Love in the Line of Fire

5

TATIANA

There was a time before you.

There was time with you.

Now there’s time after you.

I never counted on after you. I’d never be ready to deal with the time after you.

“There shouldn’t have been an after you,” I whispered as I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Two weeks without him seemed like an eternity. My fingers trembled as I reached for my phone sitting on a little nightstand.

I never got to say goodbye. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to say goodbye.

The words played on repeat. My heart thundered against my chest in a painful beat. I stared at my phone, the time staring back at me. Time was so important before. Now, it meant nothing. There was too much of it.

I set my phone down on the table, but my eyes never left it. I wanted to say goodbye. I needed to hear his voice. Just one more time. I picked up the phone again and I dialed his number. My fingers slowly traced the keyboard of my phone, pushing the digits that represented my husband’s number.

His name appeared on the screen with the picture of our first event at The Den of Sin together. I must have lost my mind because I completely forgot I could have just pulled up Adrian’s name to dial him.

The call went through and I held my breath at the first ring. Then second. On the third, he picked up.

“This is Adrian. I’m not around. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back.”

The same voice. The same light notes to his speech. His voicemail doesn’t know he’s dead, I thought with a strangled sob. If I started crying now, I’d break down. I had to keep it together.

No time to cry, my brothers’ motto.

The voicemail ended. And like a glutton for punishment, I dialed his number again. I listened to the voicemail again and again. Each time I held my breath as the line rang, expecting Adrian to pick it up. Against all odds, I hoped he’d pick up the phone.

I didn’t know how many times I’d listened to his voicemail when I finally put the phone down.

The psychologist at the hospital told me there were five stages of grief. I was still in denial. My brain couldn’t process my husband’s death. Numbness and pain was all I felt. But not even physical pain compared to the pain I felt deep inside my chest. A pain that made it hurt to breathe.

I stared at my reflection. My body seemed to be in better shape than my heart.

My forearm had a s***h down it. My shoulder was slowly but surely healing. My cheek had a gash on it. My left eye was bruised purple. My clothes hid bruises and cuts all over my body.

Two weeks. A car accident. A life forever altered.

My brothers dug for information to figure out what exactly happened that day. They hacked into city surveillance but found nothing. They questioned the hospital staff to find out who brought me in. Who saved me? Yet, they kept running into roadblocks.

They learned nothing. Only that Adrian died in the explosion.

There was nothing left of him. An explosion. His body burned to ashes. Along with my life. My memories. How did I survive? I remembered the SUV smashing into the back of Adrian’s car. I remembered our car flying through the air. Rolling. Rolling. Rolling.

Screams and pain. Then blank. Nothing. Just darkness.

Except for the nightmares that came when I slept, which wasn’t very often. I hated the nightmares.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. Focus on the good. That was what the therapist said. Focus on the good. I survived. Maybe, just maybe, I could have what I’d been begging for. A baby of my own.

My trembling hand hovered over my flat belly. Maybe God would grant me this small mercy and not leave me alone. My period was late. A whole week late.

I was never late. It had to be it. I was pregnant; I was sure of it.

The timing was bad. But the blessing would be welcomed. Something of Adrian’s to keep under my heart and with me. I’d love it enough for both of us. Our baby would want for nothing. A tremor rolled through me and pain squeezed my throat.

I swallowed a shuddering breath, trying to keep my s**t together.

“Please,” I whispered to the empty room. To my reflection. To anyone who was listening. “Just don’t leave me alone.”

My voice cracked, the empty penthouse daunting. Every little sound echoed through it. When Adrian was here, there was always noise around, even when he wasn’t around. His gadgets and computers beeping. Now, it was nothing. Just deadly silence, echoing the death in my soul.

I wiped a stray tear from my cheek. If I started crying, it’d be hard to stop. No time for tears, Vasili’s voice whispered when I was a little girl. You’re a Nikolaev.

Was I? I’d taken Adrian’s last name, so maybe that no longer counted.

The year-end approached and promised loneliness. Tears. Dull pain somewhere deep down where I didn’t dare to go. The lump in my throat grew, bigger and bigger, until my airway clogged. The back of my eyes burned. My nose reddened. An ache swelled in my lungs until it suffocated.

I felt alone. I was alone.

The pain was fresh but something deep down inside me dulled. The sharp, stabbing agony in my chest became a constant companion.

A baby would ease it, I thought desperately. Surely if there was a God, he’d grant me that.

For the first time ever, I prayed. I closed my eyes and prayed. For a baby. For inner peace. For the pain to go away. And all the while hot tears pricked at my eyes.

“Tatiana.” My brother’s voice drifted through the air and my eyes snapped open to meet his eyes in the mirror. The coldest eyes. The most broken eyes. Until recently.

Alexei.

The most fractured one of us. Although his wife mended his wounds. He even cracked a smile occasionally. If he could heal, then so could I.

Right? Then why did I feel so hopeless?

“Are you ready?”

I raised a brow, my lips curving into a bitter smile. “Am I ready to bury my husband’s non-existent body?” My lungs felt tight. My voice sounded acidic. I resented his happiness. I resented Vasili’s happiness. I f*****g resented everyone. “Sure, I was born ready for it. I am a Nikolaev after all.”

I should have known in our world something always got f****d up. Someone always died. Father died. Alexei’s life was hell because of my mother. Revenge was an ongoing theme in this life - mafia or not. Someone got to Adrian. It was the reason for the car chase. It had to be.

The question was why?

“You hate the world right now.” Alexei’s voice pulled me away from the fog of unknowns.

“I don’t—” I cut myself off. There was no sense denying it. I did hate the world. I hated that I couldn’t remember much from that night, leaving me with a million questions. I hated that the last words from Adrian that I remember were said in anger.

A bitter laugh slipped through my lips, sounding almost hysterical. My future died that night.

Alexei’s gaze, pale blue like mine, was heavy and dark, pinning me to the spot as my heart shuddered.

“He wasn’t as good for you as we hoped,” he said in a cold voice, sending a shock wave through me. “Not anymore.”

Our gazes met. My brows furrowed. Why would he say that?

Shadows in his eyes danced and threatened. He held my stare, as if he waited. Waited for what though?

“Alexei, you know something.” It wasn’t a question. My voice shook worse than my hands. The oxygen failed to make its way into my lungs. My blood started buzzing in my ears. Emotions circled like a tornado, threatening and dark. One wrong move and it’d swallow me whole. “Tell me,” I rasped.

His jaw ticked and his gaze dropped to the ground. As if he was hiding something.

I opened my mouth, but before I could question him, Vasili and Sasha walked in.

“You ready?” Vasili asked and it took all of my self-restraint not to snap at him.

Instead, I closed my eyes and prayed.