Page 100 of Pack Baby for the Bratva
Neither of us said anything. We walked back down the corridor in silence.
At the staircase, Ivan stopped. "You should tell her you like her."
"Everyone likes her," I said. "Of course I like her, she's the omega of the pack."
"That's not what I meant."
I didn't answer.
"You should tell her," Ivan said.
"Tell her what? That I watched her tell Irish stories to our son and it made my chest feel like it was being reorganized by someone who didn't know where anything went?"
"Yes. That." He grinned.
"Artem is the Pakhan."
"Artem is your pack mate. He is also a man who reads baby books and leaves sticky notes."
"I didn't leave sticky notes."
"You laminated a feeding schedule."
"That was operational."
"It was romantic. You just don't know it yet."
As I considered this, Ivan clapped me on the shoulder and went downstairs, leaving me at the top of the staircase with Fergus, who had reappeared from somewhere and was looking at me expectantly.
"What?" I asked.
Fergus barked once.
"Your opinion is noted."
He trotted down the stairs, presumably to guard the house, which was apparently his role now. He forgot that we have Dobermans guarding the grounds and house.
I stood at the top of the stairs for another minute. Through the window at the end of the hall, the grounds stretched gray andgreen toward the tree line. Somewhere beyond the gates, Callum McCarthy was preparing to collect a debt.
But inside the nursery, Maeve was teaching our son the language of a country she'd been forced to leave, and somewhere in that act was the answer to a question I hadn't known how to ask.
How do you make someone you when they’ve been broken once before by love?
Fergus was right. I was being stupid. You don't make them or fix them. You hand them the pieces and let them decide what to build.
23
Maeve
I didn't spend thefour days preparing speeches. I didn't pace the floors or cry into my pillows or let the fear of Callum McCarthy drag me back into the dark place I'd finally crawled out of.
I built things instead.
On Tuesday, I sat in the conservatory and called Lena.
Her face appeared on my laptop screen looking exhausted and electric, the way people look when they've been running on caffeine and ambition.
“Oh my God, you’re alive. How are you?”
