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Chapter Fifteen

DEMYAN

My head hurts.

I think I slept for about forty minutes and every one of those minutes managed to be filled with dreams.

I can’t shake the idea I’m being unreasonable. Fuck that, I know I am. I just can’t stop. She took my son, denied me of the chance to be a part of his life and I don’t know how to reconcile that. I don’t fucking know how to begin to forgive her.

Erin’s still up there.

She’s been crying, yelling, and Olga snuck her a sandwich. I’ll let it slide. I’m not a monster. I’m not going to starve her, but I also don’t want someone like Erin winning the staff. I want them, a little afraid of what I might do if they’re too nice to her.

I fell under her spell. She’s feisty and strong, innocent and sweet, and under all that? Guilty as the fucking devil.

By the time seven a.m. rolls around, I close my computer and stalk out of my study, down the hall, and into the dining room where Alina, Olga, and Magda are fussing over a screaming Sasha .

Who the fuck built tiny kids with such big lungs?

I’m not sure why he’s crying again. He had a good sleep, and I got a text from Ilya that he’ll be here at eight with all the things needed for Sasha. Already, workmen are turning the bedroom near mine, my hated childhood room, into a new, brightly painted room of his own for Sasha.

We don’t have the furniture, that’s coming, but the paint is a bright lemon yellow and I was flicking through motifs in between work, things we could put on the walls for him to make it more homelike when his one child band of noise destroyed my morning.

Sasha sees me, and his bright-pink cheeks wobble as he lets out a fresh round of tears and cries for his mama. He shrinks back, pressing into Magda.

I just look at her, and Olga scurries off, but Magda strokes his head. “Sir,” she says in Russian. “The boy wants his mother.”

“He’ll get over it. I’ll have the usual for breakfast. Alina?”

My sister shakes her head, but I ignore it.

“Alina will have the same.”

Magda has balls. She’s known me since I can remember and there are times where she’ll walk right up to insolence. This, it seems, is one. “And the boy?”

“He’s fussing, Demyan.” Alina wrings her hands. “We’ve tried everything. Even cereal. Maybe we should get some chocolate puffs?—”

“The boy will have milk, orange juice, and toast.”

There’s an actual moment I think Magda’s going to defy me, but she nods and ruffles Sasha’s hair before bustling off.

He’s in some kind of booster seat. The fuck knows where it came from as Ilya isn’t back yet, but I’m betting someone dragged something in from home. I really don’t care, as long as he has a seat.

I sit and pour a touch of milk into my coffee that appears next to my print paper. My tablet’s there, too. I like the feel of print, but today I use the tablet so I can keep an eye on the fussy child.

“Here you go,” Magda says, bringing out the bacon, eggs, and toast. There’s some for Sasha, too, but as I eat, he turns his nose up at everything offered to him by Magda.

He doesn’t want the boiled egg. He doesn’t want the bacon. Or the juice. Or the milk, and Sasha makes it known, turning his head and pressing his lips together whenever food comes near him.

“Noooo,” he cries. “I want Mama, I want Mama!”

“She’s not here,” I snap.

And he cries harder.

Magda sends me a narrow-eyed look but leaves, and Alina sighs. She gets up to try to comfort him.

I want to do that, but even looking like I’m going to move closer sends him into hysterics and screaming for his fucking mother.

“Eat your damn toast and quit crying, Sasha,” I say, “or you’ll go hungry.”

He lets out a high-pitched wail and starts to thrash around as he cries, and Alina gathers him to calm him, but the child’s just in his own world of tears and screams.

“I mean it, Sasha. Eat or you’ll have that served for dinner and lunch and tomorrow’s breakfast until you do.”

“Demyan.” The quiet condemnation in Alina’s soft voice irks me, and it cuts deep. Her eyes are puffy and I’m pretty sure she’s been giving Sasha a run for his money on the crying game, but unlike him, her tears are warranted.

“Leave it,” I say, guilt biting at me. “He needs to learn.”

“He’s only two, Demyan. He’s just a little kid, and he doesn’t understand what’s going on. He’s in a big, strange place, and his mother’s gone. He’s scared.”

I glare at her. Yeah, I’m fucking aware of that, but am I meant to let this woman take my child again? Am I meant to let her get away with what she did? This boy hates me because of her, and it rips my fucking heart from my chest. And that’s on her.

He would know me if I’d been there from the beginning, and he’d have the world. I can give him the world. But…

“She did this, Alina.”

My sister’s quiet a long time, and she tries to offer Sasha a toast soldier, but he shakes his head and utters a watery, “Mama.”

“Demyan…” She pauses, and I try to quell the rising anger. Not at my sister or the boy who both break my heart and make it want to burst, but at the woman who robbed me of him for two fucking years. “Demyan, I get it. Your anger and your pain. But your reaction and punishment with Erin is…”

“Unwarranted?”

She sighs. “No, I get it, but as warranted and justified as you might be, can’t you see how unfair this is to Sasha? He’s two. He’s clearly terrified. He doesn’t know us.”

My hand clenches hard on the table.

“Right or wrong, we’re strangers and the only reason he reacts to the women is we’re the closest he has to his mom right now.”

“He’ll—”

“What? Get over it?” Alina shakes her head. “I’m barely hanging on but even I see the wrongness. You’re not unreasonable. You’re not…” She swallows, looks at my son, then at me. “He clearly needs his mom and you’re going to do long-term damage by keeping them apart. I know you know that.”

Her words are sharp, poisoned barbs and they hit deep. The anger in me is swirling, looking for an out and I can’t lash out at Alina. But she also doesn’t get to speak to me like that.

“Mind your own fucking business, Alina. How I handle Erin and my son is my decision, my choice. No one else’s. When you have kids, you can make decisions for them.”

The silence is damning and the expression in her eyes, like I punched her, is devastating.

She pushes back her chair. “That’s never happening, is it?”

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I lashed out, Angel. I didn’t mean that. I’m just?—”

“No, Demyan. No.” And she utters a sob, turns, and runs out.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. When did I turn into this monster? I’m exactly the failure that my father saw.

Only a monster demands a small child eat or go hungry.

And only a monster tells the sister he loves insensitive shit about having kids.

Her fucking fiancé’s dead. The man she planned to spend her life with was excited about starting a family with, whom she loved with her whole heart is gone, and then I go say fucked-up shit to her?

“Olga.” The maid isn’t here. I raise my voice some more and she comes running. “Get him to eat his breakfast and keep an eye on him.”

I take off after Alina.

She’s in her room, crying like she’s Sasha’s other half, that inconsolable note I’m fast learning is there, in her voice.

I sit on the bed and put a hand on her back, her body so fragile as it shakes. “Angel, I’m sorry. I’m an asshole and I was way out of line.”

She sniffs and turns. “It’s not even that.

It’s… it’s everything.” Her gaze meets mine and my heart breaks for her all over again.

“How do I move forward without him? I feel like he just stepped out, even though I know he’s gone.

And I expect him to just walk in. Why Demyan?

Why Max? He was so good. How did this even happen? ”

And she dissolves once more.

I’m stricken. In Russian, I say soothing things, sweet things, all the lies and fairy tales I can think of and she just sobs.

What the hell am I even meant to do? Find the guilty party and make them and theirs suffer, sure. But it’s not going to help Alina. It won’t bring Max back.

Shit. I try to think of something else, but it all sounds fake, wrong, and finally I do the thing I don’t want.

“Alina, what about funeral arrangements?”

She moans and gives a shuddering breath. “His mom’s arranged a small service, immediate family only.”

“All his friends should?—”

“M-max wouldn’t want big; he wouldn’t even what this. I know he’d want a party to celebrate, so people could cheer each other up, but…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know if I could ever face that. Not yet, not for a while.”

I search for the right words, but they don’t exist, so I settle. “If there’s anything you need, I’m here for you, okay?”

“The only thing you can do that I need,” she whispers, “is to punish the animals who did this.”

I latch on to that, something I’m working on anyway. “I can do that.”

“I… I’m going to try and sleep, okay? And be nice to Erin. She lost Max, too.”

Oh, I know that, but it doesn’t change a thing. But I nod and make my way back downstairs.

It’s still a war zone down here and Sasha’s winning. I admire his tenacity, even if it drives me fucking insane. He’s a stubborn child. But right now, I need him to fucking eat and he’s still refusing.

“We made more toast, but he refused. And no one wants cold egg and bacon,” Olga says.

I bite my tongue as I go in the kitchen.

There’s got to be something in here. I throw open the cupboard, but I eat clean and I tend not to have much in the way of processed food.

And somehow, the high protein granola mix Magda makes is not going to be something he likes, but I reach for the container and pull off the lid, turning and almost running into Olga and Sasha.