I’ll protect her no matter what. I will have her back as she does mine. I just need to get her and our children out of danger first. “You’re so strong, Ahren. So fucking strong. You are a queen worthy of her throne, and you’ll never want for anything.”
When Justine peers up at me with the same adored look she wore when I freed her from Vladimir’s clutch with only the slightest carnage, my wish to go on a murderous rampage is immediately set aside. Only she can strip the carnage from my mind with one glance. Only she can break through the evil I was born shrouded in.
With her hand curled around my bristled jaw like my closeness fills her with more strength than the piercing of her nails in the calloused skin covering my hands, she bears down for the final time.
Our son’s entrance into the world is silent. He doesn’t scream like Mila did, nor does he move. He remains perfectly still—as motionless as my heart.
“What’s wrong with him?” I ask anyone listening, my voice a roar.
I’ve faced takeover bids, killed the man who raised me without any remorse, and slaughtered men in the thousands before I reached my twenty-fifth birthday, but nothing could have prepared me for the turmoil that hits me in the gut when I realize I’m incapable of saving the one thing I want to protect the most.
My children.
“Go, Nikolai,” Justine begs when they race our son to the other side of the room.
I command my legs to move, but for some fucking reason, they refuse to budge. His arms are flopped to his sides like Justine's were when she was raced into an operating theater with blood-soaked pants and a white, ashen face. His eyes are shut, and the blue mottling of his skin looks like bruises.
Those facts alone already have my hand creeping toward my knife, so there’s no fucking chance in hell I’ll hold back the urge to slit the doctor’s throat this time around. Especially if my fucked-up childhood has me mistaking the compressions he’s doing to my son’s chest as him hurting him. It’s clear he’s fighting for him as I’ll forever protect him, but it’s rare for a man born in hell to understand not everyone is evil.
I just need to remember that:
The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Relief snuffs my desire to go on a murderous rampage when I spot the faintest flutter in my son’s neck after only a handful of compressions. It's barely noticeable, but when it’s followed by the cries of a warrior clawing his way out of the trenches, it’s as satisfying as the heat of Justine’s cunt wrapped around my cock.
He fought Satan and won—more than once.
After rubbing off the murky white gunk coating my son’s skin, Dr. Goyette says, “The cord compressed his airways enough to limit his oxygen supply, but his vitals are now good. I’ll order additional tests, but for now, how about we warm him up with some skin-to-skin contact.”
Since the doctor is more barking out orders than making a suggestion, a midwife wraps our son in a blanket before handing him to the midwife who delivered Mila.
The shudders wreaking havoc with Justine’s tiny frame soothe when our twins are placed onto her chest. To maintain her modesty, the midwife then drapes a blanket over the three of them. “There you go, Mrs. Popov. Two beautiful healthy babies.”
The foreignness of being called Mrs. Popov increases Justine’s grin when she glances down at our children for the very first time. We only got married three weeks ago. Justine wanted to wait until after the twins were born to wed, but I was born into a loveless, fraudulent marriage, so I did everything in my power to ensure my children wouldn’t start their lives the same way.
It was an affair much to glamourous for a man with a heart as black as mine, but everyone in attendance enjoyed themselves—even Dimitri, who arrived a week before our nuptials with news of his own to share.
This kills me to admit, but I had no fucking clue Dimitri lived an entirely different life than what his mafia ties led me to believe. He has a wife, two children, and another on the way.
Did discovering the real reason he left Justine to face the wrath of his father alone have me forgetting everything he put Justine through? Not one fucking bit.
Regretfully, I can’t say the same for Justine.
Our children were kicking up a storm when Dimitri’s daughter unexpectedly placed her hand on Justine’s stomach. While looking into eyes identical to Dimitri’s in every way, Justine forgave Dimitri. It wasn’t the half-pledged forgiveness she offered him months earlier. She fully forgave him, because in an instant, she understood her nightmare had purpose.
Her scars will never entirely disappear; the nicks scarring her heart will last an eternity. However, even if she knew the injustices that would follow her decision years ago, my queen would have still gone on her date with Dimitri because walking through the gates of hell made her the woman she is today.
It also led her straight to me.
“I’m so fucking proud of you, Ahren,” I mutter over the coo of our children who are taking in the world like they’ve been here before.
Since she’s no longer separated from the brother she spent the last eight months in the womb with, Mila isn’t screaming her lungs out. She’s wide-eyed and alert, her baby blues studying her mother as closely as I scrutinized her through the two-way mirror at Las Vegas PD.
Even with her hair a mess and sticking to her temples, and her eyes circled with tiredness, Justine is as beautiful now as she was back then, a true angel in every meaning of the word.
And undoubtably just as stubborn.
“I’m not seeing it,” Justine mutters, her voice groggy from an excruciating fourteen hours. “Mila suits her name. It’s spunky and cute… just like her. But this little guy…” She runs the hand donning a hospital bracelet over our son’s almost red hair. “… he doesn’t look like any of the names on your list. Igor, Oleg, and Timofey are too gaunt, gothic and…”
“Evil?” I fill in when words elude her.
“Perhaps,” she answers, confident enough to speak her mind without fear of repercussion. My queen knows her place. Her crown will never slip. “Our son needs a name—”
“That ensures he won’t be messed with. It needs to be strong and abrupt,” I interrupt, confident I’m on the money. He won’t face the hell I did as a child, and the strength of his name will commence his ruling.
“No.” As Justine fists my shirt, aware my mind wandered into the bleak existence of my past, she shakes her head. “He has your blood in his veins, Nikolai. He’s already strong.”
You can’t hurt a man’s family and not expect to suffer the consequences of your actions, just like you can’t stroke your man’s ego and not anticipate an equally powerful response.
With a growl warning her not even a thousand men could stop me from kissing her right now, I tilt my mouth toward Justine’s. I get within an inch of her hungry, greedy lips when a high squawk from across the room suspends my lips midair.
“Nikolai?” Dr. Goyette twists the top half of his body to face me. “It is you.”
His eyes, although filled with fear, are nowhere near as panicked as they should be. I've killed men for interrupting me when I'm intimate with my wife. My knife would be making a mess with his jugular right now if he didn’t just save my son’s life. He also isn’t eyeballing my wife like many men do when they realize she’s my only weakness. His eyes aren’t even on my Ahren. They’re staring at the foot I almost lost when I was beaten to within an inch of my life like he’s aware not all my swagger is compliments to a massive ego.