“You created perfection, honey,” she whispered, sounding happy and sad at the same time. “Congratulations, Maw-maw.”
The approval from the woman who was my rock and as close as a sister to me meant everything, but so did the fact I was finally taking my babies home with me. All of the stress and fear was over, and now they were healthy. I’d get to be with them all the time instead of during set hours.
It felt like they were finally mine.
As soon as I thought it, I had to battle the tears of happiness that were building the whole way home, determined not to give into them. It wasn’t a long journey home, but it felt like it took hours.
But finally, after what felt like a lifetime since they’d come into the world, I walked through the front door of my house and brought my boys back home.
My heart felt like it was almost full to bursting.
Almost.
Chapter Eighteen
Taras
The next person who came near me was going to end up with my knife in their neck. All day I’d had people asking for shit, raising problems, asking where the guys who’d been questioned last night were.
I was fucking done. I’d missed my sons being released from the hospital and their first car journey, and I hadn’t been there to support Nell during it either.
I couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d felt leaving them every day, but I knew how I had, and it’d been hell. Now she had the weight of being fully responsible for them, with no medical staff to help if something went wrong.
I wanted to be there to help her and to hold them. The little guys had become a vital piece of me the second I knew they existed, and I was missing them badly. I hadn’t been able to see them coming into the world, and wasn’t there for the first eight days. I’d missed enough, damn it.
And to make it even fucking better, Donna and her father, Makar, were currently sitting opposite my father, Dmitri, and I, after turning up unexpectedly.
“I’d assumed when our children fell in love that we would become a united front, Bogdan,” Makar said, his eyes fixed on Dad.
The fact he hadn’t used the title of Pakhan wasn’t that surprising, seeing as how he was the head of his own Bratva, but the tone he said Dad’s name in rankled me.
“Is there something going on that we should know about?”
Dad reached into his suit jacket, making the asshole stiffen, until he pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”
Makar shook his head, pulling a pack of Bongani cigars out of his pocket. Beside me, Dmitri made a noise when he saw the packet of the brand from Mozambique—a Portuguese speaking country, where Ribeiro and some of his allies had met publicly nine days ago.
How fucking dumb could one man be?
Lighting his cigarette, Dad inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke out again. Dmitri made a show of pulling out a pack of clove cigarettes from his pocket, taking one out and passing it to me, before putting his own in his mouth. Neither of us were smokers, per se, but now and then we’d have one.
Especially when each brand being used showed where our loyalties lay.
Makar was lifting his cigar to his mouth when he saw the pack, and his hand froze in mid-air.
The cigarettes were the brand made by the Suárez Cosa Nostra family, who made no secret of their hatred of the Azarovs, and were only shared out at private gatherings.
Playing a hand like this was all about timing. That timing increased the impact of it, and right now, Azarov had something to worry about. Either we’d kept a pack back from a previous meeting with them, or we’d met with them recently.
Which one is it, you snake?
Quickly recovering, Makar put the cigar in his mouth, making a show of lighting it as we lit our Suárez cigarettes.
“Interesting choice you have there,” he said around the cigar, looking at my hand.
“Likewise,” Dad agreed, nodding at the cigar. “Bongani. I haven’t had one of those in a while. Never appealed to me after the one I had when Ribeiro tried to kill me.”
Azarov’s eye twitched, but his expression remained impassive. “That’s a shame. They’re a good cigar.”
Looking between us, Donna threw her hands up in the air. “What is all of this with who smokes what? Papa, you said we’d come here and speak to Bogdan about the marriage. It can’t continue like this, I won’t have it.”
The petulant little princess was showing her colors.
“What won’t you have, Donna?” I asked, blowing out smoke afterward.
“You’re my husband, and you’re always away. That’s not the actions of a man who loves his wife,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest and pouting. Her play was cheap, just like her.