Page 69 of Marrying the Pakhan

“Take whatever time you need.”

“I need to check on Ginger,” she says, standing before I can respond, needing motion more than anything else right now.

She leaves the kitchen without another word.

32

HARPER

Fury and terror don’t usually occupy the same body well. Tonight, they’re sharing mine without any apparent conflict, taking turns, sometimes arriving at once.

I keep seeing the parking lot. The man’s hand closing around my arm. Ginger’s face, frozen for that one terrible second before she ran. I keep seeing it, and then I keep seeing Viktor’s face across the kitchen table telling me he’s known, in some form, for months, and the two images tangle together until I can’t tell anymore which one is making my hands shake harder.

Ginger’s door is cracked open when I push it the rest of the way.

She’s asleep, curled small under her blankets, one arm flung over the edge of the mattress the way she sleeps most nights, utterly unaware that her own grandfather spent eleven years hiding from a war he started, unaware that today a stranger nearly succeeded in taking her because of a family history she has no idea she’s connected to.

I sit on the edge of her bed and watch her breathe for longer than I probably need to, memorizing the rhythm of it, the small rise and fall, proof that despite everything, tonight ends with her safe in her own bed instead of somewhere I can’t reach her.

I think about Sunday dinners at the Ivanovs’ house, years ago now, before any of this, before Mia died, before any of us knew what waited underneath the surface of that family. Ginger used to fall asleep in her grandfather’s lap during those visits, worn out from too much cake and too much attention. I used to think that was the safest place in the world for her, surrounded by people who loved her unconditionally.

I don’t know how to reconcile that memory with what I know now.

The baby shifts inside me, a small deliberate movement that used to feel purely wondrous and tonight feels like something closer to grief, this child arriving into a world I no longer trust to be as safe as I believed it was this morning.

I think about every moment from these last months that makes sense differently now. Viktor going rigid at the courthouse. The security that quietly doubled without explanation.

The car outside the house I convinced myself was nothing. The vague answer about an old business rival, technically true, deliberately incomplete. Every single piece slots into place now, and the picture it makes is worse than anything I let myself imagine while I was still giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He let me leave Ginger in a supervised visitation room with the man who apparently orchestrated months of surveillance against us.

He let me believe, every single day, that whatever danger existed was vague and distant, manageable, nothing requiring my full attention, when the truth was close enough to reach out and grab my daughter from a school fence.

I don’t know how to hold that fury and my love for him in the same chest without one of them cracking under the weight of the other.

Ginger stirs slightly, and I still, waiting until her breathing evens back out, before easing off her bed and slipping out into the hallway.

Viktor’s waiting there, leaning against the wall a few feet from her door, the particular stillness he gets when he’s giving me room without actually leaving.

“She’s okay,” I say, more to fill the silence than because he asked.

“I know. I checked on her myself an hour ago.”

I nod, and we stand there, neither of us quite looking at the other, the hallway suddenly feeling smaller than it ever has before.

“I keep thinking about all the ordinary moments,” I say, surprising myself by speaking at all. “Grocery shopping. The diorama. The porch, every night, wine going warm in our glasses. I was living an entire life next to a man I only knew half of.”

“You knew all of me that mattered. Just not the part that could get you killed.”

“That’s not a small part to leave out, Viktor.”

“No. It isn’t.” He doesn’t defend himself further, doesn’t reach for the argument that might make this easier for him.

“I need space tonight,” I say finally. “I can’t lie next to you right now and pretend I’m not furious. I can’t perform calm for your benefit when I’m not anywhere close to calm.”

“You don’t have to perform anything for me.”

“I know that logically. I still can’t do it tonight.” My voice cracks, and I hate that it does, hate how much of my anger is tangled up with a fear I can’t fully separate from it. “I need to be alone with this. Not forever. Just tonight.”