Page 52 of Devil's Vows

“Malyshki! I missed you!” I have Irisha and then Katya both in my arms and walk them over to the sofa where I sink down with anOoof! Soon, I won’t be able to do this anymore. They are growing up too fast. “Tell meeverythingabout your day.”

I listen as they babble on, about painting and working in the garden and finding worms and bugs and pressing early fall leaves between the sheets of old phone directories Kostya found in the basement. I shoot glances at Gabriella where she’s quietly setting out the food on the table.

“Can you call Milana, please?” she asks Yuri when he hovers, clearly wanting a word with me. “And you’re staying for dinner, right?”

“I have my quarters?—”

“Stay, Yuri,” I say, wanting to hear every side of this story. In a way, this will be like the old days. Plus, I sense there are things to discuss here. Maybe he’s already hooked some intel on Randazzo, but our rule is no emails, no calls. Face to face in a secure place only.

“If you insist. I’ll get Milana,” he says with a nod and walks off, leaving the four of us alone.

I doubt Milana will join us. She’s cut me out since that morning in the driveway when Gabriella arrived.

“Let’s wash your hands, girls,” I say, nudging them to get off the sofa. We head for the sink where there is a little stair to help them reach the faucet. “It smells great. What did you make?”

Gabriella shoots me a shy smile as she helps Irisha with the soap dispenser. “Just everyday Italian fare. I had Kostya on thephone while he was shopping, so I got all the right ingredients.” Gabriella hands Irisha a clean dishcloth to dry her hands. “And then the girls had a solid two-hour nap while I did the cooking.”

“Wow.” I’ve watched those naps. She’s been settling them every afternoon at the same time, enforcing their routine. “Even Irisha?” I ask as she steps off the little stair to make space for her sister.

“Even Irisha. She had a busy morning,” Gabriella says as she strokes Irisha’s golden hair.

Her gentle touch stirs me, and I have to look away to stop myself from making the moment ours by placing my hand on top of hers and leaning in for a kiss—the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking of these past four days. Me, a thirty-seven-year-old single dad who fucked a fair share of very beautiful women before my first arranged marriage, could think of nothing else but kissing this woman as I walked into the house. As if we were husband and wife.

I let Katya rinse her hands as I roll up my sleeves to wash up. “Sounds like we need to have some wine with this meal.”

Gabriella’s eyes are on me, on my hands as she helps Katya finish up. “No.”

“No?”

“I’m not sure if Yuri told you about Milana?”

I watched most of it. Until they were in Milana’s suite where I have no cameras installed. I shake my head as my sister’s voice sounds, in tandem with Yuri’s, from the corridor. “Okay, no wine. We’ll talk later.”

“Yes.”

When my sister walks into the room with Yuri by her side, our gazes meet briefly, awkwardly, only stressing how many unsaid things anchor us miles apart. She smiles at the girls, though, if a bit weak, but the dark circles under her eyes spellout her exhaustion. At least she’s dressed in clean clothes and her hair is washed and plaited to hang down her back.

All I want is to walk over and hug her, tell her everything is going to be fine, but how do I say this to a woman who hasn’t had any agency since she landed back on American soil?

For a moment, the atmosphere is so strained, you could cut it with a knife, but then Irisha starts chatting again.

“This looks delicious, Gabriella,” I say as she dishes up small servings of penne in a tomato sauce.

“Something for the girls to start. There’s grilled chicken and veggies forsecondo, which I hope they will also like, yes, girls?”

“I see.” I glance around the table, at us sad lot who are basically starved for good food that didn’t come in a take-out container.

As we dig in, I watch around the table. If someone is going to get Milana to eat again, it’s going to be Gabriella. I don’t know how she managed to get her to be at dinner with us.

And my sister iseating. Not just nibbling and pushing food around her plate.

Gabriella is starting to look like a godsend, and I don’t believe in those. She has Irisha and Katya eating small strips of chicken that aren’t even coated in some weird breadcrumb mix that has no bread in it, so maybe I better start believing.

We finish the meal listening to the girls chatter. Gabriella makes sure to keep them talking with questions and prompts so there’s no lull in the conversation, which would only be filled by the tension that still hangs between me and Milana. Who knows what happened today after Yuri and Gabriella dragged her back to her room, but something did.

“Bath time, girls,” Gabriella announces as Milana excuses herself and stands, but in the process stacks every empty plate and walks it to the counter by the dishwasher.

I’m grateful Milana was here with us for dinner, and I’m not ready to let her go, wanting to speed up getting back to thevaguely normal family life we had before Darya’s death, before the Pakhan’sillness…before Dimitri.