Chapter 170

Wren looks around me at Bee, who’s typing frantically away on her laptop. She pauses only long enough to glance in our direction. “Yup—sorry, hon. Something popped up last minute and I gotta handle it. I’ll be there next time, okay?”

She doesn’t wait for Wren to reply. She goes right back to typing, giving Wren no way out. I’m pretty sure I can see her grinning like a hyena in the reflection of her computer screen.

“Fine,” she sighs. “I guess you could take us just this one time.”

“Excellent. Want to feed him by the window?”

She eyes the armchair suspiciously, as if I have the damn thing booby-trapped or something. “I’ll feed him downstairs in the nursery. If you come get him in twenty minutes, I can have my shower and we’ll leave.”

Mission accomplished, I happily hand over Mischa to his stony-faced mother, who leaves without a goodbye. Once she’s gone, Bee drops the working too hard for conversation act, leaps to her feet, and applauds wildly.

“Now, that’s what I’m talking about!” she cheers. “It’s about time you started getting creative.”

“She’ll be pissed at you for bailing on her.”

Bee shrugs. “She can’t be too pissed at me. I’m still recovering from my very recent death.”

“How long do you think you can get away with milking that excuse?”

“I’ll let you know when it runs out. Now, go. This is the first time you’ve got her all to yourself in weeks. Make the best of it. I can’t put this family together single-handedly, you know. God knows I’m trying.”

Snorting, I head to my room for a quick change, because as it happens, Wren’s not the only one Mischa likes to pee on. Then I head down to the lower penthouse to wait with our son while Wren gets ready.

The flash of skin as she readjusts her nursing bra is enough all on its own to make me rock-hard. “I’ll just be ten minutes or so,” she says, a faint blush tainting her cheeks.

God, how I’ve missed that.

It takes the entirety of her shower before my erection deigns to come down. And then she walks out of her bedroom and I’m right back to where I started.

“My God,” I breathe. “You look incredible.”

She’s wearing a soft floral dress that seems to move even when she’s standing still, pink fabric fluttering in some invisible breeze. Her hair is a loose tumble over one bare shoulder, thick and luxurious enough that I’d pay dearly to wind my fingers through it.

“Oh. Thanks,” she mumbles. It’s a totally different reaction from her first one upstairs. And it makes me wonder… Did she dress for me?

“All set?”

Wren nods. “Just gotta grab Mischa’s baby bag⁠—”

She dips down to get it, but I beat her to the punch while balancing Mischa in the crook of my right arm. “I’ve got it.”

She straightens up self-consciously and nods. “Okay, I guess we can leave then.”

She makes a point of not looking my way at all as we make our way downstairs to the Rolls Royce purring on the curb. After I’ve strapped Mischa into his car seat, she gets into the back with him.

I look at her in the rearview mirror as we pull away. “Wren⁠—”

“I don’t want to talk, Dmitri,” she announces firmly.

“You don’t have to. I’m asking you to listen.” I sigh and adjust my grip on the steering wheel. My free leg is pistoning up and down with unspent nerves. “I know I have no right to ask you for anything, but I’m a selfish, arrogant bastard, so I’m going to do it anyway. For the sake of our family.”

Ripping her eyes from mine, she redirects them out of the window. Her silhouette alone is stunning. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that she is my wife and that that itself is a miracle I have yet to process.

“Fine,” she grunts. “Be my guest.”

I clear my throat. “I know this sounds like bullshit now, but I was going to tell you about Bee. I had every intention of doing it—and then I came to our room and your nose blew up and I had to rush you to the hospital.”

“Not good enough, Dmitri.” Her gaze veers slowly back to mine in the rearview. “You didn’t want to tell me. You were looking for excuses not to.”

“You’re right. I didn’t want to⁠—”

“Why?” she blurts out. “Why the hell not?”

“Because, in my own way, I was genuinely trying to protect you. I was just doing it the same way I had always tried to protect Elena: by keeping you separate from the Bratva. By keeping you removed from the gore of it all. I figured, when I’d won the war and Bee could move around freely again, I would tell you.”

She bites her bottom lip. “You didn’t tell Elena anything that happened in the Bratva?”

“Nothing. And she preferred it that way. I guess I just took it for granted that you felt the same.”

“You bet your ass I don’t,” she snaps, placing a protective hand over Mischa as we turn a corner. I wonder if she even realizes she’s doing it or if that need to protect her loved ones just flows from her without a second thought. “The whole point in being married is that we share everything with each other, Dmitri.”

“I know⁠—”

“It’s what you promised me when we got married.”

“I know.”

“Why promise something you had no intention of keeping?”

“Because I was going to tell you the truth eventually,” I assure her. “I just didn’t want to do it then, while you were so pregnant and dealing with so much.”

She gnashes her teeth in frustration. “The ‘so much’ that I was dealing with also included mourning one of my best friends. A friend who was very much alive and living right on top of us.”

“I know it doesn’t make any sense now⁠—”

“No, it doesn’t. It sounds like you were just trying to keep me out of your life.”

“Moya devushka, I married you because I wanted you in my life. Forever.”

“Why?”

I blink, confused. “Why what?”

“Why did you even ask me to marry you?” she explains. “Was it some twisted attempt at controlling me? At making sure I could never leave you?”

I hate that she’s even gone there. That she’s questioning our marriage now, too. But I’m the one who’s brought this on by lying to her in the first place. I have only myself to blame.

“No, it was not.”

“Then why?” she presses softly. “You could have proposed, yes. But we didn’t need to get married immediately. We could have waited until the baby was born. Until I knew about Bee. But you insisted it all happened right away.”

At that, I stop the car in the middle of traffic. Horns blare as cars swerve around me, furious, but I don’t give a fuck. This needs a moment.