Sold to the Hitman(65)

I didn’t know it was possible to love anyone as much as I love my husband and son. And I never knew just how much happiness I could squish into my life.

“Was he looking at the camera this time?” I ask, coming around to lean on Andrei’s shoulder and look at the iPhone screen.

“Nyet, looking at his mama, as usual.” Andrei turns to kiss me on the cheek before doing the same to Max, who giggles again and reaches for his daddy’s face.

“You wanna go to daddy?” I coo, hugging Max close.

“Da-da,” he mumbles, his dark eyes crinkling up with delight at the mention of his father. The two of them are like two peas in a pod, totally fascinated by each other. Andrei takes Max from my arms and lifts him up, swinging him around in a circle while the baby laughs hysterically. My husband looks at Max with such tenderness and enchantment, like he’s the most wonderful creature on the planet. And Max often stares wide-eyed at his daddy, scarcely blinking, totally entranced by his every move. I can already tell that Andrei is his hero.

But he loves me, too. I’m his comfort. I’m the one he wants when he cries, when he’s hungry, when he’s scared. Andrei is the fun one, and I’m the safety blanket. We suit our roles very well, I’ve discovered. When I first met Andrei, I never would have imagined this side of him: so gentle and sweet.

Sometimes I feel like my life is too good to be true. But it’s totally real, and it’s mine.

“So what time are we leaving in the morning?” I ask, leaning forward to take a strawberry out of the picnic basket and pop it into my mouth.

“I’m thinking around eight. So we have enough time to arrive in your hometown before Isaiah’s piano lesson,” Andrei replies, retrieving a strawberry and offering it to Max. The baby takes it excitedly and starts pulling the little green leaves off the top with inexplicable glee.

“I can’t believe how fast he’s growing up,” I say, shaking my head. “Seems like just yesterday Isaiah was a baby, himself.”

“And now he’s an uncle,” Andrei says, smiling.

I grin at the idea of my eight-year-old brother being an uncle. “Crazy.”

After extensive research and intel, Andrei managed to track down my parents and Isaiah. They moved a county over from where I grew up, picking a new place to start over. Sure enough, Andrei found out through some particularly crafty sleuthing that my parents have been telling everyone that I moved to South America to be a missionary. They have no intentions of reaching out to me — I am essentially dead to them.

Honestly, even though it still hurts a little sometimes, I’ve gotten over that betrayal. My happiness with my current situation far outweighs my angst over what happened in the past. I no longer miss my mother and father. But I did miss my brother. Andrei couldn’t stand to see me suffering, and he knew how badly I wanted Isaiah to meet his new nephew.

Last month was the first time I got to see my little brother since the day of our wedding. It took a lot of secretive planning, as well as a hefty pinch of kismet, to pull it off. It just so happens that my best friend and ballet instructor Sonya has a friend named Peter who teaches piano lessons in upstate New York. Since my old teacher retired years ago and my family was new to their area, I knew my parents would be on the hunt for a piano teacher for Isaiah.

So Andrei talked to Sonya who talked to Peter, who surreptitiously put himself forward as a private piano tutor, advertising himself as a man who specializes in hymns. It didn’t take long for Jan and Arnold to sign up for Peter’s services. And it wasn’t long after that when Peter told Andrei he would be more than happy to facilitate a secret visit.

Overjoyed at the thought of being reunited, however temporarily, with Isaiah, I said yes and jumped at the opportunity. So last month we took a drive up north to see Isaiah during his piano lesson. I made him swear not to tell our parents, and he’s old enough to know how serious the situation is, at least on some level. I think he understands that if he tells anyone about the meetings, our parents will only try that much harder to keep us apart.

Tomorrow, we are going back up there to visit him for a second time. And after that, we are catching a plane to Madrid! It will be my first time out of the country. Actually, it will be my first time ever even leaving the state of New York! We’re going on a month-long tour of Europe, hitting Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland before jetting up to Siberia for a short visit to Andrei’s hometown of Yakutsk. It will be blisteringly cold there, of course, but he assures me that we will be perfectly fine. After all, there are lots and lots of people who live there year-round! I’m excited to see where my husband grew up. I know he will have to confront a lot of difficult memories, but with me beside him, I think it will be a cathartic experience.