“What did you tell her?” More babies cry when Andrik’s silence forces Mikhail to shout. “What did you tell her!”
Andrik stares his brother in the eyes, his thighs unshaking, his jaw tight as he says with remorse, “I told our grandfather to tell her you weren’t coming.” When his confession forces Mikhail to curl his finger around the trigger, he speaks faster. “Because I thought it would be better to lose her for a while instead of forever. The gender scan was in her name, Mikhail. The federation would have made the same mistake as me.”
He’s telling the truth. My mother is the director of our company, and as such, doesn’t have insurance. Back then, I was an employee with full benefits, so I booked her scan under my insurance details, as I had other medical procedures during my relationship with Mikhail. It isn’t a hard ruse for my mother to pull off. People often mistake her for my sister.
Mikhail knows this. He’s just hurting too much right now to think things through.
Andrik keeps chipping, though. “I thought I was protecting you, Mikhail?—”
“From what?”
“This,” Andrik shouts. “The pain in your eyes. The devastation I would give anything to accept on your behalf.”
“The devastationyoucaused!”
Andrik nods, agreeing with him. “Because they wouldn’t have asked questions first. They would have killed her,thensought the truth.”
There’s no denying the honesty in Andrik’s tone, but Mikhail doesn’t hear it. He is too swallowed by anger, buried with grief. He is shaking furiously as years of hurt and abuse spill from him in a brutal display of violence.
He appears seconds from killing his brother.
“Mikhail…” Zoya’s plea is as painful to hear as the cocking of the guard’s gun when Mikhail unlatches the safety. “Please. I love him.”
“That isn’t enough.” I don’t recognize Mikhail’s voice or the words he speaks.
Love was always enough for him.
He said it is the one thing that can overcome any obstacle.
I learn the cause of his backflip when he says, “Because I loved her too, andhestill took her from me.”
“He made a mistake,” Zoya says at the same time I deny his claim that love can’t achieve the impossible. “Love is enough.”
Mikhail’s stance remains firm, but I know he heard me. His cheek muscle twitches as he fights like hell not to crank his neck to face me.
Tears burn my eyes when I force eye contact. I’m not wrangling a boy hell-bent on proving that he is a man worthy of affection. I’m fighting the demons of his past, the abuse that years of love will barely touch the surface of. I am endeavoring to break through decades of trauma with three short words. “Loveisenough.”
Andrik warns me not to, but I have no reason to fear stepping into the path of a gun. Not when the man holding that gun is the love of my life.
I fill the minute gap between Mikhail and Andrik, immediately decompressing Mikhail’s compression of thetrigger, and then I peer at him over the barrel of the gun. “It can overcomeanyobstacle.”
Tears flow when I stare into the eyes of a man I will never stop loving. He’s there, hiding behind years of pain and hurt. I just need to coerce him out of the dark.
“And if you give me the chance, I will prove that to you. I will spend every day showing you that love is the only thing you need to survive. It triumphseverything.”
I hear Andrik swallow thickly when I lower myself to my knees. He isn’t fretful his cover is gone. It is from how Mikhail’s eyes immediately follow my fall, and how the deviation of his eyes adjusts the aim of his gun. It is no longer pointed at Andrik’s head. The bullet would barely graze his ear if it were to be dislodged now.
I shake my head when Andrik considers making a dive for the gun.
I’ve got this.
I’m confident I do.
A shaky breath rattles my lungs when my confidence pays dividends not even three seconds later. The gun clatters to the floor a second before Mikhail’s knees butt mine. We breathe as one when he balances his forehead against mine, and then he closes his eyes as I brush our mouths together.
“I love you, Coal,” I whisper over his lips as my relieved exhale breathes life back into his lungs. “Always have, and I always will.”
Epilogue
