Page 51 of Broken Vows (Marital Privileges #4)

“Mikhail, wait!”

After telling my mother I will be back, I take off after Mikhail. His strides are so long I have to jog to bridge the distance between us, and even then, it’s still too wide.

“It isn’t what you’re thinking. She’s not your child.”

Either not hearing me or deaf from the raging of his pulse in his ears, he continues walking.

“Can we please talk about this? It’s not what you’re thinking.”

My heart rate surges into coronary failure territory when he doesn’t head for the exit as anticipated. He enters the maternity ward at the speed of a bullet, and it catapults my panic.

I reach him as he flings open Zoya’s hospital room door. A sickening crunch sounds from the room when he slams his fist into his brother’s face. The power of his hit sends Andrik sprawling back and has him rearing up for a fight… until he realizes who the hit came from.

After wiping at the blood dribbling from his nose, Andrik tells the guard stationed outside Zoya’s room to stand down before he holds out his hands in a non-defensive manner. “Mikhail…”

Mikhail didn’t come here to talk. In a maneuver too quick for Andrik or the guard to ward off, he yanks a gun out of the guard’s holster and points it at the crinkle between his brother’s dark brows.

Zoya watches the spectacle unfold, unable to speak and somewhat contained since she is nursing Amaliya, and Andrik searches my face for answers since Mikhail’s impassive expression is unreadable.

I don’t know what he sees, but the truth settles on his face remarkably fast.

“It isn’t what you’re thinking.” Andrik’s words are calm despite the anger flaring his nostrils.

He knows he brought this situation on himself, but at the moment, his only thought is the safety of his wife and daughter.

As he moves so not even the dust of a ricocheting bullet could reach them, he says, “Wynne is not your daughter.”

Mikhail’s voice is on the opposite end of the spectrum. He sounds murderous. Villainous. “I know that.”

Andrik’s eyes shoot to me. Shock I got the situation so wrong is all over his face.

I shrug, a better defense above me. I thought he believed Wynne was his daughter.

I’ve never felt more confused.

Andrik’s eyes slowly return to Mikhail when he says, “I know that because Emerson would never hurt me like that. She would never strip the blood from my veins while standing directly in front of me, pretending to love me.” The return of the hurt, scared boy I’ve been trying to protect the past two weeks forces tears to my eyes.

“But you… my family… you would do that. You’d drain the blood from my heart if it meant you could skip the shit-fest they’d planned for you before you were born.

” He grits his teeth as anger overwhelms him.

“I was the one who saved you from that, Andrik!” His shout startles Amaliya, but he acts oblivious.

“I sat with you year after year, decade after decade, and faced countless forms of abuse, and this is how you repay me. You stripped me of the one thing I loved more than life itself. You destroyed my fucking life.”

“No—”

Andrik’s denial agitates him further. “She was there, wasn’t she? She was at the church, for me.”

He chokes on a shocked breath when Andrik nods, digging his hole further. “Yes. She was there for you.”

“What did you tell her?” More babies cry when Andrik’s silence forces Mikhail to shout. “What did you tell her!”

Andrik stares his brother in the eyes, his thighs unshaking, his jaw tight as he says with remorse, “I told our grandfather to tell her you weren’t coming.

” When his confession forces Mikhail to curl his finger around the trigger, he speaks faster.

“Because I thought it would be better to lose her for a while instead of forever. The gender scan was in her name, Mikhail. The federation would have made the same mistake as me.”

He’s telling the truth. My mother is the director of our company, and as such, doesn’t have insurance.

Back then, I was an employee with full benefits, so I booked her scan under my insurance details, as I had other medical procedures during my relationship with Mikhail.

It isn’t a hard ruse for my mother to pull off. People often mistake her for my sister.

Mikhail knows this. He’s just hurting too much right now to think things through.

Andrik keeps chipping, though. “I thought I was protecting you, Mikhail?—”

“From what?”

“This,” Andrik shouts. “The pain in your eyes. The devastation I would give anything to accept on your behalf.”

“The devastation you caused!”

Andrik nods, agreeing with him. “Because they wouldn’t have asked questions first. They would have killed her, then sought the truth.”

There’s no denying the honesty in Andrik’s tone, but Mikhail doesn’t hear it. He is too swallowed by anger, buried with grief. He is shaking furiously as years of hurt and abuse spill from him in a brutal display of violence.

He appears seconds from killing his brother.

“Mikhail…” Zoya’s plea is as painful to hear as the cocking of the guard’s gun when Mikhail unlatches the safety. “Please. I love him.”

“That isn’t enough.” I don’t recognize Mikhail’s voice or the words he speaks.

Love was always enough for him.

He said it is the one thing that can overcome any obstacle.

I learn the cause of his backflip when he says, “Because I loved her too, and he still took her from me.”

“He made a mistake,” Zoya says at the same time I deny his claim that love can’t achieve the impossible. “Love is enough.”

Mikhail’s stance remains firm, but I know he heard me. His cheek muscle twitches as he fights like hell not to crank his neck to face me.

Tears burn my eyes when I force eye contact.

I’m not wrangling a boy hell-bent on proving that he is a man worthy of affection.

I’m fighting the demons of his past, the abuse that years of love will barely touch the surface of.

I am endeavoring to break through decades of trauma with three short words. “Love is enough.”

Andrik warns me not to, but I have no reason to fear stepping into the path of a gun. Not when the man holding that gun is the love of my life.

I fill the minute gap between Mikhail and Andrik, immediately decompressing Mikhail’s compression of the trigger, and then I peer at him over the barrel of the gun. “It can overcome any obstacle.”

Tears flow when I stare into the eyes of a man I will never stop loving. He’s there, hiding behind years of pain and hurt. I just need to coerce him out of the dark.

“And if you give me the chance, I will prove that to you. I will spend every day showing you that love is the only thing you need to survive. It triumphs everything .”

I hear Andrik swallow thickly when I lower myself to my knees.

He isn’t fretful his cover is gone. It is from how Mikhail’s eyes immediately follow my fall, and how the deviation of his eyes adjusts the aim of his gun.

It is no longer pointed at Andrik’s head.

The bullet would barely graze his ear if it were to be dislodged now.

I shake my head when Andrik considers making a dive for the gun.

I’ve got this.

I’m confident I do.

A shaky breath rattles my lungs when my confidence pays dividends not even three seconds later. The gun clatters to the floor a second before Mikhail’s knees butt mine. We breathe as one when he balances his forehead against mine, and then he closes his eyes as I brush our mouths together.

“I love you, Coal,” I whisper over his lips as my relieved exhale breathes life back into his lungs. “Always have, and I always will.”