Page 60 of Babies for the Boss
He sighs. “Open war among the bratva pakhans of New York would not be surgical. It would be total. It would draw attention that none of us can afford, produce casualties on every side, and destabilize arrangements that currently keep a great deal of violence contained.” He looks at me steadily. “It would get people killed. A lot of people. Possibly including the people he’s trying to protect.”
It is true and terrible simultaneously. “Including me.”
“Yes.”
I press my hand to my abdomen again, the instinctive checking-in that has already become reflexive since the ultrasound. Two heartbeats that know nothing of any of this, that are doing the quiet, industrious work of becoming people, entirely unaware that the world they are becoming people into is currently on fire.
“Tell him,” I say. “Tell him what you just told me.”
“I will try.”
“Igor. Make him hear it. Whatever you have to do. Make sure Vet did not die for nothing.”
He nods once, straightens his jacket with the automatic precision of someone for whom presentation is professional discipline, and looks at me for a moment with something in hisface that is not quite the sovetnik and not quite the man but something in between. “Rest. The children need it.”
If he were anyone else, I’d snap at him for telling me what I already know. But he’s Igor. He says the thing I already know because he’s reinforcing it. It’s his way of saying he cares.
Then he goes, and I’m alone in the white light of the hospital room with the equipment humming and Vet gone and my husband somewhere starting a war and my babies doing their quiet patient work inside me. All of it is underlined in fear.
I lie in bed, gazing at the ceiling, feeling everything—the grief for Vet, vivid and ongoing. The fear of what Pavel is becoming in his furious state. The helpless frustration of being unable to do anything from a hospital bed—aware of it all. I don’t attempt to organize these feelings into something manageable because they are not. Pretending otherwise would be a lie.
I’ve had my fill of comfortable lies for a long time.
Mangoes. Vet and I were talking about mangoes when I heard a popping sound. Her hand went to her shoulder immediately, as she sharply turned the car. Blood seeped between her fingers, staining her shirt as she swerved around something in the road. But all I could see was the red.
That memory flash sends my grief reeling through me all over again. I press my hand flat against the blanket, and I breathe, carefully, around the bruising.
It will take a very long time, but I am going to be alright.
I say it to the white ceiling, to the humming equipment, to the two small presences that know nothing and need everything.
We are going to be alright.
22
PAVEL
Igor walks into my office,but I hardly notice him.
I’m behind my desk, but I’m not sitting—sitting requires a stillness I do not currently possess. The study has borne the brunt of my… I cannot even call it anger.
There have been times in my life when anger was my shadow. We walked side by side through the world, being a Useful Devil. I learned to live with that prickly, constant companion, and to wield it when needed.
This is something else. Something I don’t have a word for. Something I don’t control.
Igor keeps judgment from his face, but he sees what I’ve done already. A glass that was in the wrong place at the wrong moment bore the brunt of it when I walked in. Sparkling fragments now litter the rug. Then, a chair I slammed into the wall twice, not a pile of firewood. The curtains lay in tatters on the floor.
Destruction. That is my gift. That is my purpose. My office is barely a warm-up compared to what I have planned. This wasjust… blowing off steam. But it did nothing but annoy me. I need to do more. Right now.
Igor closes the door behind him.
I look at him across the room and feel the thing in my chest that has been building since Vet’s voice went silent on the phone. I know what he’s going to say. “Don’t bother.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’re going to tell me to be reasonable. That is not an option. So, if you don’t have anything useful to say, then don’t fucking bother me.”
Igor moves to the still-standing chair across from my desk. He sits. He folds his hands. He looks at me with the level patience of years of service and says nothing, which is its own form of argument.
