Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (17 page)

S
HE was pregnant
.
The Darkness came on so suddenly this time, it nearly blacked out his vision. Sirena was pregnant. His wife was pregnant. With another man’s baby.

For seconds on end, he was so busy trying to tame the beast inside him, he didn’t realize she was on the move until she was nearly through her apartment door. As it was, he only just managed to keep the door from slamming in his face.

Pushing it back open, he followed her into the condo. Nose flaring in and out as he watched her waddle away from him toward the kitchen at a determined clip.

He couldn’t believe a woman as far along as she obviously was could move so fast. Or that she was pregnant at all. How had this happened? She was obviously more than three months pregnant, but Dexter had been watching her the entire time she’d been doing the opera.

There was no way she could have gotten artificially inseminated on Dexter’s watch. But then how—?

The truth hit him like a pile of bricks, stopping him in his tracks in the middle of the front room. It was his. The baby inside her belly was his!

The room went a little fuzzy then, and he shook his head, unable to process what his brain was telling him. But it was the only explanation that made any sense. He’d not used condoms with her over the past year, mostly because he’d mistaken her meaning when she’d said he didn’t have to worry about her getting pregnant.

Bair swayed like a fighter who’d just taken a hit straight to the face, and then he raised his eyes to Sirena...

Just in time to see that she was now standing in her open plan kitchen with a steak knife fisted in both her hands.

“Get out!” she said, her voice low and ugly, as she held the knife out in front of her.

He shook his head confused. Why was she holding the knife, like she was afraid?

Another truth hit him then.
She thought he was going to hurt her
. Because she was pregnant with his baby. She still thought he was capable of such a thing. And now, unlike every other time he’d confronted her, she was truly afraid of him.

Someone was yelling in Russian behind him. He looked over his shoulder at the personal guard and driver he’d left posted below. “
Nyet
!” he told the guard when he saw him going for his piece. “I will handle this.”

“But—”

“She is only woman. I can handle. Now go wait below.”

The guard backed away slowly, eyeing the knife-wielding woman with the crazed look in her eyes the entire way. But he did as commanded. Probably figuring correctly that it was better to let his boss get stabbed than risk the repercussions for not following a direct order.

Bair turned back to his wife after the guard was gone. “Sirena…” he started to say.

“I’m not Sirena!” she screamed at him, voice unhinged. “I’m Thel! And I won’t let you take this baby from me. I love her. I love her with all my soul.”

A girl? They were going to have girl?

He took a step toward her, instinctively reaching out.

But she backed further into the kitchen like an animal cornered.

“Get out!” she screamed, holding the knife up even higher. “Get out! Or I swear I’ll give you another scar for your belly!”

His nose flared. Every primal instinct in his body tugging him in a different direction than out. He wanted answers. He wanted…he didn’t know what exactly, but he knew it didn’t involve being on the business end of his wife’s knife.

However, in the end, he drew himself up straight…and backed away slowly. He knew how to read fighters, and the manic look in her eyes didn’t speak well of what might happen if he dared turn his back on her. His Sirena was in full mama bear mode, her champagne eyes burning beautiful and bright.

She watched him with sharp eyes. Alert as a tigress. And as soon as he stepped back into the hallway, she sprang into action. Leaping forward and slamming the door in his face.

The next thing he heard was her ragged breathing as several locks engaged. Then came the sound of her terrified sobbing on the other side of the door.

He laid a fist against the door, wanting to bang on it. Wanting to break it down to get to her. But knowing either action would only make things worse.

***

“Who the hell would be calling at this time of night?” Alexei’s wife, Eva, demanded.

Alexei wondered the same thing as he turned over to answer the phone.

He frowned when he saw the name on the lit up screen. “Boris, I hope this is important,” he said in Russian.

He sat up when he heard his brother’s answer. As did his wife.

“Is he okay?” she asked, obviously hearing the unhinged desperation in his brother’s voice, even if she didn’t understand all the Russian words he was shouting loud enough for her to hear on the other side of the phone.

“No,” Alexei mouthed, shaking his head at her.

Then he said to his brother, “Yes, I still have number for that San Francisco doctor. No, don’t worry he can probably transfer the—Calm down, Borya. It will be okay. I am here. Your brother will help you through this.”

“Is he hurt?” his wife, who could understand his tone but not his words, asked.

No, worse
, Alexei thought, before giving his frantic brother more reassuring words in Russian.

H
E was still there
.

Thel looked through the condo’s front window at Bair sitting on the steps outside. He was dressed in a new outfit today: a pair of wool trousers and a thin sweater that clung to his massive torso. It made her body clench with the memory of that Christmas morning when he asked her to be his pet. The way his heavy body had felt on top of hers when they celebrated her yes. Having his thick waist between her thighs, as he drove into her like a well-oiled machine.

Luckily she blinked before her sex-starved body could take her too far down memory lane.
Focus, Thel,
she told herself. He was still out there. But why?

She’d actually tried calling the police on him when she’d gotten up this morning and found him out there. But they’d been less than zero help. As it turned out, Bair was the owner on record for not just the condo, but for the entire building. And since she’d never filed any kind of restraining order against him, there wasn’t much they could do about a man sitting on the stairs of his own property.

So he’d remained there most of the early morning, and now it was time for her to head into work.

She hesitated at the window, torn between not wanting to go out and needing her job. Her boss was already looking for any excuse to fire her since, according to him, she’d tricked him by not mentioning she was pregnant at the time of her interview. So yes, she had to go to work, and yes, that meant she’d have to go outside to get there. Out there. Where he was.

She crept out as quietly as she could, but Bair turned around as she soon as she stepped a foot outside. Turned and stood, like he’d been waiting for her.

A Nine Inch Nails song chewed on her chest as she brought up the knife with a trembling hand. “Don’t!” she warned. “I’ll use this. I swear I will.”

He didn’t say anything. Just stood there, dead-eyeing her in that predator reincarnated way of his.

With an unsteady heart, she lowered the knife, testing to see what he’d do.

He didn’t do anything. Just continued to stand there. Quiet as stone.

However, his black eyes stayed on her as she backed away toward the stairs on the other side of the landing. And she didn’t dare to turn her back to him until she absolutely had to in order to get down the steps safely.

She made it all the way to the Audi and quickly yanked open the door. But she couldn’t resist looking back up at him before she got in. He was standing at the landing now. Looking down at her. Like a predator assessing its prey.

“
W
hat are you doing here
?” Jimmy the other Greek asked as soon as she walked in the door.

He sat behind the shop’s counter, eyes wide and shocked, like some sort of ghost had manifested in the middle of his sales floor.

Thel, who’d been fully expecting to get reamed for being fifteen minutes late, stopped just on the other side of the door, wondering if this was some kind of employee terrorizing tactic on his part.

“Uh, working,” she answered carefully. “Since this is my job…”

His eyes narrowed like she was the confused one. “Not anymore, sweetheart. You’re on paid maternity leave, effective today.”

“Excuse me? That doesn’t make any sense. I barely even qualified for benefits! Now you’re trying to put me on paid maternity leave?”

“Yeah, well,” Jimmy shrugged, as if those two words explained everything.

“
Y
ou got me fired
?!?!” she screeched at Bair a few minutes later, pushing past his guard at the bottom of the stairs and chugging up the steps with the knife fisted in her hand.

“Not fired,” Bair answered, sounding almost bored as he once more came to his feet on the steps. “Paid maternity leave.”

“Un-huh,” she said. “And who exactly is funding this paid maternity leave, because I know it sure as hell ain’t Jimmy the Other Greek!”

His brow hitched up. “Jimmy the Other Greek. This is what you call him?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “But I’m pretty sure he isn’t running girls on the side.”

“He is not,” Bair assured her solemnly. “I checked. Or else it would have been very different conversation I have with your boss.”

She had the crazy urge to laugh at that response, and then she just felt weak. Like the weakest woman in the world. With a steak knife in her hand.

“Why are you here, Bair?” she asked him. “What do you want from me? Because if it’s a late-term abortion or anything like that, I’m not…”

She stopped when she saw the look of horror flash across his face. Wounded and hurt like she really had stabbed him with her knife.

“So you’re not here to make me get rid of our baby?”

His nostrils flared, and then he answered with a simple, “No, Sirena. That is not why I’m here.”

Which begged the question, “Then why
are
you here?”

He looked at her for a very long time before quietly saying, “In two days, it will be Christmas. I would like for you to come with me to my brother’s house to celebrate holiday.”

His voice sounded rote. Uncomfortable, like he was repeating someone else’s lines.

And she had to blink, because they wouldn’t have had so much as a tree in their Berlin apartment if she hadn’t taken care of all the Christmas stuff herself back in the day. They never even exchanged gifts since, according to Bair, “Christmas is not holiday I enjoy.”

But now he not only wanted to celebrate Christmas with her, but drive her to his brother’s house to do it?

As if reading her skeptical thoughts, he added, “I have made appointment for December 26 with mediator my brother found for us. I can promise if you come with me to Texas, we will come to agreement about custody without long court battle.”

Thel sank back on her heels, trying to process his request. She liked the sound of a mediator as opposed to the battalion of sharks thinly disguised as lawyers she knew the Rustanovs kept at the ready. And she liked the sound of a simple custody agreement as opposed to having to defend herself and her baby against a man who’d never wanted children in the first place.

But… “How do I know this isn’t a trick? Like you’ll get me on some plane and fly me somewhere I can’t escape?”

He shook his head. “You cannot fly in your condition. We must drive. If we leave now, we can make it there by nighttime.”

She shook her head at him. “So you, the man who’s been sitting here all dang morning, want to drive me, the woman who’s holding a knife on you, to spend Christmas with your family. You realize how crazy that sounds, right?”

To this he merely shrugged. “I am Siberian,” he said, as if that explained everything. He then nodded at the knife in her hand. “If you like, you can bring that with you.”

S
O this was
how Sirena came to be sitting in the passenger seat of the Audi he’d given her for their wedding anniversary, holding a steak knife in her lap while Bair drove them both to Texas.

She threw many suspicious looks at him during the first two hours of what would be, according to the car’s navigation system, a nine-hour drive.

But then she must have gotten tired of sitting at the ready. Out the side of his eye, Bair watched her shift in her seat, obviously trying to find a comfortable resting position. Not an easy feat, he could see. Her belly was huge.

With his baby.

Not Darkness, but some equally powerful mix of terror and panic seized his gut at just the thought. He was still having trouble wrapping his mind around this fact. That his worst fear would be coming to pass in just a few months.

“Would you like to get out?” he asked Sirena. “Stretch your back? I know such long drive is hard in your condition.”

She cut her eyes at him. “No, I’m fine,” she answered.

More silence.

“I would not have you uncomfortable, Sirena.”

“Thel,” she reminded him. “And the only thing that’s making me uncomfortable is this entire situation.”

“Then tell me how I can make it better.”

Again, she threw a suspicious look at him.

“I am serious,” he told her.

She tilted her head at him, expression almost comical in its incredulity. “What happened to Mr. You’re Not Allowed to Be Sad?”

It was a joke. Even he recognized it as such. But…

He kept his eyes glued to the highway in front of them as he answered her question truthfully. “I was young then. Stupid boy. I did not know how to handle anything I couldn’t punch or buy.”

He thought of the wild sadness that would sometimes fall over her like an invisible cloak. One he could feel plain as day but not see, and further explained, “When you became emotional like you did that first August…I did not know how—as you sometimes say—
to deal
.”

Out the corner of his eye he could see his wife now staring at him with her mouth hanging open.

“You do not have to look so surprised,” he said. “I am human. Not beast. Or how did you call me in your diary,
monster
.”

His wife actually seemed to take in his words then, sitting back in her seat and mulling them over for a few thoughtful moments. “To your credit, I met your brother, so I don’t think anybody ever taught you any better.”

He didn’t like her still bitter feelings toward his brother, who’d truly changed over the years since she knew him in Germany. Even more so than Bair.

But nonetheless…

“You are correct. No one ever taught me any better.” He released a snorting breath, knowing this was the part where he should further explain his behavior in Russia. But how?

“Before you, I did not have much experience with women—” he cut off. That made him sound like he was some kind of
zadrót
who’d never touched a woman before her. Which was not how he wanted her, this girl who’d been a popular cheerleader before her brother died, to see him.

“At least not kind of woman who stays in my home for long time and does not leave,” he added.

That actually elicited a half grin out of her. “So you treated me like you did because I overstayed my welcome?”

He kept his eyes on the road as he answered, “No, I treat you like this because I wanted to keep you and I was afraid you will wake up one day and realize I am nothing man who does not deserve such beautiful siren. That is why I watched you. That is why I marked you in front of other men. That is why I did not allow you to have too many emotions in August, Sirena.”

The words came out rawer than he’d intended. But they were nonetheless true, and maybe his wife could sense that because when he looked over at her again, she was no longer laughing.

But then she said on a choked whisper, “Thel.”

And his chest filled with punching bag sand at the thought of that name. The one she’d kept from him for so long but now insisted he call her. “I will never call you by this name. Sirena is my wife.”

“And Thel is your baby mama,” she shot back, her voice brittle. “You don’t want to get us mixed up, because you haven’t really wrapped your mind around this whole kid thing. Because you want me, but not like this. Not if I come with a child.”

“I did not say I didn’t want a child,” he found himself replying.

“Are you kidding me?” she answered with an incongruous shake of her head. “I was on my way to get my tubes tied when I left you. And you left me when you found out how serious I was about having one.”

“I said there would be no children between us, Sirena.”

“What’s the difference?”

He lips twisted in frustration and he admitted, “I do not think I have the correct English to answer this question.”

I
do not think
I have enough English to answer this question.

What the hell did that mean? Thel’s mind swam with confusion and half-formed questions that couldn’t quite capture what she wanted to ask him.

But after that strange conversation, Bair didn’t seem to have much left to say. They drove some more in silence, until he asked if she was ready to eat.

She put the steak knife in her purse where she could reach it and suggested Applebee’s.
Seriously, could their relationship be any more fucked up?

“There is something I must talk with you about,” he said after the waiter took the orders at the chain restaurant. “When we see my family, I would not like for there to be questions about this…”

Before she could ask what, he produced a wedding ring. But not just any wedding ring. It was the one she’d sold in Washington D.C.

“You! You
were
the buyer.”

He nodded solemnly.

“But why?” she asked, seriously not understanding. “Why would you buy back my ring after I sold it?”

“Because it is as you said.
Your
ring. I would not have you be without it.”

“You know, I wasn’t trying to hurt you when I sold it,” she said, eyes soft on the piece of jewelry she’d never thought to see again. “But my sister needed the money.”

When she glanced up, she found him watching her with an unreadable expression. “I understand why you sold it,” he said after a few solemn moments. “Would you put it on? It would make me happy to see it on your hand again.”

A request. An actual request, and it touched her to her very soul. Before she could think too hard about it, she found herself picking the ring up out of its box and slipping it on her finger.

To her bemusement, it no longer felt like the lead weight she’d remembered back in Germany. Now its weight was comforting. Solid.

She looked up at Bair, remembering how she’d been beginning to feel the same way about the man who’d given it to her this summer. Before Thel came back…

They held each other’s eyes for a moment, and then Bair said, “You said we were two strangers living out an opera in your diary. That I did not know you and you did not know me. I am taking you home to meet more of my family because I want you to know me.”

“I’ve already met your family,” Thel said, thinking none to fondly of his overbearing brother and his comments about the fidelity of American black girls.

“Not all of them,” he answered. “This Christmas, our cousin Nikolas will come with his family. He is like me, son of a pet.”

The name rang a bell. “Is that the guy whose mother…?”

“
Da
,” he answered, before she could bring up the tragic abortion story. “But his father is dead now, and he is very happy with wife and children. His past is no longer a story our family talks about.”

He gave her a significant look then, one that could have almost read like an apology if you squinted. Then his face hardened back up, as he said, “There will also be another cousin there from Russia. Ivan. He is like Alexei, legitimate Rustanov. Son of one of my father’s brothers. Though maybe you will not see so much of him. He had an accident back in Moscow, and he is still…recovering.”

From the way Bair’s eyes shadowed, Thel had to wonder exactly what this Ivan’s recovery entailed.

But then a shoe dropped on something he’d just said and she had to ask, “Wait, your
mother
was a pet?”

“I did not tell you this?”

“No!” she answered. “You did not tell me that. I always thought it was some random hook-up or something. You didn’t talk much about your parents being together, like you and me were together.”

He shifted in his seat and clasped his hands together, so that they resembled a large fist. “That is because they were not together like you and I were together. He kept her in apartment in Moscow. She came to visit me maybe once or twice a year in her old home where my grandmother raised me.”

It hurt Thel’s heart to think of him growing up like that, with neither of his parents wanting to bother with him. “Is she coming to this family dinner, too?”

Another shadow crossed his face. “No.”

“Because Alexei doesn’t want his father’s mistress there?” she guessed.

“No, because she is dead. From even before I met you. When Alexei’s father died, she was taken in by Ivan’s father, Pyotr. And when he decided to replace her with another pet, she killed herself.”

“Oh, my God, Bair. I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling terrible for him. To be raised apart from his mother, only to have her die so tragically. Say anything you want about crazy Marian, at least she’d stuck around after Thel’s father had dumped her.

Bair glared down at his clenched hands. “I do not tell you this so you feel sorry for me.”

She reached across the table to cover his fisted hands with both of hers. “I don’t feel sorry for you. I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sad for you. There’s a difference.”

Bair just shrugged as if this whole conversation, actually sharing all this deep stuff with her, was making him completely miserable.

So she tried to steer the conversation back to more pleasant topics. “But you and Alexei managed to stay close all this time?”

“Alexei and I did not grow up together. We did not meet until I was eighteen. He was not aware of my existence until he was going through our father’s old papers. He came and found me in Germany, where I had been sent for schooling after my grandmother died. All boys school. I did not like it.”

“I bet,” she said.

Well, that explained how a Russian underground fighter came to speak German so well. How could she not have asked him about any of this while they were together? She now realized she’d been guilty of doing the exact same thing she’d accused him of doing to her in her diary. She’d been so caught up in her own psychology, she had almost never stopped to wonder about Bair. What had made him this way. Why he’d tried to control her. Why he hadn’t wanted children.

“Tell me more,” she found herself murmuring.

He looked up from his clenched hands. “More?”

“Yeah, more. I want to know more about you. Like, tell me about your life in Siberia, before Germany. What was that like?”

The faintest ghost of a smile as he looked sideways. “Cold. It was very cold, Sirena.”

She shivered. “As cold as Germany?”

“Germany cold was relief compared to Russia cold.”

“I don’t believe you. Germany was SO cold!” she said, remembering how she used to curl up into his side as they walked, trying to get away from the biting chill.

“I now know you think this because you are from too warm place. I am not surprised you stayed on in New Mexico. You are maybe very weak woman when it comes to weather, Sirena.”

And so it went, with both of them exchanging various stories about growing up as they drove the rest of the way to Drummond, a small town in Texas that Thel had never heard of before.

Her eyes widened, however, when they came upon Alexei’s residence. After passing through what looked like a relatively suburban small town, they arrived at a huge compound made up of three brick villa-style houses. A wrought-iron gate with stone pillars situated every few feet surrounded the huge property, and there was an enclosed security booth just outside its main entrance.

“And I thought you were paranoid,” she said to Bair as they both handed over their IDs to the guard who’d come out of the booth to greet them.

Bair just grunted. You’d think he be a little more relaxed now that they’d reached their final destination, but if anything he was even more tense.

They parked in one of the spots in front of the middle house as they’d been instructed by the outside guard. And Bair rushed around the front of the car to open her door while Thel just goggled up at what the guard had called “the guest house.” The two-story mini-mansion seemed like it should be more than enough for just one family. And if this was only the “guest house,” she had to wonder what the main house had going on.

She could sense Bair’s tension like it was a physical thing as they approached the house.

“What’s wrong?” she found herself having to ask him.

“I am now just realizing what this next thing might look like to you,” Bair answered, his voice tight. “But I would like for you to realize this is not threat, but Christmas gift, okay?”

“Okay…” she said warily, looking both ways and wondering what kind of gift could be misconstrued as either/or.

She found out when the door suddenly flew open and her nephew came running out. “Aunt Thel! Aunt Thel!”

“Trevor!”

But then his eyes widened when he saw her belly. “Mama!” he tattled over his shoulder. “Aunt Thel’s got a baby in her stomach!!!”