Three Weeks. Five Days. Three Hours.
Every day that passes, the stronger Ivelisse becomes. We’ve been home, in our new place for the last two weeks. I didn’t want to bring her back to the house because I know how painful it is to be there. I’ve had a crew working on tearing the whole place down to the ground and rebuilding so I can sell it off.
The penthouse I bought is nice, but it isn’t the place we started our lives together.
Walking into the bedroom, I see Ivelisse laying on her back in the center of the bed. Her eyes are closed as she bobs her head to some unknown beat. Getting on the bed by her feet I slowly crawl forward until I’m hovering over her body. She’s finally started to gain back some of her weight, but she still has a ways to go.
“Doll,” I murmur, pressing my mouth against hers. Her eyes open and I see a glimpse of the girl she was before the shooting.
“Hi, baby.” She reaches up and wraps her arms around me, pulling my body down onto hers. The doctor said to take it easy and to not rush the sexual aspect of our relationship. So as hard as I’ve been trying to not fuck her the last few days, she’s made it the exact opposite of easy. Three nights ago when I got home, she was laying on the bed in nothing but a pair of sexy heels that Harlyn bought for her.
I couldn’t say no to that, no man could. I fucked her slowly that night, memorizing every inch of her body with my mouth. She was mad because I wouldn’t fuck her hard or rough, but I wasn’t ready to see her in pain again.
“What are you doing?” I ask. I trail one of my fingers down her body and I feel her shiver.
“I was waiting for you to come home.” Her speech has gotten better with the help of a speech therapist and she’s been working with a trainer to strengthen her body back up. She doesn’t stutter unless she’s pissed at me or really excited.
“Well, I’m here now.” I run my tongue along her neck and blow air on the wet spot. Her body arches into me and her fingers dig into the sides of my suit jacket. “What can I do for you?”
“I want a baby.” Her words cause me to freeze. I look into her eyes and still see the pain there. She can’t hide it from me anymore than I can hide it from her.
“It’s too soon, doll.” I swallow around the lump that’s forming in my throat. “Plus I don’t want to bring a child into this until I know for sure the threat against you is eliminated. I can’t lose another child.”
“You don’t love me anymore,” she whispers.
Grabbing her face with my thumb and forefinger, I force her to look at me. I take the weight I’m holding up and I let my body sink into hers. “Don’t.” She tries to move out of my grip, but it’s no use. “Don’t ever say I don’t love you. I watched you almost die. I’ve been by your side every day since that night. I love you more than I’ve ever thought possible. That night my whole world went dark. I was a fucking mess. Without you I’m nothing.” A tear slips out of her eye, so I wipe it away with my thumb.
“Then why can’t we have a baby? We were going to be parents before…” She trails off and doesn’t finish her sentence.
“That’s why,” I state. I’m not trying to be a dick to her, but we need to grieve. We need to be able to move on from the shit she went through and having another baby won’t do that. We need to get back to being us first. “We need to grieve the loss of the baby, Ivey. If we don’t, we are going to fall apart. I don’t want you to resent me for this shit, but I also don’t want you to resent our next child because of what happened. We need to be a hundred percent sure that we are ready and that you are out of harm’s way.” She doesn’t say anything, but she nods her head slightly. “We need to get back to being us. I miss being the couple we were.”
“How do we go back to that?” Her lips tremble as she speaks the words. It breaks my heart seeing her in this much pain.
Brushing the hair out of her eyes, I press a kiss to her lips. “We talk it through. Tell me how you’re feeling. If you feel like crying, tell me. I’ll be the one holding you and wiping the tears from your eyes. Just don’t shut me out.” I brush her cheek with my finger and she bites her lip.
“I’m sorry I’ve been shutting you out. I just don’t know how to deal with it. I feel like half of my heart has been ripped out. How do you not break down?” I close my eyes. She doesn’t know that I shut myself in my office and break down. I don’t let her see me being vulnerable. It’s not the type of man I am.
“I don’t let you see it,” I admit. “When I shut myself inside my office, it’s because I’m trying to be the strong one here. I don’t want you to comfort me when I should be comforting you.”
Her eyebrows furrow together and she opens her mouth but closes it quickly. “You let me think that you don’t even care that our baby is gone.” She punches my chest and I just let her. “I thought you didn’t care that we lost the baby. That you didn’t care that I’ve been slowly dying inside.” The rivers of tears that fall down her face cause me to push my body up and off of her.
“I thought you didn’t care.” She sobs. She turns to her side facing away from me and curls up in a ball. Her cries are muffled by the blanket, but it doesn’t hurt any less.
I don’t know how we got here. I don’t know how to help her or myself anymore. I’m failing at the most important part of this marriage and I don’t know if I can save it. “Ivelisse.”
She doesn’t move from her spot, but the sounds of her cries get louder. Lying on my back on the bed, I stare up at the ceiling. I’ve fucked this up so badly that I don’t even know how to fix it. “I’ll never stop loving you, that much I know. I will never stop protecting you, even if it’s from myself.” With that, I get off the bed and make my way to my office. I need to think, but I also need to see where Stav and Ilias are with the problem at hand – finding information on the hit.
It feels like hours have gone by when I finally open the door to my office. Looking out the door, I see her body curled up on a chair just outside of the room. Kneeling down in front of her, I lift her head up so I can see her beautiful face. “What are you doing out here?” She shrugs her shoulders, but I know she knows. “You could have come in.”
“I heard you,” she whispers. I close my eyes and try to keep the anger at bay. I don’t want to lash out at her like I did last time I was pissed. She doesn’t deserve that. No woman does.
“Heard what?” I ask. I have no idea when she came over here and sat outside the door. She could have heard a number of things.
“Everything. The crying, the conversations, the breaking of glass, I heard it all.”
I sit on my ass and just stare at her. I don’t have the words to say how I feel. I don’t know if she wants me to say sorry that I don’t let her see that part of me, but I won’t. I’m the man. I don’t break down and cry about losing a child to the woman who didn’t even know she lost our child until she woke up from a coma.
“Nikolai.” She starts but doesn’t finish. Instead, she sinks off the chair and wraps her arms around me. “I’ve been selfish not caring how you felt or if you were grieving. I want so bad for our baby to still be here that I would do anything, including getting pregnant again right now. But right now, the only thing I want to do is hold you.”
She doesn’t wrap her arms around me like she’s done a million times. Instead, she just waits patiently for me to say something. “I love you, Ivelisse and I’d do anything for you, but a baby isn’t going to fix this.” She closes her eyes, tears falling down her cheeks. “I’ll give you time if you want that, but you’re not walking away from this marriage. We are going to get through it together.” Grabbing the back of her neck with my hand, I pull her into my lap. She straddles me and puts her forehead against mine.
“I love you so much, Nikolai Aleksandar Levin.” Just hearing her use my whole name brings me back to the day of the shooting. How happy we were before I left the house and how pissed my uncle was that I was late. He knew. “I need to make a call, doll.”
She doesn’t move from her spot, and I don’t force her to. Moving her just enough to grab my phone from my pants, I dial Ilias’ number and wait for him to answer. “Hey boss, I was just about to call you,” he states with a serious tone.
“He was pissed that I was late that night. He said that they had been waiting for me before Stavros told me I had a hit on me.” I feel Ive’s body tense on me and I run my hand down her back and continue talking. “It was probably less than ten minutes after I sat down that my phone rang saying that there were gunshots at the house. That son of a bitch knew.”
Ive takes her head off my chest and looks at me. She has a freaked out expression on her face and I try to calm her down without letting her get worked up too much about it.
“He called a meeting today. I’m on my way there right now.” I frown, meeting?
“I wasn’t told about a meeting.” I look at Ivelisse and she looks worried.
“You weren’t? He said that all the higher ups were going. I thought for sure you were going.” I shake my head and go to stand up. I bring her up with me and set her on her feet. Grabbing her hand, I drag her down the hallway towards the bedroom.
“Ive, I need you to pack clothes. Get clothes for both of us.” She nods her head and grabs a bag from inside the walk-in closet and starts to put some jeans and sweats of hers in the bag. “Ilias, he’s going to come after me and Ivelisse. I’m going off the grid. I need you to make sure nothing happens to Harlyn and Ruslan. You are the only other person who knows where they are. If something happens to me, make sure you tell Stavros where they are. He can protect them.”
“Got it, boss. I’ll call the burner when I get out of the meeting and let you know what’s going on.” I thank him before hanging up and call Stavros.
“What?” he bites out. He’s been irritated over the last few weeks since Harlyn still isn’t taking his calls.
“I think Uncle Viktor is coming after me and Ive. I need a place to lay low and go off the grid completely.”
“Fuck,” he mutters into the phone. “What about the cabin I have in the mountains? It’s off the beaten path. No one in the club even knows about it. I have a few precautionary measures in place as well. If someone hits a certain part of the property, you’ll know about it.” I grab a few things out of my drawers and hand them to Ivelisse to put inside the bag.
“That works. You sure no one knows about it?” I ask. “It can’t be traced back to you?”
“No. I have it under an alias. It’s impossible to trace back to me, but I suggest you get rid of the phone you have and the car. They will be tracing both if they really want you both dead.”
“Yeah, I got a burner that Ilias knows. If you need to get ahold of me, call him.”
“Got it. Key is under the deck. Call if you need anything.”
“Thanks, brother,” I say before I hit the end button and drop the phone on the ground, crunching it under my shoe.
Once everything we need is packed, I go into the office and grab the computer and the burner. I grab everything important and shove it inside the computer bag. I also get as much cash as I can from the safe and shove it into the bag. Grabbing the keys to my car and my gun, I make my way back to Ive and see her sitting on the bed. I reach for her chin and point her face up to look at me. “I won’t let anything happen to you this time.”
A ghost of a smile forms over her lips as she looks up at me. “I trust you, babe. I love you.”