainwashed me into taking his side of things. They think I’ve chosen Aleks over them, but I’m the one who spent months here. I know him better than they do. And besides, it’s hypocritical—they picked sides, too. They chose Hargrove over me.”

I cover my face with my hands and try to rein in my feelings. But nothing really helps right now except for getting these thoughts out of my hand and into the universe. So I keep talking.

“They wanted me to abort the baby,” I tell Vlad in a quiet voice. The word still hurts to say.

I feel a pang of minor guilt. I don’t really know if I can or should trust him with this information, but I’ve come too far to turn back now.

“They actually tricked me into the car to drive me to the hospital. That made it a hell of a lot easier to choose Aleks, I’ll tell you that much.”

I twist my fingers together, trying to figure out what else I want to get out in the open. The catharsis is working, because somehow, despite the day I’ve had, I feel better than I did an hour ago.

“Maybe this is naïve,” I say, trying to push through my fear, “but right now, I have to believe this is temporary. This rift between Mia and Rob and me, it has to be temporary. They’ll find out the truth and then they’ll understand why I stood my ground. And everything will go back to the way it was. Because I can’t imagine…”

My voice breaks and I look up at Vlad, remembering that I’m actually talking to another human being right now.

This feels a little like an open confessional, though. Maybe it’s appropriate, considering I buried my mother today. She was always a fan of confessionals. Although I have no idea what she ever had to confess to in the first place.

“I wonder if choosing Aleks now means sacrificing my family for good.” I force out the words. They taste as bitter as the rest. “What if that’s the choice I made? Losing them forever?”

He stares at me, his deep eyes taking in my every expression, my every movement, and giving up nothing in return.

“I think I’m in love with your son,” I say, before I really even have a chance to decide whether I should say it or not. I lean in. “Just in case it’s not clear, that’s classified information. I guess I just wanted to say it out loud to see how it sounded. Does that make sense?”

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