Page 168 of Nine Months to Love

“The baby.” She shakes her head. “I never thought I’d see the day. Stefan Safonov, playing house with a woman he barely knows.”

“I know her better than I ever knew you.”

It lands like the insult it was meant to be. Mikayla flinches, then recovers. “You never wanted to know me,” she says quietly. “You wanted a blunt object to do your dirty work. And I was happy to be that for you. Until I realized you’d never see me as anything more.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? When’s the last time you asked me about my life? My dreams? WhatIwanted?”

I open my mouth to respond, but at first, nothing comes out. Because she’s right. I never asked. I never cared.

“I gave you freedom. What more could you want?”

“No, Stefan. You gave me a new master. And I was so desperate, so broken, that I convinced myself it was freedom.” She walks back to the bed and sits down. “You know, for a while, I forgot my oath to your mother. I stopped answering her calls. I turned my back on her and pledged myself to you. Really, truly pledged myself. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to.”

“So what changed?”

She looks up at me, and for the first time since I walked in, I see real emotion in her eyes.

“You chose the other one instead,” she says. “The perfect doctor with her perfect life and her perfect morals. You looked at her like she was the sun. Like she was everything you’d been waiting for. What did that make me, Stefan?”

“You were?—”

“I was nothing!” she screams, interrupting me. “I was nothing to you. And once I saw that, I couldn’t see anything else.”

I feel my hands curl into fists. “So you went back to my mother.”

“I went back to the only person who ever saw me as more than a tool.”

“She doesn’t see you at all, Mikayla. She sees a pawn. Just like your sister.”

“At least she needed me.”

“I needed you, too.”

“No. You needed someone, anyone. It didn’t have to be me.”

I want to argue. To tell her she’s wrong. But the truth is, I don’t know if she is. My whole life, I’ve seen the world in terms of what is useful to me and what is not. Mikayla belonged to the former category for a long time. Now that she doesn’t anymore, I’m not quite sure what to make of her.

I turn toward the door.

“Wait,” Mikayla says. “You promised! A walk. Fresh air.”

I stop with my hand on the doorknob. “You lied to me,” I say without turning around. “For years. You put my family in danger. You almost got Babushka killed. Well… I lied, too.”

I pull the door open and step into the hallway. Behind me, Mikayla screams. “You bastard! You promised! Stefan!”

I close the door and lock it. Her screams echo down the corridor, but I don’t look back. The guards straighten as I walk past. “Keep her secure,” I order. “No one goes in or out without my permission.”

“Yes, boss.”

I take the stairs two at a time, my chest tight, my hands shaking. By the time I reach the main floor, I can still hear her screaming. Faint, but there.

Taras is waiting in the foyer. He takes one look at my face and asks, “That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Did you get what you needed?”