For a moment I thought about the child I carried, one that would be raised by a man I had considered to be a monster just a few hours ago. If Gavril died, this child wouldn’t know its father. It wouldn’t realize the pain, the anguish, the brutality of the man that I had grown to love.
Hadn’t I just told him that I would tell our child about him? When I had said that, I hadn’t meant the parts I didn’t like. I would tell our child about its father who had laughed and watched movies with me. The very man that seemed to be a superhero at times with his knives and who had made certain I could protect myself.
I would tell our child of the man who had given two young girls a chance of a lifetime when he could have easily turned his back on them.
That would be the man our child would know as a father, not the Belaya Bratva’s Pakhan. No, I wouldn’t smear his name and tout the brutality, but I would try and help our child understand the man I had seen.
I dashed the tears away from my cheeks as the car rolled through the winding hills of LA, back toward the city. Gavril had reacted like he wasn’t going to make it through this war, but I knew better. He was strong, capable like Anatoly had said.
He wasn’t a man to give up so easily, and if the Krasnaya Bratva was already on its last legs, then he should be able to defeat them easily.
I needed for him to do that. I needed for this war to be over and done with quickly so that he could come after me, and we could feel out the reconnection we had felt earlier.
I didn’t want that to be our last time together.
“I hope you understand,” Anatoly said after a few minutes of driving. “That him sending you away was just as hard on him as it was on you.”
I could only hope that was right.