NIKOLAY
Fuck.
How had I not seen this coming?
I had been the one to tell her how badly I wanted kids with her, and this whole time, she’d been carrying the weight of this on her too-small shoulders.
It was all my fucking fault.
I tightened my arms around her, and every tear I felt of hers seeping through my shirt was like a whip’s lash against my skin.
And I had done the asshole thing and forced the answer out of her this way.
I didn’t often feel regret or guilt.
But there was a weight on my chest that seemed to be holding me down, and I didn’t know what to do to get rid of it.
I kissed her forehead, unable to say anything and knowing that even if I could find the words, she wasn’t listening right now.
She was stuck in her own little world.
All I could do was hold her.
So that was what I did.
I held her until her sobbing turned into soft whimpering, then until it became nothing but the occasional hiccup, then until there was only silence in this room.
It took me a moment to realize she had fallen asleep in my arms.
Poor baby.
She’d cried all her energy away.
I stayed with her, staring at the space on the wall distractedly.
She moved a little against me, murmuring something in her sleep. I tightened my arms around her, hoping it would be enough to stave off any nightmares that plagued her.
The way she reacted to telling me was strong.
I didn’t think her infertility was the whole story. There might be something else there. I just didn’t know what that was, and something told me it might have to do with Agnello.
If she knew she was infertile, then it meant Agnello had her checked.
That would make sense.
Women in this world were seen as nothing more than broodmares.
Did she somehow tie her worth to her inability to have children?
My jaw clenched from the thought, and I wanted nothing more right now than to kill the bastard.
My heart burned with anger.
One of these days, I was going to take away all her demons, starting with tearing Angelo Agnello into a million little bloody shreds.
The door opened, and Mikhail walked in, looking tortured. Catalina hadn’t been quiet when she told me, and I was sure he heard.
“You shouldn’t have done this to get her to confess,” he said, a twitch moving in his jawline.