Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68937 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68937 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
The two of them were two months apart and would have kids very close in age.
Which reminded me of my own vow of never having children.
“How do you make sure that they stay safe?” I asked.
It was Nastya who answered. “You’ve met their fathers, right?”
When she put it like that…
“Cutter would literally kill anyone and everyone if it kept our child safe,” Milena said softly, her eyes meeting mine.
Something passed between us, a knowledge that we’d both suffered the unthinkable.
Honestly, we were both doing very well considering, but she seemed to be handling the kid part better than me.
And nothing against my brother, but Dima was the way scarier of the two.
I knew that Cutter wouldn’t hesitate to harm or even kill someone if he had to, but Dima just had this, I guess you could say, air about him. Like he could and would kill you even if you breathed wrong. And god help them if they breathed wrong around me.
If we had a child…whew.
“Okay,” I said. “He’d said as much…and I’d been thinking as much…but when you put it like that, I guess it makes me realize that it’s not just Dima and me that would be watching out for a child if it came down to it.”
“Are you already at that point in your relationship that you are thinking about children?” Milena asked, her eyes sparkling.
“I can’t say that what we’re doing is making any sort of sense, but I do know that he means the world to me, and I don’t see this going anywhere but in the right direction,” I admitted.
I wasn’t sure how I knew that.
I just did, down deep in my heart.
I knew that this was it for me. That he was it for me.
That…
My phone chimed, indicating an incoming message.
Dima:
Spoke too soon. This is gonna take longer than three hours. Place the order, baby girl. Shasha’s going to pick it up. He’s close.
I placed the order.
And when Shasha arrived with it, I was only slightly disappointed.
Brecken moved to take the bags from him and give him a solid kiss on the cheek.
“Can’t stay long because the babysitter we hired for the night says that one of our kids is puking.” Shasha sighed.
“Hope it’s not mine.” Maven groaned, but made no move to get up, fully trusting her brother to handle it.
Maven was the quietest of the bunch, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t participating like her sisters.
I adored them all, and I was glad that they were all so nice and welcoming.
“Oh,” I said. “I have some Zofran that you can give them.”
I hopped up from my chair and went into the bathroom where I kept my meds bag.
Even though I hated being a nurse, I did always come prepared.
I had Zofran always on hand, just in case.
There was no worse feeling than being sick and not being able to control it.
I pulled the meds out of my bag and said, “This dissolves under the tongue.”
“It’s safe for kids?” he asked.
“More than,” I said. “My good stuff that you would rub on the belly is at home. I’d suggest that over this, but it’ll still work in a pinch as long as you can get them to hold their liquid down long enough.”
He took the tablet from me and fisted it into his hand.
When I expected him to say thank you, he surprised me by going off on a tangent.
“I know that you’re a good person,” Shasha said quietly. “But Dima is broken, Keely. Don’t hurt him.”
I blinked, surprised by the words. “Like you just said, I’m a good person.”
“Good people can still do bad things to people that aren’t expecting it,” Shasha pointed out. He looked beyond me to the women in the kitchen laughing at something. “I had to pull all kinds of strings to get him out of the military and back here in one piece.”
My brows rose.
“He was one job away from losing himself,” he said honestly. “I’d like to say that he was going to be able to pull himself free, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think that he would’ve given and given until he had nothing left, then gone and died quietly by himself with none of us the wiser.”
My heart seized inside of my chest.
“I won’t hurt him, Shasha,” I promised him. “I won’t.”
Shasha turned back to me and said, “You better hope not.”
As Shasha walked away, I knew that I’d met the pakhan of the Russian Bratva right then, and not Dima’s brother.
Shasha would keep his promises, even if that meant heartache for his brother later on down the road.
But I promised myself right then that no matter what, I would not be the one to hurt Dima.
I didn’t care what I had to do to make that a reality, but I’d do it if it meant that Dima would never have to feel a void ever again.