by Nicole Fox
So, why is Zoya different?
I close the passenger door and walk around to the driver’s side.
She isn’t. My feelings have nothing to do with her. I’m only feeling this way because Mikhail just died and I’m stressed out, and for reasons I will never understand, I feel guilty about getting Zoya fired and put in this position in the first place. Those two men never would have had access to her if she was still living in her family’s cottage on the estate.
It is just a strange mixture of circumstances and emotions that are making me feel off. Once I get Zoya to the hospital and taken care of, the dust will settle, and I’ll be back to normal.
I duck down into the car and start the engine. As I pull away from the curb, Zoya falls forward, and before I can even think about it, my arm shoots out and forms a bar across her chest, keeping her from headbutting the glove compartment. I shake my head and ease her back into the seat. I just need to get her to the hospital and everything will go back to normal.
For the rest of the drive, I slowly accelerate and transition gently to the brakes, keeping my arm on the console just in case she falls forward again.
The waiting room is empty this late in the night, and I can’t pace anymore.
Zoya was still unconscious when we arrived, and I told the nurses helping her what little I knew, but it wasn’t much. I don’t know when she got pregnant or who the father is for certain. I don’t know anything about her, and as far as I know, she is still unconscious, so I can’t ask her for clarification.
She grew up on Boris’ estate. I know that much.
Her parents have worked for our family since before she was born. I have vague memories of her running around in the grass around her family’s cottage as a kid. I never paid her much attention, though. Even as she aged and filled out. Even as her flat lines and edges curved and her clothes could no longer hide her body. I noticed, obviously, but I didn’t address it.
Not the way Mikhail did.
That is probably why she is carrying his child now. He made it apparent he was interested in her. I never did.
Because I wasn’t interested in her. I’m not.
I run a hand down my face. I know the words are bullshit even as I try to convince myself they aren’t. Of course, I care about her. I showed up at her shitty apartment in the middle of the night, for Christ’s sake. I have to care about her on some level to do that.
The important question is, why I care about her?
Is it guilt because I got her fired?
Ever since our argument in the kitchen that day, I’ve had a gut-twisting feeling, but I don’t think it is guilt. I’m not very familiar with the emotion, to be sure, but I don’t feel bad for what I did. As an employee of my uncle, she should have done her best to make sure I was comfortable. She should have jumped up and done her job without complaint. So, getting her fired seemed like an appropriate response.
Or, more likely, do I care because she is carrying my brother’s baby?
Now that Mikhail is gone, his child will be all that is left of him. Aside from me, of course. I’ve never cared about kids before, but my own niece or nephew might be different. Maybe the desire I feel to take care of Zoya is really an innate desire to protect my family, to defend my tribe.
I stand up and pace down the narrow aisle between the fabric-covered chairs. My eyes burn from exhaustion and my arms and legs feel heavy. I should be at Boris’s house asleep, preparing for another day of meetings and intimidation to ensure my family gets what we are owed. Mikhail left a shitstorm in his wake, and I’m the one left cleaning up the pieces.
Zoya, included.
Except, thinking of Zoya as Mikhail’s gives me that gut-twisting feeling again. It isn’t guilt or a desire to protect her…it is jealousy.
The fact that Mikhail fucked Zoya makes me feel sick. My hackles rise at the thought of it. And the fact that he fucked her and then got her pregnant and died, leaving her to deal with it all on her own, pisses me off, too. He couldn’t just fuck up his own life; he had to take everyone else down with him. Classic Mikhail.
No, my feelings for Zoya have nothing to do with her carrying Mikhail’s child. In fact, I care about her in spite of that.
I pace back towards my chair, and I can see the night receptionist behind the desk watching me nervously. I look like a hungry tiger pacing his cage, and I’m making her nervous. So, I sit down and before I can fully think it through, I pull out my phone.
When my mom answers, her voice is raspy. “Hello?”
“Shit,” I say, looking up at the clock on the wall. “It is so late. I shouldn’t have called.”
I hear shuffling on the other end of the line as she sits up. “Ridiculous. You can always call me. I’m your mom.”
“I’m not even calling about anything,” I admit.
“That is even better. We can just talk,” she says. “I wasn’t sleeping anyway. I haven’t been able to sleep for the past few days.”
My mother and Mikhail weren’t close for the last few years, but I know that doesn’t make his death any easier for her. She expected it, but she was still his mother. Still the woman who carried and gave birth to us both. I don’t think that is a bond that can ever be washed away.
“Are you doing okay?”
“Okay,” she says simply. Then, she sighs. “I knew he was killing himself slowly, but on some level, I didn’t really think it would ever happen.”
“Me neither.” It is true. Even when I knew Mikhail was really bad, I imagined him overdosing, being rushed to the hospital, and then having an epiphany. He would get clean, take over the family for our father, and find purpose in running it. Even after Mikhail would stumble to my apartment drunk and high and half-crazy, I always thought it would be his last bender before he cleaned himself up. Now, there wouldn’t be another chance. It was over.
“The funeral will be sometime next week. There isn’t a date set yet, but they are doing an autopsy to determine cause of death and then he will be transported back to St. Petersburg.”
“Cause of death?” I ask. “It’s a drug overdose.”
“I know, but they still have to determine it wasn’t foul play. Which isn’t so unlikely given what you both do for a living.”
“Will it be a church funeral?” I ask.
She hums a yes. “I called the pastor of a church I used to go to. He’ll preside over the funeral.”
“Mikhail will love that,” I say sarcastically. “Remember how much he hated going to church as a kid?”
She groans, though I can tell she is smiling. “I had to drag him through the doors by his collar and threaten him within an inch of his life to get him to stand up during the hymns.”
“He always took two cups of juice during communion.”
“And he’d steal yours half of the time, too.” She laughs, and when the sound fades away, we sit in the silence for a minute. “I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think forcing him into more church as a teenager would have helped.”
“No,” I agree. “Mikhail was stubborn. He would always have done exactly what he wanted. The only way his life would have turned out differently is if he wanted it to.”
There is another long pause, and when my mom finally speaks, her voice is soft. “You don’t think finding out he was going to be a father would have helped?”
I grit my teeth. “No. I don’t.”
She hums, but I can’t tell whether it is in agreement or just thought. “I think maybe it would have.”
I don’t want to ask her about Mikhail and Zoya again. Partly because I don’t want to know, and partly because I’m angry at her for not telling me the truth. I don’t want to ask again if she is just going to refuse to tell me what happened. But I’m exhausted and alone in the waiting room, and if I’m going to sit here and wait on Zoya, I deserve to know at least one goddamn thing about her life.
“How do you know Mikhail is the father?” I ask suddenly.
“It doesn’t matter h
ow I know,” she answers immediately. “I just do.”
“Fuck,” I growl. The gaunt woman behind the desk looks up at me, eyes wide, and I turn away from her. “Why are you protecting him?”
“How do you know I’m not protecting her?” she asks.
I don’t know what that means, but I latch onto it. “I’m the one protecting her,” I say. “From rival family members who showed up at her apartment tonight and wanted to beat the shit out of her.”
She gasps. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because they know about her connection to Mikhail? I don’t know enough about anything to say for sure, but I do know that I’m the one sitting here waiting for her at the hospital doing my best to protect her. Not you. Maybe you should just tell me what is going on.”
There is silence on the other end of the line, and just as my mother inhales—perhaps to finally tell me the truth—a nurse walks through the swinging doors and into the waiting room. She has curly black hair held back with a headband and a hand on her hip that lets me know she isn’t planning to wait around for me.
“The doctor will talk to you now,” she says, gesturing for me to follow her. She turns and moves back towards the doors, and as much as I want to finish talk to my mother, I can’t.
“I have to go,” I say, standing up and jogging after the nurse. “Talk later.”
I hang up before she can reply and push through the double doors.
Hospitals exist outside of day and night. It is almost four in the morning, definitely still pitch-black outside, yet the hallway is full power, bright white light. I squint against it as I follow the nurse down one hallway and then another.
I glance in dark rooms as I pass. There are sleeping lumps under rough hospital blankets and machines beeping and dispensing and monitoring.
The nurse walks down a third hallway and then turns to the right where the hallway opens into a large circular desk where nurses in scrubs work behind computers and push trays of fresh blankets from room to room. She looks over her shoulder at me and points to a woman in a white coat standing at the counter with a chart in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. Her blonde hair is smoothed back into a flat ponytail and aside from a winged eyeliner and pink lipstick, she is bare-faced. She looks up as I approach.
“You are here for Zoya Orlov?” she asks.
I nod.
“Your relation?”
I hesitate for only a second. “Boyfriend.”
“And father of the baby?”
I nod again, my stomaching turning, and I realize in that moment how much I wish it was true. Not that I want children right now, but I would rather be the father than Mikhail.
She narrows her eyes. “You told the nurses you didn’t know how far along she was in her pregnancy.”
“Was?” I ask, picking up on the past tense. “Is she not pregnant anymore?”
The doctor looks at me, assessing me, trying to determine how much she should tell me. But then she sighs and flips a page in the chart. “The baby’s heartbeat is strong and Zoya is okay, too. She was dehydrated, and based on her weight, a bit undernourished.”
Relief washes over me. “Okay. So, fluids and food. Does she need anything else?”
“A prenatal vitamin,” she says, flopping Zoya’s chart closed. “And you should have her add you as an emergency contact. Right now, there is no mention of you anywhere in her information. I probably shouldn’t have even told you as much as I did.”
“Thank you,” I say genuinely. “When can I see her?”
“Right now. She hasn’t woken up yet, but you can wait with her.” She points to the room right behind me, and I nod my head in gratitude before rushing into the room.
Zoya looks even smaller in the hospital bed than she really is. Under the dim fluorescents, her eyes look sunken in and her cheeks look hollow. It doesn’t seem like it should be possible, but she looks thinner than she did a week ago. She certainly doesn’t look pregnant.
Her brown hair is spilling out around her shoulders, and her chest is rising and falling in deep, even motions. I sit in the chair next to the bed so I won’t wake her. However, when the vinyl fabric squeals under my weight, her breath catches and she opens her eyes.
“Sorry,” I say softly, standing up and moving to the edge of the bed.
Her eyes widen when she sees me. I half-expect the heart monitor next to her bed to start beeping like crazy, but it remains steady. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought you here,” I say. “I found you outside of your apartment.”
“Those men attacked me,” she says, her delicate brow furrowed.
“They were going to.”
She looks up at me and nods, her eyes glassy and distant as she remembers the events of a few hours ago. Then, she shakes her head. “Why were you at my apartment?”
That question is more difficult to answer. I haven’t uncovered the answer myself yet, so I move around it. “You aren’t safe there. Those men were going to hurt you.”
“Because of you,” she says almost as if she is uncovering the information as she speaks. She frowns and looks down at her hands in her lap. “They said you needed to back off. They wanted me to tell you to back off.”
I take another step towards the bed, and Zoya’s eyes flash up to me. The strong, defiant woman I argued with in the kitchen a week ago is nowhere to be seen. She looks scared. Of me? I’m not sure, but I hope not. She shouldn’t be.
“Back off of what?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. They thought, for some reason, that you and I were…close. They thought I would be able to convince you.”
The way she says it, as though the idea of us being close is absurd, makes me bristle.
“Well, whatever the reason, you aren’t safe,” I say. “You can’t go back to your apartment.”
Suddenly, her blue-green eyes are on me, narrowed, and I see a flash of the strong woman I recognize. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I can’t go home.”
Home. She means Boris’s estate. That has been her home her entire life, and I made sure she couldn’t go back to it.
“You can do whatever I allow,” I say. “And you can go back to Boris’s.”
“It’s too far from my job,” she argues. “I won’t be able to make it to work.”
“Quit.”
She sighs. “I have to make money. If I don’t, then I won’t—”
“Your connection to me got you into this mess, and I’ll make sure to get you out of it.”
She closes her mouth, but I can see she is far from in agreement. “I don’t need your help.”
“Don’t you?” I ask with a dark chuckle. “It sure looked like you needed my help.”
“I don’t need it anymore,” she snaps. “I can take care of myself.”
I lean forward, my hands on the plastic rail running along the side of her bed, until my face is level with hers and we are only six inches apart. Zoya pushes her head back into her pillow until it looks like she is trying to sink into it.
“And what if you can’t?” I ask. “What if I let you go back to your new job and your shitty apartment, and then you can’t take care of yourself? What if you die?”
“What does it matter to you?” she snaps, eyes blazing green flames.
I bite my lower lip in frustration and push myself to standing. “The cottage isn’t safe, either. It is too close to the gate, and your mother can’t protect you. You will stay in my suite.”
Her face pales and she sits up straighter, the blankets falling around her waist. “No, I won’t.”
“It will only be until the threat is dealt with.”
“And how long will that take?” she asks, pushing back the blankets and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Her hospital gown is pushed up to the tops of her thighs, and I can see every inch of her shapely legs. I swallow back a spark of desire as she stands up and grabs the back of her gown to make sure it stays cl
osed.
“I’m not sure. I kind of have a lot going on right now.”
“More maids to fire?” she asks, head tilted to the side in a challenge.
“And a funeral to attend,” I say flatly.
She rights her head, and the anger in her face flattens. “Whose?”
She doesn’t know. Mikhail might be the father of her child, and she doesn’t know he is dead. I clench my hands into fists to keep them from nervously fidgeting and say it as straight as I can. “Mikhail’s.”
Her eyes widen, but rather than being flooded with grief, her face fills with pity. Her brows arch and everything about her softens. Her hands lifts like she is going to reach out and touch me, and my body tenses in anticipation. Then, at the last minute, her arm falls back to her side. “God, Aleksandr. I’m so sorry.”
I nod, wondering whether I should apologize to her, as well. Or whether I should ask outright. I know I should, but the idea of having Zoya confirm it, of hearing her say that she slept with Mikhail and the baby is his, makes me feel unsteady. It is too late—or too early—to have that kind of discussion. We are both tired.
I nod in thanks and then point to her clothes folded on the small table next to the chair. “You should get dressed so we can leave.”
She stares at me for another few seconds, and her lips move like she wants to say a hundred different things but can’t decide on one. Then, she turns and grabs her jeans.
I look towards the wall as she slips her jeans on underneath her hospital gown, but when she turns away from me and pulls the strings on the hospital gown to let it fall open, I can’t help but look. Her back narrows into a tiny waist and then flares out again towards her hips. There are two small indentations above her hip bones that I desperately want to dig my fingers into. I imagine my hands memorizing the curve of her body, my tongue licking across her ribbons, and I feel my pants become a little tighter.
Her bra is black and lacy, and I envision snapping the delicate straps with my teeth and grinding my body into her backside. How did I go years without paying Zoya any attention? How did I let her walk past me in Boris’ house without falling at her feet with my tongue dragging on the ground?
