Chapter 69 Nikolai
The island was so small it didn't appear on most maps and that's exactly why I chose it.
We flew into Athens first and then took a private boat that Irina had arranged through her old contacts, crossing dark water for three hours until we reached a cluster of rocks that barely qualified as land. The house sat on the highest point overlooking the sea, white stone with blue shutters and a small garden that had gone wild from not being tended, and when we arrived just before dawn the whole place was quiet except for waves hitting the shore below.
Marlena stood on the porch looking out at the water while I carried our bags inside and I watched her from the doorway for a moment before joining her, seeing the way the early light caught her face and made her look younger than she had in months.
"It's beautiful," she said quietly.
"It's safe," I said, which felt more important than beautiful but I understood what she meant, the island had a kind of peace to it that seemed impossible after everything we'd been through.
We spent the first day just settling in and learning the house, finding where things were kept and what worked and what didn't, the water heater was temperamental and the electricity came from solar panels that needed cleaning but otherwise everything was functional enough. There was a small town on the other side of the island where we could buy supplies, maybe twenty houses and a store and a church, the kind of place where people minded their own business and strangers were accepted as long as they didn't cause trouble.
That evening we walked down to the beach hand in hand and our feet sank into sand that was still warm from the sun, and we didn't talk much because we didn't need to, just walked along the water's edge while the sky turned orange and pink and then purple and finally dark.
I felt something I hadn't felt in years and it took me a while to recognize it as peace, actual peace and not just the absence of immediate danger, and when I looked over at Marlena walking beside me with her hand in mine and her hair blowing in the wind I thought maybe we could actually do this, maybe we could build something here that wasn't built on lies.
"Are you happy?" I asked her.
She looked at me and smiled, small but real, and said "I'm getting there."
For three weeks we lived simple and quiet in a way I'd never experienced before, no phones except a single burner that Katya could use to reach us in emergencies, no internet, no news from the outside world, just us and the house and the island and the sea stretching out endless in every direction.
We fell into a routine without meaning to, waking up when the sun came through the windows and going to bed when it got dark, eating meals at the small table on the porch where we could watch the water, spending our days doing small ordinary things that felt almost revolutionary in their normalcy.
We talked about baby names while sitting on the beach at sunset, throwing out ideas and laughing at the bad ones and getting serious about the ones that felt right. Marlena liked Elena for a girl and I agreed immediately because of course we'd name our daughter after her mother, and for a boy we went back and forth between names that meant new beginning or hope or light, settling eventually on Luka because Marlena said it quietly one evening and then started crying and I held her and said yes of course Luka.
I cooked for her every day even though I wasn't very good at it, simple things like pasta and fish from the market and vegetables from the garden that I tried to revive, and she'd sit at the kitchen counter watching me work and making comments about my technique that were half teasing and half actually helpful.
She was getting rounder in small ways that only I would notice, her face filling out from eating regularly and resting enough, her stomach just starting to curve under her loose shirts in a way that made my chest tight every time I saw it. The baby was growing and she was growing with it and I made sure she had everything she needed, vitamins from the pharmacy in town and books about pregnancy that I'd found in English and comfortable places to sit when her back hurt.
At night we'd lie in bed with the windows open and listen to the sea and I'd put my hand on her stomach waiting to feel movement even though it was still too early, and she'd tell me about what it felt like, the tiny flutters that she said might be the baby or might just be her body adjusting but either way it made it feel more real.
I was soft with her in ways I'd never been soft with anyone, careful and gentle and patient, making sure she felt safe and cared for and loved because those were things I should have given her from the beginning instead of contracts and blackmail and revenge.
Every morning I'd wake up before her and watch her sleep for a few minutes before getting up to make coffee, studying her face and the way her hand rested on her stomach even in sleep, and I'd think about how close I'd come to losing her completely, how many times I'd almost destroyed the one good thing that had ever happened to me.
I'd promised myself I would be better and here on this island I finally had the chance to prove it, no empire to run or enemies to fight or past to avenge, just a woman I loved and a baby on the way and a future we were building one quiet day at a time.
Marlena started leaving her guard down in small ways, laughing more easily and touching me without hesitation and talking about the future like it was something real instead of something theoretical. She'd sit in the garden in the afternoons with her hand on her stomach and a book in her lap and sometimes I'd catch her smiling at nothing in particular, just smiling because she was content, and those moments were worth more to me than anything I'd built before.
One evening we were sitting on the porch watching the sunset and she turned to me and said "I think we're going to be okay" and I believed her because for the first time in as long as I could remember the evidence actually supported hope instead o
f contradicting it.