Page 75 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

The way he says it, flat, factual, a scheduled event, puts a cold line down my back, and I ask him straight out. “How? You told me you’d stay with me all night.” I hear my own voice climb. “You can’t go anywhere, Max. The police will⁠—”

“I sent Lev to collect him.”

And my heart sinks, because I’ve been around long enough to understand better. “Lev. You sent Lev to kill a pakhan. Alone?”

Maxim’s jaw is set. “Lev alone is worth ten of anyone else.”

I turn in the chair to face Max. “Won’t that look weak? To the other families, whatever they are. Sokolov comes into your house, hits your family, and you don’t handle him yourself—you send your sovetnik while you’re sitting in a hospital? Doesn’t that, in your world, come across as weak?”

In his world, weakness is like blood in the water. A vulnerable Vernigora is one whose pregnant girlfriend and unborn child suddenly become much easier to reach.

“It might,” Maxim says. “I don’t care.”

“You have to care, that’s the whole⁠—“

“I told you I wouldn’t leave your side, and I mean it,” he says firmly. “I’ve broken many promises to many people, but not this one. Not for my reputation or for Alexei Sokolov’s corpse. They can think what they want. I will stay in this chair until the doctors arrive, and afterward, I will be wherever you are, come Hell or high water.”

God help me, it’s the most romantic thing anyone’s said to me. We’re in a room smelling of antiseptic and old coffee, with blood on my shirt, and I love him so much it scares me. That’s why I say the insane thing. “Then I’ll come with you to Sokolov.”

He turns his head slowly and looks at me, left brow rising.

“I’m serious. If you won’t leave me, fine—don’t. Bring me along. I’ll sit in the car. I don’t mind. If it has to be you, if your reputation requires it, then we both go. Sokolov still⁠—“

“Are you serious right now?”

“Yes.”

“No.” His tone is flat and final as both of his hands close around mine. “Absolutely not. I’ve spent months and all my resources keeping you out of that room, and I didn’t do it just to hand you over to Sokolov tonight because you’ve decided to challenge me. You’re not going near Alexei Sokolov. This isn’t up for negotiation, and you can throw whatever you want at me—sugar bowl, fists, I don’t care. Go ahead.”

For half a second, I wonder what he’d do if I just left?

A strong, terrifying Maxim is a Maxim nobody dares touch, and a Maxim nobody dares touch is a father whose child grows up safe. His reputation is my baby’s insurance policy, and I would do anything to keep that policy paid up. I would walk into⁠—

“Family of Pasha Kagan?”

The voice cuts the thought off clean, and a surgeon in scrubs stands in the doorway, pulling off a cap. I’m on my feet, Maxim rising with me.

“That’s us. Him. Is he—how is he?”

The surgeon’s face is tired. “He’s out of surgery. It was close. We lost him twice, and each time we brought him back was harder than the one before. The bullet did a lot of damage in there. But the bleeding’s stopped, and he’s stable.” He exhales.

It’s like a new part of my lungs opened up when he said that. “Thank you, doctor.”

“He’s got a long road ahead, with months of rest and rehab. He won’t be able to work for a while, but with no infection, he’s on track to fully recover. He’s going to be just fine.”

Fine. He’s going to be fine.

The morning catches up to me. Tears come up out of nowhere and everywhere. The hole through the door. Galina’s hands on Pasha’s gushing stomach. His head in my lap. Everything I’ve been pushing away so I could keep functioning pours hot down my face, and I don’t try to stop it.

Pasha is still alive. He will continue to be terrible at teaching me chess for decades. He might also have a life he can someday comfortably live out loud.

Maxim’s arm comes around me. “This is very good. Now I can yell at him.”

I pull back and stare at him. “You can what? He almost died, Maxim. He took a bullet! You want to yell at him? For what, exactly?” And it clicks what he means, and I go cold. “Is this about what he said? If you’re about to be homophobic in a hospital, this relationship⁠—“

“Thea.” He catches my face in both hands. “I do not care that Pasha loves men. That is not the thing.”

“Then what’s the thing?”