The Score (25 page)

Anton was fine with that. He took the first hit with brutal force, knocking his friend straight to the ground. Blood spilled instantly from the broken nose Ivan now sported. Anton didn’t need more than one hit. He just needed to get the anger out, the anger he’d felt was misdirected towards his wife. Anton stood above his friend and shrugged, sticking out his hand to offer the man a way up from the ground. Ivan took it while wiping away the blood with his free hand.

“Didn’t need more than the one,” Anton muttered.

Ivan huffed under his breath. “Go home, Anton.”

“I am. I need a fucking drive.”

***

The Oceana house was dark when Ivan dropped Anton off in the driveway. His friend handed over a set of keys to the house before telling Anton to get himself in check before he went back to work again.

Anton agreed.

Inside his house, all was quiet.

Anton found Clarissa drinking a cup of tea at the kitchen island.

“Hello, Anton. I guess I should say a belated welcome home.”

“Sure. Thanks. Where’s my wife?”

“Sleeping. It’s well after eleven. If you’re here to hurt her in some way, you can leave, Anton.”

Anton barely held back his shock. “Pardon me?”

“I loved your step-grandfather. Knew his mind and heart in ways you couldn’t possibly understand. The only thing he loved more than his family and his Bratva was a girl he couldn’t raise himself. I watched that girl break to pieces all week over you. I imagine something happened, and I don’t care much to know about it, but I won’t watch her hurt like that for another week.”

Anton felt a need to apologize, and he didn’t even know why. “I’m not going to hurt her.”

“Good,” Clarissa muttered into her cup. “Also, your son is in his room, likely playing with his toys again. Viviana needs rest, and that child just won’t go to sleep until his little body shuts down and forces him to. If you could handle that, I’d be grateful and so would your wife.”

Like an idiot, Anton nodded. “Okay.”

“And call your mother first thing in the morning. That poor woman is going out of her mind.”

“Okay,” he repeated.

“You can go now, Anton.”

“Thank you, Clarissa … for everything.”

The maid smiled. “Don’t screw it up, Anton.”

Demyan’s bedroom door was wide open, but someone had placed a safety gate in the doorway to keep him from getting out. Sure enough, inside the lit up room was his son, playing with Rocco and his matchbox cars. On his nightstand was a plastic cup, still half-filled with red juice. Demyan’s familiar blue eyes were tainted with the darkness of someone who needed sleep, and he didn’t even notice Anton standing just beyond the safety gate. Even Rocco, almost asleep, didn’t notice his shadow.

Why wasn’t his child sleeping?

Hadn’t Viviana said their son was sleeping in their bed?

“Demyan, what time is it, little man? I think it’s your bedtime.”

Demyan’s head jerked up at his father’s voice. “Papa …?”

Fuck, his boy didn’t even seem like he believed what he was seeing. Anton watched fat tears slide down his son’s cheeks. All over again, his heart broke. Finally, Rocco woke up to the commotion, giving a quiet bark in welcome, but that was all. Anton ripped the safety gate from the doorway when he couldn’t get the latch to work under his shaking hands.

“Come here, Demyan. Come to Papa.”

Demyan was up off the floor before Anton blinked, his little hands reaching, making grabbing motions towards his father. “Up, Papa!”

Anton cradled his son, holding him tight and saying nothing for minutes. His chest ached when tiny fists wrapped into his T-shirt and refused to let go. “God, I missed you. I’m home, little man. I promise.”

“Papa’s
malysh
,” Demyan whispered.

“My boy,” Anton echoed. “Always, Demyan.”

“Ma?” Demyan asked.

“Yeah, we’ll go get Ma.” As he walked down the hallway towards the master bedroom, still holding his son, Anton asked, “Why aren’t you sleeping, Demyan? It’s bedtime.”

“Papa comin’ … Ma said,” Demyan told him, his childish voice groggy.

Anton’s heart rate picked up at that revelation. Viviana had told Anton she let Demyan know he would be home soon. To know his son refused to sleep because he was waiting for his father was an awful feeling.

God, he was a shitty husband and father. Selfish as fuck.

That ended immediately.

“I’m sorry, little man. But, Papa’s home now, so you have to sleep, Demyan.”

“Sleep. S’bedtime,” his son mumbled.

“That’s right. It’s bedtime.”

“With Papa and Ma.”

Well, Anton wasn’t about to deny his boy that. “For tonight. Tomorrow night, it’s your bed.”

“M’kay, Papa.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Silently, Anton pushed open the door to the master bedroom, his gaze instantly zoning in on the sleeping woman he’d missed so fucking much. Viviana wasn’t even curled up on her side of the bed, she was wrapped in blankets on his side. Anton didn’t even make it two steps inside the room before his wife was sitting up in their bed, a choked noise falling from her lips as she caught sight of Anton holding Demyan.

“Please don’t take him …”

Anton shook his head, stopping whatever crazy thought she had before she could finish it. “He wants to sleep with his mother and father tonight. I thought it’d be okay, if it’s fine with you, baby.”

Viviana blinked, sniffling. “He won’t sleep at all. Clarissa basically yelled at me to go lay down. I’ve been up with him all week.”

Shifting the already sleeping boy on his shoulder for his wife to see, Anton placed Demyan on the bed with his mother. “He’s sleeping, now.”

“That’s good. He needs it.”

“And so do you,” Anton murmured.

Viviana sobbed, turning her gaze down to their son. Anton knew that look on her face—shame. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t. I don’t need to hear it, honestly. I know you are and that’s enough. I was so fucking angry all week, and I just couldn’t get rid of it. I was scared to death if I came home, I was going to hurt you. I love you. I should never, ever want to hurt you, Viviana.”

“You’re home, now,” she said softly.

“I am, and I’m not going anywhere. I should have called, or something. I know. I was being selfish.”

“No, you needed space. Time to think.”

Anton shrugged. “In a way. What I needed more was to calm down; I wasn’t in control of myself. Anger can be just as much a drug as it is a poison. Nothing gives me the right to call you names—and you’re not, Vine.”

“Not what?”

The word stuck in his throat. “A whore, or anything like that. I know you’re not. I know you’re faithful, devoted, mine. I know all of those things. I shouldn’t have said that word and put you in the same sentence. I’m sorry.”

Even in the darkness, Anton could see the tears she refused to acknowledge. “I’ve only been yours. I’m only ever going to be, Anton.”

“Yeah, I know. Listen, I don’t like what happened, and I’m really not okay with it, but I get it. I understand why you did it. But I don’t ever want to talk about it, Viviana. Ever. I’ve had to think about it all fucking week and that was enough. So after tonight, don’t bring it up to me. Don’t you ever do it again, either, no matter what happens to us. If you do, baby, if you do that to me again …”

He couldn’t even finish the thought running through his mind.

“Okay,” Viviana said, nodding. “Ever. Never. I get it. Is that all you needed to say?”

“That’s all I can give you right now, Vine. And I love you.”

Viviana moved on the bed, making room for Anton to climb in. Between them, their son was snuggled in tight, snoring away. Over his prone form, Anton skidded his hand along the blankets until he found his wife’s.

“But I wanted to hear you tell me why, Viviana. From your mouth.”

“I couldn’t not have you,” she said brokenly. “What was I going to do without you?”

Yeah, he figured that out a long time ago, too.

“Love you,” Anton repeated. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that all week.”

“I love you, too.”

“I know. That’s what kills me, baby.”

***

Light filtered into the bedroom, and Anton groaned, not feeling as though he’d slept nearly enough. Childish giggles sounded from his left, making Anton turn to see what had his son so happy.

Demyan, on his side with his back turned to his father, poked his sleeping mother’s stomach and laughed again. Anton’s brow furrowed as his vision cleared of fatigue. He couldn’t figure out what in the hell his son was doing until Demyan poked Viviana’s rounded midsection again. Under the thin shirt she wore, tiny movement responded back to the poke.

“Demyan,” Anton whispered, admonishing his son while trying to hide his humor. “Don’t poke Ma, that’s not nice.”

He reached out to pull his giggling son into his side, then pressed his opened palm to Viviana’s stomach. Under his palm, his baby kicked. It was the first time he’d felt the baby move and his heart swelled at the sensation.

Damn, he loved his wife.

“Not Ma,” Demyan said, staring up at his father and grinning. “That’s baby Ana. Ma says so.”

Baby Ana
.

Oh, hell.

They were having a little girl. The girl Anton wanted.

A girl. Sweet in pink, her daddy’s little princess, and beautiful.

Ana
.

Anton was so stuck on realizing his second child was a girl that he barely recognized the squirming dance his son was doing in the middle of the bed. But when Demyan began grabbing at his groin, Anton snapped out of it.

“Go pee, kiddo.”

“Okay!”

Demyan didn’t waste time crawling off the bed and disappearing into the master bath.

With his son out of sight, Anton let his hand travel up from Viviana’s midsection until he stopped at her cheek. Sleeping, she looked so peaceful and at rest in the morning light. Anton rolled his thumb along her cheekbone, soaking in the love that still suffocated every fiber of his being.

“Love you, Vine.”

Viviana smiled, letting her husband know she wasn’t really sleeping. “Do you?”

“Like crazy. In a way that says there’s got to be something fucking wrong with me. So, Ana, huh?”

“For your grandmother, and me, sort of. I liked it. She seems like an Ana.”

Anton moved across the bed, kissing his wife until her pretty brown eyes opened wide to stare into his. The feeling of her lips on his reminded Anton of every reason why he loved his girl.

“Is Ana a good name?” Viviana asked when Anton pulled away.

“Ana’s great, baby.” Anton found his wife’s hands with his own, intertwining their fingers before he tugged her into his chest. “And so are we.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. New day, you know. Do you always let him poke your stomach like that? Because when I used to do it—”

“You’re a grown man, Anton.”

“So? Demyan seemed to like it.”

“This baby isn’t Demyan.”

“Well, she seems to like it.”

Obviously realizing she wasn’t going to win the argument, Viviana rolled her eyes and giggled. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Yeah, but I’m your kind of ridiculous.”

“Good thing.”

Anton knew they had a ways to go, but oddly, this didn’t feel like an end.

It was a beginning.

“We’re okay,” Anton said in the morning light, wanting his wife to know again. Viviana graced him with a smile. “We always were, baby.”

“Always,” she echoed.

Nearly four months later, Ana Christina began to make her show into the world five days before her due date. Unlike the birth of their son that went without issue, Ana’s was not the same. Anton could tell that from the very beginning when his wife woke him not long after he’d fallen asleep early that night, swearing she couldn’t do it alone because the minor contractions were so awful already.

She took hours, Ana did. They weren’t easy hours. They were the kind of hours that ripped every bit of strength Viviana had left away and left her weak and exhausted. For a second child, a second birth, the doctors were confused. Viviana’s body should have responded better, it should have understood what it needed to do. Instead, she struggled through contraction after contraction, never dilating enough for pain medication until ten hours turned into twenty, and those twenty turned into thirty-two.

The entire time, Anton felt so lost. Viviana could handle pain. Of that, Anton was most sure. This wasn’t the same. It was brutal. Her whimpers, her tears. They tore him to shreds. It hurt him even more when she begged him to promise no more children. She didn’t want to do it again.

Anton made that promise, though.

Unable to help his wife, all the while watching the monitors around them, Anton was unsure of what he was seeing. And then the baby heart monitor, the one keeping track of little Ana’s heart, stopped showing life.

Suddenly it wasn’t about waiting anymore, it was about rushing.

Ana was born in to the world late in the evening of December twenty-eighth. She’d been without oxygen for minutes. Her cord had somehow detached. From the very start, she showed not only how much of a fighter she was, but that she was also trouble. Once they got her breathing, she started to cry. Anton was pretty sure his daughter cried nonstop for the first three years of her damned life, but he didn’t care.

Anton loved his dark haired, brown-eyed daughter from the first second he laid eyes on her. She looked just like her mother, but with blue-black hair like his. Five tiny fingers on her small right hand curled around his thumb inside the incubator and just like that, their home was filled, all pain and fear from the day forgotten.

Ten tiny fingers.

Blue-black hair.

And the brownest, prettiest eyes.

“Papa?” Demyan asked as he stared into the incubator, confused.

“That’s baby Ana,” Anton tried to explain.

Demyan made a face. “No, that’s not baby Ana.”

Anton chuckled. Attempting to explain to Demyan that his baby sister wasn’t his mother’s stomach was not an easy thing. The kid was so damned stubborn about everything. Just like his father. Not to mention, it was clear he was also jealous. Viviana and Anton expected that, though. It was normal.

“No, that is baby Ana.”

“That’s yucky.”

“Demyan, don’t call your sister yucky.”

“That’s yucky,” his son repeated seriously.

Viviana giggled from her spot in the rocking chair three feet away. She was still healing from the C-section and walking could be an awful experience. “It’s the sibling kind of love already. If we’re lucky, yucky will be the nicest thing he calls her.”

“Vine,” Anton groaned. “Don’t jinx it, baby.”

Over his shoulder, Anton met his wife’s gaze and caught her smile with his own. They’d had a rough few months together. Hell, they had a rough fucking year. Eventually Anton learned what he needed to do was put his mind and thoughts to the side, and let his heart take back over.

Trust was rebuilt.

Those cracks in the foundation were filled.

Anton learned he didn’t have to feel like he owned her, to own the best parts of her. Viviana gave them willingly, in any case.

They were okay.

So okay.

God, he loved his wife. Like crazy. Like nobody understood.

Viviana’s smile turned into a knowing grin. “Love you, too.”

“Still kills me, baby.”

Because he could be a lot of things. A monster. A man. Overwhelmed. Exhausted. Loving. Unsure. Her husband. Their children’s father. The Bratva boss. He could be so goddamn bad, or so fucking good. Sometimes love hurt, sometimes it suffocated.

Sometimes it just consumed.

She didn’t care. Viviana loved him, anyway.

Yeah, it killed him. But in the best way.