The guilt she’d been suffering from the moment she’d felt Lekzi kick proved she already knew that. “I do not care. Morally, it should be.” It didn’t bother her in the least that she sounded as if she were a sulky child because she knew she ceased being one the moment she walked out of the TarMor building that night.
By keeping her daughter a secret, she’d started a dangerous adult game with a man one should know better than to play with. But Sacha would play. And she would win. Because the alternative wasn’t something she could live with.
If she was left to live at all.
THREE
A fucking attorney, Alek thought, swallowing a groan as he kicked a skiff of snow off the toe of his Ferragamo and followed his uncle to a bare patch of sidewalk in front of the restaurant.
Sacha, Sacha. Who have you brought into our lives, angel?
God, it felt good to think her name. He’d blocked it for so long because of the pain it brought with it.
“Maks. Come on. Anything?” he asked impatiently.
“I’m working from a goddamn toy here, my brother.” The tapping on the small screen went on without pause when another of theirs ghosted by Dmitri to enter the group.
Micha Zaretsky, Maks’s right hand spoke to him in a low voice but didn’t try to hide what he was saying. “The kid wants to know if you’re okay. He’s starting to sweat.”
Maks raised his head and blinked away a who-me? before a slow grin stretched across his face. He was touched by the concern coming from his fiancé’s twelve-year-old son who he’d recently saved from what could have been a tragic situation involving the brother of a Mexican drug lord. Thankfully, Eberto Morales hadn’t had the opportunity to do much physical damage to Andrew, but mentally, the kid was shaken up. It was too bad Eleanor, the other twelve-year-old who had been in Morales’s care, hadn’t fared so well. From what they were learning, the bastard hadn’t held back when he’d slapped his daughter around. The cowed little thing was now safe and secure in the new unit that was Maksim’s family, but, again, mental scars were evident. Probably why they all blended so well, Alek thought. Because Maks, who was now putting a call through, presumably to Andrew’s cell phone, had enough trauma in his past to permanently damage ten men.
“Russia?”
The inquiry came through the speaker on Maks’s phone because he was once again scrolling through information on the small screen. Andrew’s voice was at that in-between stage; now low, yet not childishly high anymore.
“Hey, kid.”
“You okay? Uh, mom was wondering.”
Maks stopped scrolling and exchanged an amused look with Vasily. “Yeah, we’re all good. You finished dessert?’
“What dessert?”
Maks’s face fell. “Shit.” He glared at Micha. “The fucking cake I forgot in the fridge at home. We’ll destroy it when we get there. What’s your mother doing?”
“Talking with Elli about a boy,” Andrew whispered.
Alek could have sworn Maks paled. “You fucking with me, kid?”
“Yeah.” Andrew laughed. “They’re talking to Eva about names for the baby.”
Maks rolled his eyes. “Lucky you’re not in front of me. I’d kick your ass. Tell them to pack up. You okay keeping an eye on them?”
“Sure. Uh, sorry if I bothered you, Russia. I just…you know, wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“No worries, kid. You bother me whenever the fuck you want. We’re cool.”
“Sweet. Are you close?”
“Right outside the door. Just me and the boys.”
“Okay. Later.”
As he hung up, there was a tenderness in his expression that one didn’t often see. Alek could only speak for himself when he said the role of family man wasn’t one he’d ever expected Maks to play. And play so well. Going by the satisfied glint in Vasily’s eye, he, too, liked the new development. And rightly so since he was the one who’d found Maks in an underground prison of sorts and brought him back to the States when the irreverent giant was nothing but a big, menacing teenager.
“Fuckin’ kid gets me every time,” Maks murmured as his finger began swiping. He pulled the info back down once he reached the bottom. “Okay. I’ll give you the basics now, and a shit ton of details once I get home and on my invasive little beauty.”
An affection way of describing what Alek and the boys had coined Computer Central.
“Justin Benjamin Sheppard; age thirty-four. History of private schools, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law. Currently a high-profile defense attorney working out of a mega-firm in Manhattan that his grandfather started in the seventies. Justin is now one of the Sheppards on the door. Was offered and turned down a position to serve as Special Counsel to the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development—who just so happens to be his fucking godfather.” He gave Alek a sidelong look and an irritating wink. “You into appreciating some irony right now?” He blinked innocently when he got a glare. “Too soon?”