Chapter 176 176

Chapter 176 176
ISAAK

TWO MONTHS LATER

“Nikki!”

The puppy just barks happily and keeps running.

“She runs fast for a chubby little bugger,” I sigh.

Camila slaps my arm. “Hey!”

I laugh. “Well, look at her. You’re feeding her too much.”

“She’s got a healthy appetite!”

“You mean you and Jo spoil her.”

She gives me a guilty look. “Maybe a little.”

“A lot.”

Camila sighs. “It’s been good for Jo to have a distraction. Especially after…”

She trails off as though saying the words out loud will be too painful for me. She’s been treading on eggshells about Mama’s death.

I think she’s worried that something might trigger me belatedly. I can understand why she thinks that. For someone as emotive as Camila, expressing grief is natural. And healthy.

For me, it’s… completely the opposite.

Even when I feel it, it’s a dark hole deep inside of me. It’s not buried, just… controlled.

“You can say her name, you know,” I say. “I’m not going to start weeping.”

She gives me a curious little side glance. “I know it must be painful for you.”

“The damn dog is named after her, Camila,” I point out. “I’m fine.”

Naming the dog “Nikki” after my mother had been Jo’s idea, of course. She had taken the death the hardest of all of us. Understandably so.

The dog was step one on the road to finding peace with everything we went through together.

Step two was telling her who I really am.

Step three was moving all her things from Bree’s place to here.

“Mommy!” she yells. “Papa! Come on!”

She’d started calling me Papa almost immediately after we’d sat her down and had the conversation with her. She’d looked between us silently. And for a long time, I thought she was disappointed.

Then she’s hugged us both. And that was that.

To be honest, it was a little anti-climactic. I was prepared for hysterics. Instead, I got what she’s given every hardship in her young life: a smile and acceptance.

She has strength that I can only begin to guess at.

Which is not to say that it’s all sunshine and rainbows. She’s suffered in ways we might not appreciate for a long time. As her parents, I know Camila and I are not going to get a free pass. The questions will come when Jo is old enough to think of them.

But for now, we get to enjoy this. Family. Being together. Simple as that.

“You never talk about her,” Camila says, as she slips her hand through my arm.

“Because there’s nothing to say.”

“Don’t you miss her?”

“Sometimes.”

I’m not sure if there’s a whole lot of truth in that statement, but I know it’s the answer that Camila expects to hear. It’s not that I didn’t love my mother.

I just didn’t know her. Not truly.

So the love I felt for her was… detached. Removed. It felt more like a biological responsibility than a conscious choice.

I’m a cold bastard, in large part due to the cold bastard who raised me. But I’ve evolved enough to know that that’s not what I want for my children.

I can break a cycle that once threatened to consume me.

“I miss our conversations,” Camila admits. “She let me in, you know?”

I smile. “I’m glad you got to have a relationship with her before she went.”

Svetlana’s bullet had pierced Mama’s spine and paralyzed her. We’d rushed her to the nearest hospital, but by the time we got there, she slipped into a coma.

She’d lingered unconscious for a few days before finally passing on.

I felt it once that day—the sharp sting of loss and the gnawing regret that made me feel guilty for not doing enough to understand the woman who made me.

But in the moments before her death, she looked so damn peaceful that I couldn’t help feeling as though she’d been waiting to go for a very long time. Maybe she’d even been longing for it.

She’d unburdened herself of her secrets. It was time to leave then. It was all okay.

She left behind a bit of a mess, to say the least. Bogdan and I are still processing the bombs she dropped that day. But in the grand scheme of things, none of it changed a damn thing.

Not within the Bratva.

Not for my men.

And certainly not between Bogdan and me.

We don’t recognize the term “half-brothers.” We have never been that and we never will be. He is and will always be my brother.

Cami and I catch up to Jo, who’s sitting by the pond with Nikki flopping around on her lap. Jo giggles happily and I watch as Camila’s eyes go soft with tenderness.

“Sweetheart,” she says, “we should go back inside now. Aunt Bree will be here in a few minutes to pick you up.”

This is the first weekend she’s going to be spending with her aunt and uncle since she came to live here. She’s been excited about it all week.

“Okay!” Jo chirps, getting to her feet.

The puppy runs towards us and starts nipping at my ankles before performing the same routine on Camila.

“This dog needs to calm down.”

“Papa!”

I can’t say a fucking thing about the dog. Not one word of discipline. If Jo doesn’t jump down my throat, Camila does. Honestly, some days, this little shit gets more attention than I do. She’s gonna be a terror when she gets big enough to start doing real damage.

Laughing, Camila scoops up the chubby golden retriever and cradles her as we make our way back to the house. Jo skips on ahead, but when Nikki starts to whine, Cami begrudgingly sets her down.

The dog immediately rockets off after Jo, tail wagging so hard I wonder if she’s about to take flight.

“Those two are going to be inseparable,” Cami sighs.

“Going to be?” I ask.

She smiles. “I think it’s a good thing. It’s not like she has siblings to play with.” I give her a look and she blushes immediately. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Maybe you should.”

The blush gets deeper, but she says nothing. Lucky for her, Bree arrives then, with both boys in tow.

The older one is still a little shy around me—awestruck, I think—but the younger one worships the ground I walk on.

“Can’t we stay a little bit, Mom?” Sam asks. “I want Uncle Isaak to show me his car collection.”

Bree rolls her eyes. “You’ve already seen it.”

“Not the whole garage!”

“Another day,” Bree insists.

I ruffle the kid’s hair. I’ve taken a liking to both her boys. They’re very different personalities, and in some ways, they kind of remind me of Bogdan and myself.

You know, if we were normal kids who were raised by normal parents.

“Aw, come on, Mom!” Sam complains.

But Bree steadfastly ushers all the kids and the puppy into the backseat. “Have a romantic weekend, you two,” she says, giving me a wink as she gets into the front seat.

“I’ll call tonight, sweetheart,” Camila promises. “I’ll call before you go to bed.”

“Bye, Mommy!” Jo waves from the back seat. “Bye, Papa!”

The moment the gates close behind them, I wrap my arm around Camila’s waist and steer her back into the house. “Finally,” I mutter, “some peace.”

“Stop,” Camila says, giving me the evil eye. “You’re going to miss her.”

“Of course,” I admit freely. “But now it’s our time to do whatever we want.”

“Are you referring to the conversation we’ve been putting off for almost two months now?” she asks bluntly.

“Which conversation is that?”

She rolls her eyes. “The one where you ask me what my plans are?”

I take her hand and pull her towards me. Her body hits mine, and I adjust a little so she can feel my erection. “What are your plans, Camila?”

She glances over my shoulder, but it’s mostly just so she can avoid looking at me.