Page 66 of Arranged for the Russian Pakhan

Men, I think. Fond and disturbed.

“Yes,” I admit, a little sheepishly. “I’m pregnant. I’m also not a public noticeboard, and this is not how I intended for any of you to find out. And I would appreciate it enormously if everyone could take approximately one large step back from whatever they’re about to do.”

Nobody moves.

Predictable.

I look at Trifon. “You knew something was wrong.”

“I knew something was wrong,” he agrees. His voice is careful. Controlled, the way it gets when he’s feeling something large enough to require containing. “I didn’t know it was this.”

“Well.” I pull my cardigan tighter around me. “Now you do.”

It’s Iosif who speaks first, characteristically. “How far along?”

“Nearly two months.”

I watch them do the math. It’s mortifying. And gross.

Valentin looks at Anton, and I swat at his arm. “Knock it off,” I warn.

Anton looks back at him without flinching. He’s smart enough not to speak for me, at least.

My brother? Not so much.

“If she goes home with you,” Valentin sneers, polishing his gun on the hem of his t-shirt, “and something goes wrong—”

“Nothing is going to go wrong,” Anton says.

“That isn’t a promise you can make.”

“No,” Anton says. “But I can promise you that I will spend the rest of my life making sure the conditions for it are as impossible as I can manage. That’s all I’ve got. I know it isn’t enough for you right now. I’m asking you to let me prove it anyway.”

Valentin looks at me.

I look back at him, at this brother who has been one of my closest confidants and one of my most persistent headaches for my entire life, and I give him the smallest nod I can manage that still constitutes a nod.

He exhales. He steps back.

Trifon looks at me for a long moment. Then he looks at Anton with an expression that doesn’t need words and doesn’t use them.

Anton receives it without looking away.

“Go,” Trifon says finally. To me, not to Anton. Which is exactly right.

I turn to get my things. My coat is on the hook at the bottom of the stairs, my bag on the table beside it. I take my time with the coat, turning each button deliberately, because my hands want to shake and I’m not going to let them.

As if I were ever not going with him.

But it was nice to pretend.

Chapter 24 - Anton

I’m not going to make it twenty minutes without losing my ever-loving mind, and I’ve no illusion of it being otherwise.

Darya likely sees it coming when the car slows onto the shoulder of the road, its engine humming, and the dark Massachusetts landscape spreads out around us in every direction. She says nothing about it. She keeps looking out the passenger side window, as she has been since we left the Yuri estate.

I put the car in park.