Viktor
It’s the morning after I’ve brought Millie home from the hospital, and I’ve only just woken up to see her sleeping peacefully as the cool autumn sunlight streams in through the space between the blinds.
For the first time, I’m noticing things about her that I feel like I’ve never even seen. The way her eyelashes fan out perfectly along the ridge of her closed eyes makes them almost look fake. The slight glow of her skin catches the light in such a picturesque way that I couldn’t capture it in a photo if I tried.
She looks like a painting, and I get to experience her right next to me in the real world.
I don’t want to wake her up yet, so I slip out of bed as quietly as possible, shifting her arm off my body as gently as I can. She’s so good at hiding her pain that you’d never know she was in a crash just a week before, but I can’t let her pride keep me from taking care of her.
The floor is cold on my feet as I walk out to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. As much as I want to stay in bed next to Millie, I have important business that I need to address, and I have no idea how to go about it.
Katya has been looking around for her father since the day he died, and the longer I wait to tell her what happened, the less likely she’ll be to forgive me.
I don’t even know if I’ll get to tell her the full story before she breaks down into hysterics. She had a complicated relationship with her father, but I know she did her best with him.
The second issue is that we’ve still never settled the war established between my men and the rival gang who attacked us. Now that I’ve got a baby on the way, it’s put so much into perspective that, for the first time, I feel terrified that someone I love will really be hurt. Even though there’s a code of conduct to leave the families alone, I don’t trust anybody enough to risk my family.
As I look out the window at the city skyline, I can’t help but notice the beauty of the sunlight caught in the windows of the skyscrapers that stand directly at eye level to the penthouse. Millie has shown me how to appreciate beauty like this, how to see it in the little things when I’ve never even looked before.
My chest feels heavy with the weight of my newfound responsibilities, and I realize now more than ever that I need Millie as my partner in life. She’s everything to me, and I don’t know what I would do without her.
The coffee is bitter and damn near boiling, which is exactly what I need to wake me up out of my half-asleep daze.
I groan as I remember the meetings I’d had planned for the day, booked for at least five hours with back-to-back bullshit. All I want to do is crawl into bed with Millie again, letting the worries of the outside world dissolve as I feel her kissing me sweetly in the way that only she does.
I decide to move some things around in my schedule, claiming a vague sick leave that nobody can confirm or deny, and I excitedly make my way back into the bedroom where I see Millie emerging out of sleep herself.
She blinks a few times, smiling at me and reaching her arms out for me to meet her back in bed. “Where did you go?” she asks, her voice sleepy and still a bit disoriented.
“I thought I was going to get ready for the day, but I decided there’s no ‘day’ anymore. I’m staying in with you,” I reply, and she tries to conceal an ecstatic grin as I crawl back under the blankets with her.
She wraps herself around me as tightly as she can, and I inhale the smell of her skin and her hair as if it’s the last time I’ll ever see her. She’s so enchanting to me, so pure and precious.
“Hey, so I actually had an idea,” she continues as she tries to sit herself up in bed, succeeding without my help for the first time since she came home. “Yeah? What’s up?” I ask her, still bracing my hand against her back to help her stay up even though she doesn’t need the support anymore.
“I was wondering if maybe we could have Nikolai run the bakery while I’m pregnant? I was trying to think of a perfect solution that involved me working still, and I just don’t think I can do it. Nikolai can, though,” she says, her eyes sparkling in the morning sun as she waits for my response.
“Honestly, I think that’s a great idea, and I think he’d feel a lot more fulfilled that way than what he’s been doing for me,” I reply.
“He took to the work so well the few times I was teaching him, and he has a natural talent for cooking and baking, which makes me a little jealous, to be honest,” she says, turning her body toward me and lazily draping her wrists over my shoulders.
“Do you want to talk to him, or do you want me to?” I ask. While I know I’m already insanely busy, Millie is both pregnant and recovering from a car crash that I caused, so I don’t want to put the additional pressure on her.
“I can do it. If he comes over sometime, I can discuss it with him. Honestly, I think he would be really excited about it. That way, I can spend more time with the baby when she comes,” she says.
“She?” I ask.
“Yes. She’s a girl,” Millie replies, trying as hard as she can to conceal her excitement.
The thought of having a daughter with Millie makes me feel like my chest could cave in from happiness. I’ve never been so completely happy to be alive in my entire life.
After the way I was raised, I never knew that people could truly feel content in life, and here I am lying next to the woman I love more than anything on the planet who is pregnant with my baby girl.
I carefully embrace her, avoiding the spots on her back and arms that I know still hurt. She hugs me back, and I can feel her little fingers pressing into me as she holds me tight.
At the thought of being a father to a girl, I’m reminded of the grim news that I have to deliver to Katya sooner than later. My happiness is overcome by anxiety, and I suddenly want to run away and hide from the world all over again.
“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” Millie asks anxiously, putting her hand on my chest as I lie flat on my back.
“I still have to tell Katya what happened. She’s used to Stepan leaving for days on end on drinking binges, but she’s never seen him gone longer than a week,” I reply.
Millie sits up, slowly lifting herself off the bed, and turns towards me. “How does she not know already? Her father is dead. Is she at least worried or suspicious of something?” she asks me.
I shrug. “Like I said, being gone isn’t necessarily unusual for him. She probably wouldn’t start to really worry for another couple of days, if I’m being honest,” I reply, remembering all of the times I saw Stepan and Svetlana fighting before he would disappear for days on a bender.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” she asks, her expression growing nervous. I’m sure she expected me to have had this conversation already.
“I mean, what am I supposed to expect? I’m about to tell her that her domineering gangster father was killed, and that I killed him. There are a lot of directions that this could go,” I reply, feeling the tension rising in myself.
She touches me lightly, her eyes ripe with sympathy. “I know you’ll do your best, Viktor. It’ll be okay.”
I smile at her. Of course, it will be okay. With her, the entire world could come crashing down, but I’d still be happy as long as I have her and our precious girl.