Page 31 of Her Rustanov Husband (Ruthless Bullies #2)

What the Hell?

LYDIA

Six Years Ago

“I’m sorry for calling so early in the morning, but I didn’t know who else to call… how else to get away.”

“It’s okay, Lydia. What’s going on?”

That August morning, before the sun had even broken over the horizon, I called Tasha on the very edge of hyperventilating. It was all catching up to me and flashing through my mind like strobe lights.

Paul hanging from chains in the barn…

Yom’s beautiful, sharply planed face cast in harsh shadows. “Take dick, so I can put it in jar as I torture him to death.”

The realization… that Paul hadn’t skipped the engagement party. He’d been snatched. Yom had been slow-murdering him all this time….

I am only promising you not to kill your brother because you are little girl who must be told bedtime story.

My ADHD Superpower of defaulting to my calmest, surest general mode during a crisis had worn off.

And it was all I could do not to burst into tears as soon as I explained to Tasha what had happened.

To my relief, after I was done, Tasha’s voice came back warm and sympathetic. “Okay, honey. We’re on our way to get you. But first I need to ask—are you pregnant?”

“No!” I answered.

“Because if you’re pregnant, there’s not a whole lot we can do for you. Rustanovs go to the next level of insane when a baby’s involved.”

“I’m definitely not pregnant,” I assured her, terrified she wouldn’t believe me. “I promise you I’m not.”

Six years later, Thanksgiving Day

“Everybody, I would like you to meet my son, Dmitri Rustanov.”

I stood in the open archway of the sunken den in the Orono mansion we’d picked out together six years ago.

Yom’s hand was wrapped around mine. Tight.

His other hand was on Bully’s shoulder, holding his son in place as he was presented to his notorious family.

And the Nakamuras.

I could feel Tasha’s eyes on me. She had to be so confused—and even more pissed. I didn’t dare look at her as Yom spoke.

His announcement was met with a stunned silence. Apparently, even the Rustanovs—a family littered with secret babies—didn’t have this on their Thanksgiving bingo card.

A low growl broke the silence. Then came my son’s fierce little voice. “My name’s not Dmitri. It’s Bully!”

I winced. Actually, his name was Derek. But he was only five—and not the kind of kid his pre-k teacher could convince to write out anything but his preferred nickname in both shaky pen and macaroni.

“His name is Dmitri,” Yom corrected without missing a beat. He gave the offended little boy’s ink-black curls an indulgent ruffle. “But he prefers to be called Bully. He also likes to growl and bark. Same as a dog. So do not upset him unless you want him to bite you.”

Laughter erupted, dissolving the tension.

Then I no longer had to pretend I didn’t see Tasha staring straight at me because the Rustanovs converged, pushing past and blocking my sight of the stunned Nakamura family as they rushed to meet the newest no-longer-secret baby.

“Why does this keep happening to you other Rustanovs?” Nikolai teased Yom after hugging me. “My Sam never hid our baby,” he declared.

His wife rolled her eyes. “That’s because you tracked me down and tried to make me take a pregnancy test in front of you,” she said, her usually sweet and gentle tone going tart with the memory. “I never even got the chance to think about keeping Lex a secret.”

“Exactly,” Nikolai said with unrepentant pride. He curved an arm around Sam’s neck and pressed a fond kiss to her temple. “This is because I am so much smarter than other Rustanovs. You are getting best one.”

That declared, he bent down to say to Bully, “Hey, you like to bark and growl. Show me what you got?”

Bully—who had never, not even once, ever been asked to bark and growl—happily complied. And Nikolai even more happily joined in until they were both laughing uncontrollably.

“Tell you what, after dinner all of us will go out with Ivan and his three boys to howl at the Thanksgiving moon. Like werewolves.”

Bully squinted his eyes in the same way Yom did when something particularly silly happened in one of the anime series I used to watch in college. “There’s no such thing as werewolves.”

“I do not know if this is true,” Nikolai answered with a Rustanov sneer.

“I think you are wanting to ask your Uncle Ivan about this. He has… stories. And there is rumor that he was secretly turned but never told us. Perhaps we will find out tonight when we all howl at the full Thanksgiving moon. Maybe he will bite you!”

Bully looked up to Yom with a mix of abject terror and complete anticipation in his eyes. “Can I go, Papa?”

My heart squeezed at how easily he’d adopted calling Yom that.

And Yom somehow knew exactly how to answer. He pulled Bully up into his arms and said, “Of course. But I will come with you to make sure Ivan and his boys keep their sharp teeth to themselves. Unless you want to be bitten.”

Bully thought about it, then quickly shook his head. “No, thank you,” he answered in the same polite tone I would have.

The only thing was, until that moment, I had no idea Bully even knew how to be polite—only lectured about it by Merry and me.

As more family members surged forward to make teasing remarks at our expense, I couldn’t help noticing how accepting they were of Bully—not just his status but also his odd personality.

To be honest, in Gemidgee his behavior had made him “that weird kid.” We’d had more than one conversation that started with me begging, “Bully, please, can we at least try to fit in—or at least not bite?”

But here at this Thanksgiving, his double habit of barking and growling was not just tolerated—it was mirrored back with affection.

“When I was boy, I used to walk on all fours like my Siberian tiger ancestors,” Bair declared proudly. “I can still do it. Even with kickboxer knees! I’ll show you when we go outside to howl at the moon!”

Meanwhile, his wife, Sirena, muttered something under her breath about being out three hundred thousand dollars.

But even her gorgeous daughter, Chrysanthemum—who looked like a mermaid who’d decided to grace us with her Thanksgiving presence on land—couldn’t resist crouching to let out a few perfectly pitched yelps with Bully.

And so it went. Lots of laughing. Lots of “hey, I was a weird kid, too!” stories. Then a huge Thanksgiving dinner filled with American staples from a catering company along with Pesya’s greatest-hit Russian comfort dishes.

Halfway through, VP Eva and Second Gentleman Alexei even joined us from her D.C. office via a video call projected on the gigantic dining room’s back wall, with their three progeny waving in the background.

Before they got back to their White House duties, Alexei lifted a glass to toast “the new happy family—though my wife still holds the record for the longest baby secret kept!”

Everyone laughed. Well, mostly everyone.

Yom, sitting at the head of a ridiculously long table, with Bully on his left and me on his right, simply stared back at the Second Family as everyone else laughed.

“Thank you for joining us today, Uncle Alexei,” he said before motioning to Stepan to end the call.

I didn’t quite know where to put my eyes; they bounced before snagging on Tasha’s suspicious stare all the way at the other end of the table.

Ping! Ping! Ping!

Three measured pings and then a steady buzz pulled my eyes to the medical-grade GoNoTo watch Havermore Institute had issued me just days after I moved into the mansion.

I leaned over to whisper, “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Of course…” He cupped the back of my neck and drew me closer, pressing an outwardly sweet kiss to my temple. “Be quick. Dessert will be served soon.”

“Awww, remember when we used to be like that?” Sola, Ivan’s ethnically ambiguous wife, asked her husband as I headed to the dining room’s glass-door entrance, which sat to the left of the mansion’s staircase.

“I still miss you whenever you leave the room,” Ivan assured her, his deep voice gravelly with affection. “I am sorry for not saying it anymore as much as I should.”

More aws filled the dining room as I closed the glass door behind me and took what felt like my first real breath of the evening before heading up the stairs.

You can do this… you can do this… just a few more hours.

After entering the bedroom I’d been given—a gorgeous suite nearly the same size as the entire North Loop apartment—I headed straight to the bathroom.

There I took my temperature, peed on a stick, and scanned the LH strip into a special phone attachment that read directly into the Havermore app. Then I clipped a cordless pulse oximeter onto my finger while the GoNoTo watch synced.

On the Havermore app, a scanning circle filled while words flashed across the screen…

Recording… Skin Temperature… Resting Heart Rate… Heart Rate Variability… and a few other measurements I didn’t quite understand.

Until a screen asked: Cervical Mucus?

I tapped a “3” into the app, based on the slip of my toilet-paper wipe after I peed.

One more phone attachment to go. For the fifth night in a row, I plugged in the pocket scope and pressed it to my tongue until the app said: Ferning—photographed and uploaded!

The app rained happy faces.

All done! Thank you, Lydia R. Please stay close to your phone for final results.

All done. I slipped my phone back into one of the dress’s super-cutesy front pockets, then washed my hands again… carefully avoiding looking at myself in the mirror. Or at the wedding ring on my trembling hands.

One more deep breath. One more reminder: This is the last time.

“You can do this,” I whispered as I dried my hands, then finally opened the door…

…to find Tasha waiting for me in the bedroom with her arms crossed over her ample breasts.

“What the hell?” she demanded. “Why did you lie to me?”