Page 27 of Pregnant Behind the Veil (Brides for Greek Brothers #3)

Michail

A helicopter soars above Central Park, the blades whipping about in their endless circular pattern and sending a cascade of noise up toward my balcony. I lift the glass of whiskey to my lips. The noise is a welcome change from the graveyard silence of my penthouse.

I glance at my watch. Six o’clock. The florist should be delivering a bouquet of red roses to her apartment now.

My fingers tighten around my glass. It’s been a week. One week since Alessandra walked away without a backward glance. One week since I went back into my mother’s house to find her still sad but strong. The trails of her tears had still been evident on her face.

But instead of finding her catatonic, she’d been standing in front of the easel, her shoulders back, her chin determined. She’d looked at me, then frowned and glanced over my shoulder.

“Where’s Alessandra?”

I told her part of the truth, that she’d decided to go back to the city and give us time to work through this.

What I didn’t mention was how much I had screwed up, how I had pushed my wife away in the blink of an eye.

All because I couldn’t take the risk she had and let myself fully trust the woman carrying my child.

The woman who had repeatedly given herself to me, letting down her own walls even as I fought to keep mine in place.

When Alessandra said she had been contemplating more for us, a future beyond that first anniversary, it felt like someone had reached into my chest and cracked it open, releasing the feelings that had been building since that first night in Santorini.

Love. I had been falling in love with Alessandra for months.

But I had been so fixated on keeping her at arm’s length I couldn’t see it.

Then, just when she was preparing to offer even more of herself, I had once again blazed right past the facts of the situation and demonized my wife without a moment’s hesitation.

Had I told her before about my mother, if I had trusted her with the truth, we could have faced everything together.

Now, less than two weeks into my marriage, I’m drinking alone.

I showed up at Alessandra’s apartment just a few hours after she left my mother’s home.

I knocked for fifteen minutes, talked through the door.

I’ve called every morning and every night.

My voicemails are short. But they’re honest. Telling her good morning and I miss her.

Sharing something that happened in my day, something that made me think of her, the baby. Wishing her good night.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve almost said, “I love you.” I want to tell her in person the first time, have her see the truth of my feelings so she doesn’t think I’m trying to manipulate her into coming back for the sake of the will or the baby.

But there’s just silence. No texts, no phone calls, not even an email.

The worst part is, anything I would have done in the past to get a woman’s attention, to apologize, would mean nothing to Alessandra. Jewelry, clothes, a luxury trip. They don’t matter.

Having my trust meant the most. Now, when I want to offer her not only my trust but my heart, she’s out of my reach.

As I wrack my brain trying to come up with something, anything that will show her how sorry I am, how much I need her in my life, a ding sounds behind me.

Hope shoots through me. I sit up and look over my shoulder.

Then groan as my brothers step out of the elevator.

Gavriil spots me in an instant and makes a beeline for the terrace door.

I slump back down in my chair as I hear the door open behind me.

“We have got to stop getting together like this.”

I rub the bridge of my nose. “I don’t disagree.”

Fingers pluck the glass from my hand.

“Hey.”

“Still got it.” Gavriil takes a sip of my whiskey. “I haven’t pickpocketed in years, but you never lose the touch. What is this? A seventy-six?”

My growl doesn’t faze him in the slightest.

“Rafe,” he calls over his shoulder, “top shelf in the booze cabinet.”

“When did you have time to go through my alcohol?”

“Right before your wedding.” Gavriil hands me back my glass. “I must say, for a lumberjack you carry quite the selection of fine alcohols and liqueurs.”

“You do realize,” Rafe drawls as he walks out onto the terrace and hands Gavriil a glass, “the drop down to the street would certainly kill you.”

Gavriil frowns. “Why would that interest me?”

“Because I think Michail is contemplating throwing you over the side.”

I raise my glass to Rafe. “It’s amazing for only spending a couple nights in each other’s company that you already know me so well.”

Gavriil’s amusement vanishes as he sits in a chair across from mine. “Your mother called.”

I roll my eyes. “Lovely.”

“She’s worried about you.”

“Mothers never stop worrying.”

Gavriil shrugs. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Neither would I,” Rafe chimes in.

I wince. When I first met my brothers, I assumed they had lived a charmed life, surrounded by the ease of wealth.

But Gavriil’s earliest years had been spent as a petty thief on the streets of Athens.

Rafe had grown up in a luxurious villa most people could only dream about, but his childhood had been more like psychological torture inflicted by the hands of our sire.

“I didn’t mean—”

“We know.” Gavriil leans back in his chair. “Your mother said she suspected something was wrong between you and Alessandra.”

Just hearing her name is painful, a sharp knife that lands somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“What happened?”

“What part of I don’t want to talk about it do you not comprehend?”

Gavriil cocks his head to one side. “As I recall, when I was going through my own issues with Juliette, you gave your advice freely.”

He’d been utterly miserable when I let myself into his Malibu beach house after hacking his security system. Swimming laps in a heated saltwater pool as if he could outpace his problems.

“You were there for me.”

My head snaps around to Rafe. I haven’t spent as much time with him.

My first impression had been of a stuck-up bastard incapable of experiencing human emotion.

But when I joined Gavriil in Greece to stage an intervention, it had been plain to see that Rafe’s attitude was rooted more in the hellish childhood he’d experienced, and that his feelings for Tessa were very real.

“That was different.”

“Where is she, Michail?”

I look over at Rafe.

“Home.”

Gavriil looks over his shoulder. “She’s here?”

“In her home,” I retort through gritted teeth. “In Queens.”

Rafe sits down in the chair next to mine, his face sober. “What happened?”

I hesitate. Then, slowly, I ease back into my chair. The root of my problem with Alessandra lies in my inability to trust. Maybe confiding in my brothers will get me nowhere.

Or maybe it will be the first step that will show Alessandra I truly want to change. To get back to those days we spent together in Santorini where I felt relaxed, free, instead of coiled tight inside a prison masking as a safety net.

“I made a mistake.” I stare down into my whiskey. “One I will regret for the rest of my life.”

“Mistakes can be rectified.”

I glare at Rafe. “And I’ve been trying to fix it.”

“How?” Gavriil asks.

“I tried stopping by her apartment to talk to her. I call every morning and every night. I send flowers.”

Rafe tilts his head to one side. “What do you say in those phone calls?”

“Maybe I should just forward you the damn voicemails,” I snap.

“That would be helpful.” Gavriil just grins when I flip him off. “Seriously, though, did you apologize?”

“Yes.”

So many times. But maybe it’s too late.

No . I will not accept defeat. If it takes the rest of my life, I will show Alessandra every way I can that I’m here. That I want to change, do better. I want to give her the support she received from her mother, the knowledge that I’m proud of her and everything she has accomplished on her own.

More than that, I want a life with her.

“Do you love her?”

I don’t even hesitate to answer Rafe’s question.

“Yes. I’ve loved her since that night in Santorini.”

Loved her and yet ran from it at every opportunity, too scared to confront that I had finally found a woman who had snuck past my defenses, who had bared herself to me, who had driven me wild not only with her passion, but with her strength and vulnerability.

“Have you told her that?” Gavriil asks.

“No.” I hold up my hand as Gavriil starts to say something smart. “I don’t want her to hear it the first time in a voicemail or through her door.”

“You need a grand gesture.”

Both Gavriil and I turn to look at Rafe, surprise etched across both our faces.

Rafe shrugs. “I’ve learned a lot.”

“We all have.” Gavriil turns back to me. “Although you have yet to share the details of your, ahem, first night with Alessandra, what made it special?”

Her . “What do you mean?”

“Something that stood out. A detail that would be important to her while showing her how you feel.”

I think back to that night, images whirling through my mind like a kaleidoscope.

Alessandra sitting at the bar, the Aegean Sea and rocky ridges of the caldera a backdrop to her incredible beauty.

That first smile that made the rest of the world fade away.

Pulling her body close even as I told her I could only offer her one night…

Inspiration strikes. There’s every chance she’ll say no. But maybe, just maybe, she’ll say yes.

I set my whiskey glass down. “If this works, I’ll buy you both bottles of Macallan.”

“The 1926?” Gavriil asks.

“The last one sold for nearly two million at auction,” Rafe comments dryly.

“She’s worth it.” I stand. “She’s worth everything.”

And I’m not going to rest until she’s back in my arms where she belongs.