Page 12 of Nine Months to Love

“Did you decide?” he asks.

“Have Mikayla moved to one of the guest suites. Give her decent food, fresh clothes, and medical attention if she needs it.”

His eyebrows rise. “Going soft?”

“She’s more likely to break if she thinks there’s hope. If she believes I might forgive her, might even want her, she’ll tell us everything.”

“And you can sell that? After what she did?”

I think of Olivia, somewhere out there, afraid and alone with my mother’s poison dripping in her ears. “I can sell anything if it brings Olivia home.”

Taras studies me for a long moment. “Your father would be proud.”

“No,” I correct him. “My father would be fucking horrified. But he’d understand.”

“What’s the difference?”

I pour myself a vodka. “My father loved too much and it killed him. I’m choosing to love just enough to keep everyone alive.”

“That’s a dangerous game, brother.”

“It’s the only game there is when my mother’s involved.” I down the vodka in one burning swallow. “She wrote the rules. Now, I have to play by them.”

“What if Mikayla doesn’t believe you?”

“Then I’ll make her believe. I’ll become whatever I need to become.” I set down the empty glass and taste the stinging liquoron my lips. “My mother thinks she knows me, thinks I’m still that sixteen-year-old boy. But she’s wrong. That boy died with his father. What’s left is something else. Something she created but can’t control.”

“Something dangerous.”

“Something very fucking dangerous,” I agree. I meet his eyes. “Have Mikayla cleaned up and brought to the Blue Suite in an hour. And Taras? Make sure she knows I asked about her injuries. That I was... concerned.”

He nods and leaves. Alone, I stare out at the city waking up below. Somewhere out there, Olivia is probably wondering if I’m looking for her. If I care. If anything between us was real.

Everything was real,I want to tell her.Everything except the man I’m about to become.

But that’s the thing about truth: sometimes, you have to swaddle it in lies to keep it alive. My mother taught me that, though she never meant to.

I pull out my phone and scroll to a photo of Olivia, taken that morning on the yacht when she didn’t know I was watching. She’s laughing at something, hand resting on her stomach in that unconscious way pregnant women do, even before they’re showing.

“I’m coming for you,lisichka,” I tell the photo. “Both of you. And I’ll become whoever I need to become to bring you home.”

5

STEFAN

When I step into the Blue Suite, Mikayla is sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing fresh clothes—a simple black sweater and jeans that make her look younger, more vulnerable than her usual head-to-toe black. The bruises on her face have darkened to purple-green, and there’s a cut on her lip I don’t remember putting there.

“You look better,” I say, closing the door behind me.

She snorts. “Better than what? Roadkill?”

“People who have betrayed me generally look worse.” I move to the window, careful to keep distance between us. Outside, Boston continues its morning routine, oblivious to the war being waged in its shadows. “I’m glad the clothes fit.”

“Is this supposed to be some good cop routine? Because we both know you don’t have a good cop setting, Stefan.”

I turn to face her. “No routine. I wouldn’t disrespect your intelligence like. I’m just... I guess you’d call it remembering. Reminiscing, maybe.”

“Reminiscing about what?”