Page 34 of Her Rustanov Husband (Ruthless Bullies #2)
Primary Condition
LYDIA
Contrary to Yom’s last command, I did not sleep well. Nightmares chased me throughout the night, and I woke in a bright-white room filled with bright-white light.
Seriously, did Yom actually hire an interior designer to make this bedroom look like a rich person’s insane-asylum chamber. Wait… Suddenly, I remembered.
Bully!
He never let me sleep in. For the past two years, I’d woken to his excited morning yips, not a “Mommy, get up.”
With a terrible feeling, I rushed down the hallway to his much darker room.
“Bully?” I pushed the door open. Bed made. But the room was empty, with no sign of Bully, even though he only had the clothes on his back to wear and I’d promised him the first agenda item of the following morning would be getting him at least a set of pajamas.
“Bully!” I called out again, hopefully, heading toward the bathroom, just in case he was there.
But a crisp white note on top of his dark-blue pillow caught my eye.
Two words in Yom’s block letters: Downstairs Kitchen.
Okay. I let out a breath of relief. So he was downstairs with Yom.
And probably Pesya, who I doubted would find a way to approve of an added son like she had my added weight.
I didn’t bother changing or showering. Needing to set eyes on Bully, I padded down the stairs in the same sweats I’d worn to haul animals to Gemidgee Shelter.
But the kitchen was empty. No Bully. No Pesya. Just a long island counter lined with carafes of coffee, a bowl of oranges, and an assortment of pastries that looked like they’d come out of packages, not Pesya’s mixing bowl.
“Ms. Nelson, over here.”
I turned to the kitchen nook I’d loved when I toured the house; it could hold a table big enough to seat six.
And it did, I soon discovered. Three men and two women were already sitting there, all dressed in dark suits. I immediately recognized them as the fleet of lawyers who’d explained my contract terms to me at the 90-Day Marriage meeting.
But they didn’t look nearly as friendly this morning, and only one of them was standing. Not out of respect, like last time, but to call me over.
“Ms. Nelson, good morning,” he said. “Mr. Rustanov requested that we meet with you about the updates to your marital agreement as soon as possible.”
My stomach pitched. “Where’s my son?”
“With his previously unacknowledged birth father,” one of the women answered, her lips tight with judgment.
“We thought it best to speak with you without distraction,” the man who was still standing added. He waved a hand toward the table’s only empty seat. “Please, Ms. Nelson, sit down, so we can determine our next steps in the matter of Mr. Rustanov’s son.”
I hesitated. “No, I want to see Bully now.”
The pleasant look never left his face, but his tone took on a chill. “If you truly want that, then you should sit down.”
What choice did I have?
I sat down.
All of their eyes tracked me like I was a snake in their midst. Something they might decide to kill.
“All right, good,” said the older of the two women, opening a binder. “Let’s talk about the case Mr. Rustanov could make for temporary sole legal custody pending adjudication.”
“Wait, what?” I jerked my head back. “No, he can’t do that! I read the Minnesota laws around this.” Several times, and then one more time before I reported for my 90 days, just in case anything had changed. “There’s no legal duty for the mom to notify the biological father of a pregnancy.”
“Ms. Nelson.” Her lips thinned. “This will go a lot faster if you withhold both your questions and answers until I’m done.”
So I tried to sit quietly for the next five minutes while the woman explained, in complex legalese, why he could challenge me for sole custody.
Words like custodial fitness , material misrepresentation , and willful omission got bandied about.
Oh, and they also informed me Yom would be changing Derek’s name to Dmitri.
But I had to stop her when she said best interests of the child .
“I am his mother,” I snapped at her—at all of them. “You can’t just pass him to Yom like he’s property he gets to own. It’s still in Bully’s best interests to be with me full-time.”
A man at the other end of the table cleared his throat. “Mr. Rustanov has access to the kind of support network that can easily replace a mother who exposed her child to dangerous animals?—”
“I never did that.” My hands clenched. “Bully came to work with me, yes, but we kept him safe. Always.”
The lawyer kept going as if he hadn’t heard me. “A mother who presented him with an unstable and confusing home environment by pretending to be in a lesbian partnership?—”
“I didn’t pretend anything,” I shot back. “Merry and I were co-parents, and Chris and Bully knew we were a chosen family.”
“…a chosen family who allowed the child to persist in maladaptive communication,” the lawyer continued.
“Maladaptive? What?” I asked, shaking my head.
“‘The barking and growling,” supplied the lawyer who’d told me to sit. “That’s suggestive of a broader behavioral condition.”
“Or of being five ,” I said, my voice sharpening to a point. “Kids go through phases.”
The woman with the binder didn’t look convinced. “And last, but certainly not least, you failed to notify his birth father of his existence for nearly six years before attempting to defraud Mr. Rustanov out of five million dollars for…”
She checked her notes, as if the case against me was so exhaustive she couldn’t keep track of all the details. “…the woman you were only pretending to have a personal relationship with.”
“We weren’t pretending,” I answered through gritted teeth. “Everyone just refused to believe us.”
“And this was all after you broken off your engagement to him only a couple of weeks before your wedding,” the younger lawyer pointed out.
My throat burned at all the accusations and repainting of history flying my way. “Did he tell you why?” I asked. “Did he mention that I walked in on him torturing my brother in a barn six months before the test turned positive?”
I glared all of them. “Or did he just paint me as crazy and walk away with Bully so you could do his dirty work?”
The third man, sitting on the other side of me—the only one who hadn’t talked yet—tilted his head. “Do you have any proof to back up these accusations?”
I balled my fist in my lap “My brother could tell you firsthand.”
“This would be Paul Carrington, right?” the younger woman asked. “The brother you went no-contact with six years ago?”
I blinked, unsure how to defend myself or my actions to this group of sharks in human skin, who seemed intent on making me feel as immoral and unfit as possible.
“Here’s how the case looks from our end,” the woman with the binder said, snapping it closed. “You failed to notify the birth father that he had a son… after marrying him for a negotiated payment while living with him in close quarters—arrangements you requested, by the way.”
The world spun as I saw just how big the case was against me—a woman whose every asset had just been taken away by a freak tornado.
“Please.” When I spoke again, the words were small and hushed. “Please don’t take my child. He’s five. He loves me. Whatever list of nannies you’ve come up with, they won’t replace me. I’m his mother.”
If any of them felt even a whisper of empathy, it didn’t show on their faces.
The man who’d told me I pretty much had to sit down was the first to speak. “Mr. Rustanov mentioned that you have already offered to do—quote—anything to make this omission of fatherhood up to him.”
Anything . I swallowed. The room felt like it had tilted, caught on three planes of the word: the cold winter night in Gemidgee, the hot balcony in Vegas, and this kitchen table surrounded by lawyers. But still I managed to nod, to confirm, “Yes, anything.”
The lawyer on the other side of me said, “There is one—and only one—alternative Mr. Rustanov is willing to accept to allow you to remain in this household as his wife and the mother of his child.”
“He’s… he’s willing to stay married to me?” Surprise made my voice pitch higher. The way they kept calling me Ms. Nelson instead of Mrs. Rustanov, as they had at our first contract signing, had made me think that option was off the table.
“But… I thought he hated me.”
“You’ll find Mr. Rustanov’s primary condition in here.” The woman with the binder pulled out a manila folder. “It must be executed within the original ninety days of your contract. Otherwise, our client will bring to bear every legal remedy available to ensure you do not see his son again.”
With that threat delivered, she slid the folder down the table.
Deeply aware of the five sets of eyes on me, I turned the front flap to find a document that said POSTNUPTIAL AGREEMENT at the top.
It was that club in Berlin, where Yom offered me that sex contract, all over again.
The first page was little more than a wall of black text that my dyslexia would have made hard to read on a good day.
And today was not a good day. The words turned into lines of fish, darting and doubling and swimming before my eyes.
“So, this is a postnup.” Fear clogged my throat because I sensed I wouldn’t like the answer to my next question. “What is this primary condition? What exactly does he want from me?”