Page 61 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

The bottle has been my only companion, and I have killed plenty of them, the way pushing Raina away killed every one of my dreams and my motivation.

Tonight I find myself, as I have every night this week, standing outside Raina’s room listening to her soothing Felix’s cries, and he cries a lot.

He’s so tiny and frail and so scared of the world; I wouldn’t have the first idea how to take care of him.

But she speaks to him in such calm reassuring tones I wonder why I ever thought I could be a parent. She can’t leave—not ever. I won’t know the first thing to do with him.

Which only makes this growing ache in my chest worse.

I’ve kept my distance deliberately so the attachment that has formed between us would fade, but just as they warn, absence has only made my heart grow fonder.

The longing I have for that woman is beyond my control now. It’s gone beyond obsession, crossed over into longing and dependence.

My men notice it.

Ingrid points it out, though not with specific words.

I was vulnerable to this the moment Raina Volina sat across from me in my office for that interview and I never once listened to the one man in my organization who knows me better than myself.

Now, I’m standing here, trying to garner enough emotional strength to go into that room and tell her how I feel, but it’s so heavy.

Every time I think I have enough resilience to march in there and make my demands, I draw back, remembering the hollow shell of the man I was when my first wife died.

It keeps my feet glued to the floor when I want to move, and it makes me run when I want to stay.

Agnya was my whole world. I laughed with her, cried with her, dreamed with her.

But fate was cruel to me, allowing our hearts to tangle and align, only to wrench her away so suddenly it left me floundering.

I rest my forehead on my hand and bite back the emotion that surfaces.

I’m over Agnya now, but I can’t possibly forget the amount of pain it caused when she was stolen from me.

The rage I felt, the way I lost all control and people died everywhere I want, anyone who I remotely suspected of having anything to do with her death.

Would I be that way if Raina was taken too?

“Sir?” I hear, and I turn over my shoulder, swaying where I stand as I see Akim approaching. He scowls at me, tucking something under his arm as he looks down at the half-empty bottle in my hand. “What are you doing?”

Just what I need, another babysitter to chide me for my incompetence.

I can’t stay away from her.

I can’t go to her.

I can’t say what I want, and I can’t cut her off. I’m trapped in a vicious spiral hell itself won’t let me free from, and all I want is relief.

And her…

Speaking with Raina is something I have to do. My heart won’t allow me to go one more day without making it clear she can’t leave. I won’t survive it.

I barely survived Agnya, and though Felix is only a few weeks old, the future looms over me in a haze of emotional uncertainty.

This space I put between us on purpose only proved what I need, and she’s it.

“I have to speak with her,” I slur, revealing to him just how drunk I am. I knew it hours ago, when I could barely sign the documentation Grigor brought up for me over that zoning issue. Now I’m beyond that into delirious.

“You’re drunk. You can’t speak with her in this state. You need to go lie down.” Akim stands between me and the room, puffing his chest out as he heaves out a sigh. “You’ll scare her, and she’ll be pissed that you’re drinking around the kid. You know that.” I feel his hands prodding at me, herding me like a stubborn sheep, and I jerk away.