Page 54 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

“Very well. When you sort it out, let me know how I can help.”

“Thank you, Lev.”

He leaves, and the office trickles out. The city goes on glittering down below, and I’m at the window, considering my future. At my age, I had thought I had far more of a past than a future, yet I’m going to be a father again.

It’s a strange life I lead.

I raised Niklaus into a gun pointed at his own house and nearly pointed my own at him. I ruined him. Ruined his outlook. Left him feeling like betrayal is the right option. And when I tally it all up, who is to blame?

He’s a grown man who makes his own choices, but it’s impossible not to see my hand in all of this.

I won’t do that again. I cannot. Perhaps grief was never the cause, and the flaw was always in the father. Maybe I was never cut out to be a father.

The thought shreds at me from the inside. What if… what if I never should have become a parent? When you think of becoming a father, you picture doing it with your wife at your side. Her, taking care of the home, as we had always planned it. Me, handling the money end of our world. Together, a unit perfect for bringing up a child.

But that isn’t what Niklaus had. If Irina had lived, would I have abandoned our son to nannies and boarding schools the way I did?

No. She would never have allowed it. She was warm and kind and loving, all the things a parent should be. And she was smarter than me—she would’ve seen our son falling apart, and she would’ve been there for him.

But reality has not been my friend in a very long time, and cancer takes whatever it wants.

It left me with a hole in my heart, so I left my son with two. One in the shape of his mother and one in the shape of me. He’s had to grieve the loss of two parents when only one is in the grave.

I did that to him. Who’s to say I will not ruin this one too?

21

THEA

Pasha beats me at chess for the eleventh consecutive time. “I’m sorry, but you castled too late,” he says, resetting the pieces with real regret. “Also too early, the game before. There’s a window.”

“You could let me win once. As a treat.”

“Mr. Vernigora says never to let you win. He says you would know.” Pasha looks up, earnest to the roots of his hair. “He is right. You would. You are too smart not to.”

This is my life now. I play chess in a mansion with a bodyguard who calls checkmate in a doctor’s diagnostic voice. He leaves printouts of famous games on the hall table for me. It’s the most tactful tutoring I’ve ever received.

I lose anyway.

Afterward I practice Russian with the door to my room shut. My accent remains a crime. My comprehension, though, is getting sharp, and that’s what matters.

Maxim tells me things now, which is great. Cartels and kumichos and honesty on demand. He’s very open with me.

On the surface.

But I hear him switch to Russian with the staff when I leave a room, and the switch itself is telling on him. So, I’ve developed a hobby of arriving on soft feet and lingering near doorways with a book. Perfectly innocent—I was just quiet because I was engrossed in the reading.

Two days ago, I heard him say something about tonight’s shipment. Yesterday, Lev took a call in the hall, and I caught a name I didn’t know. Then he said something about being careful. And he caught me listening.

He knows what I’m doing—there’s no denying that look in his eyes. He has started speaking more slowly near me, like he wants me to understand what he’s saying in Russian. It’s either courtesy or a trap. Hard to know which with him. He’s far more suspicious than Maxim. But I suppose that’s what he’s paid to be.

I spend mornings in Max’s bed, which has become the bed, while mine develops the untouched look of a guest room. I don’t hate the change.

Then there’s Galina in her evening chair with knitting needles going, producing something small and yellow. I asked her what it was.

She said, “Warm,” and kept knitting.

The thing has grown sleeves this week. The sleeves would fit Potato or a small human.