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I SCRUBBED MY FACE in the sink and looked at myself in the mirror.
I seemed different. I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something off about me. Maybe the fight I’d had with Mauro the day before had been enough to tip whatever was left of the old me out for good.
We hadn’t spoken since, and I had no idea how long it would be before I got a chance to see him again. If he would even want to deal with me when he did. I knew he had a right to be downright furious with me, and I wished I could go back in time and take back the harsh shit I had said to him.
But I knew that it was true, most of it, anyway. I wasn’t going to let him brush off what I had with Nadia, not when I knew that it was real, as real as anything I had ever felt before in my life. I was in love with her, and nothing that he could do would change that.
I hadn’t been able to see her in a day or so, and it was starting to get to me. I had people watching her apartment and the store to make sure that nothing happened to her, but that was a very different thing to having her right there in front of me and being able to do something about her current predicament. I wished I could convince her to come stay with me, but I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. She was an independent spirit, the kind of woman who didn’t want to give up her life for anyone, and it would take a whole lot for her to actually accept she would have been better off living with me for a while.
My phone buzzed, and I grabbed it at once – I had been waiting to hear from Mauro all day, and I had no doubt he’d have some choice words for me now that he had managed to get me on the line.
“Hello?”
“Andreas, it’s me,” Mauro’s urgent tone came down the line. “You need to get up to your father’s estate, upstate. As soon as you can. It’s Dmitri.”
My stomach dropped. All of the anger that had been flying between us just the day before seemed to have fallen away and now, the only thing that was left was panic.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll explain when you get here,” he replied. “Come quick. Nadia’s a mess...”
I didn’t need to hear anything more than that. If she needed me, I would be there with her. I hung up the phone, got dressed, and headed down to my car, tearing out of town as fast as I could get away with without the cops stopping me to slap a fine on my account.
It had been a long time since I had been up to my father’s estate, the one outside the city – it was less an estate and more a mini-hospital, a place where people could come to heal up after a fight or an attack. And if Mauro had brought Nadia and her father up there, that meant something had to have happened to one or both of them. My heart was pounding as I tore up the road towards the estate, knowing that I couldn’t wait, knowing that I couldn’t risk her being alone right now.
I finally arrived on the sprawling grounds, slowing the car down as I came to the gate – it swung open for me at once, and I pulled inside. Even though it had been months since I had come here, it was still immaculately-kept, the grass cut short and the trees trimmed back. The staff that kept this place up had been on the payroll for probably more than a decade now, and they took their jobs seriously.
But coming to this place always meant bad news, always meant something rough was happening, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. My mind had been racing almost as fast as the wheels on my car as I had come up here – I would have heard about it if there was an outright attack, so I had to assume that it was something a little less serious than that. But still, if someone had ended up needing treatment out here, that had to be something, right? Something bad, something to worry about...
Mauro was waiting for me at the door, and it seemed as though all of his anger from before had just vanished, much to my relief. He greeted me with a quick hug, and then led me inside the villa.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“I was down at the store, keeping an eye on Nadia and her father,” he explained. “When I saw him take a turn for the worse. He collapsed – looks like he had a heart attack, but the doctor here is still trying to make sure that’s all it was.”
“Shit,” I muttered, feeling the deep panic rise in my chest. I knew that Nadia wouldn’t be able to cope if something happened to her father, and I didn’t want her to have to go through what I had when I had lost mine. I knew that she was already getting by without her mother, and she didn’t deserve to lose the one connection she had to her family, especially not with everything else that was happening.
“Nadia’s in your office, I brought her up here with her father,” Mauro explained. “She could use some company, I think.”
“Thank you,” I murmured to him, and I meant it. I knew that I hadn’t made it easy for Mauro these last few weeks, with everything that I had done, but it meant the damn world to me that he was so intent on looking out for this woman who I cared about so much. He might have been exasperated with the way I had gone about everything, but he wasn’t just going to abandon me to let me deal with it all on my own.
I headed down to the office, and wondered, briefly, how my father would have felt if he had been able to see something like this going on. A Serbian, being treated here. I was sure he would see the irony in it. I hoped so, at least. And I hoped that he would be able to understand I was doing this for the woman I loved, that I was breaking such a cardinal rule because I didn’t want her to have to cope with any of this all on her own. She deserved help, deserved support, especially at a time like this. I knew she would be wrecked from what had happened, no doubt blaming herself for all of it, and I prayed that I would be able to get through to her, allow her to see that this wasn’t her fault.
I heard her crying in the office before I so much as opened the door, and, when she saw me standing there, she practically collapsed into my arms. She was shaking so hard it seemed a miracle that she was able to stay upright, and I wrapped myself around her and pulled her in as close as I could.
“It’s okay,” I murmured to her. Those words didn’t feel like nearly enough to ensure she would believe them, but I had to start somewhere, had to let her see that she didn’t need to try to be strong now I was here. I could take some of the weight of it for her, and more than that, I wanted to. I wanted to bear whatever it was she had been carrying all this time, that she had been dragging along behind her for as long as it had taken me to arrive here. I stroked her hair, felt her body sink into mine, and closed my eyes. Even though I hated that this was how we had come to be together again, I still loved behind this close to her. Loved feeling her so near to me, even if I wished it had been under any other circumstances.
By the time she pulled back and caught her breath, she seemed exhausted. I didn’t blame her, after everything that had happened – she had struggled so much, she had pushed so hard to make things right, and now, her father was sick and she must have felt as helpless as I had when mine had been in the same position.
“They think it’s a heart attack,” she told me, her voice still shaking wildly as she tried to get the words out. “But I – he was drinking, he was so angry with me, and I—”
“Why was he angry with you?” I asked, and she shook her head. It was clear that she didn’t want to go into the details right now. I took her hand, brought it to my lips, planted a kiss against her fingers. I needed her to know that I was here and I didn’t blame her for any of this, not one little bit. No matter how hard it must have been, I didn’t blame her. I trusted that she had done what she could, and now, she needed to relax and let go and allow herself to rest.
“We’ve got him here and we’ll make sure that he gets the best treatment he possibly can,” I promised her. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes...”
“Then you should try to relax,” I told her gently. She shook her head.
“I don’t know how I can right now.”
“He’s resting, isn’t he?”
She nodded.
“They said it might be a while till he wakes up...”
“Then you should accept that and be ready for him when he does.”
She nodded. I think she needed the permission from someone else to just let go for a while – I knew that it would be hard for her to accept that this was something she could do, that she didn’t need to keep pushing as hard as she had to keep going despite everything that had happened, but she softened in my arms, and I squeezed her tight.
“I want to ask you something,” I murmured, and she pulled back and looked at me.
“What is it?”
“Come stay with me for a while.”
She hesitated before she responded. I knew that she probably thought I was coming on too strong, but I needed to have her close to me; it might not have been simple for her to accept it, but I knew it was what she needed. She needed someone to take care of her for a while, someone who wasn’t afraid to step up and help her out. And besides, she wasn’t going to have any reason to go back to her little apartment now that her father was here. She might as well stay with me, and at least get some rest in a bed big enough to fit both of us.
“Please, Nadia,” I murmured to her, brushing my lips over her temple. She leaned into me, and I knew what her answer was going to be before she had so much as opened her mouth.
“Yes,” she replied, finally. “Yes, I’ll stay with you.”
