“I’ll be sleeping on top of the blankets,” she informed him as she climbed into his bed. Then she immediately gave him her back.
Nikolai gritted his teeth and turned off the lamp for another first: sleeping, and only sleeping, next to a woman.
But she was here, he told himself as he yanked the covers up over his shoulder. By his side and in his bed, which was where a wife belonged. That was enough for now, he thought, lying awake in the dark long after she’d fallen asleep. It would have to be.
BUT IT WASN’T ENOUGH…
The next morning when Nikolai woke, he found himself in bed alone. His wife’s scent, a mixture of whatever she used in her hair and the perfume she’d spritzed on for the wedding, lingered, filling up his nose. But her side of the bed was now empty.
Dread icicled its way up his chest. He was a naturally early riser and Sam had never gotten up before him. Not once.
He rushed out of the room, not stopping even long enough to throw on a robe. Alarm bells rang loud in his head as he bounded down the hallway and pushed open the door to his wife’s old room. She wasn’t there, and the icicles inside his chest turned sharp, spiking into his heart as he went across the way to Pavel’s room, throwing open his nephew’s door.
Pavel’s room was empty, too.
Nikolai bolted downstairs, needing them to be at breakfast. Hoping to the God he’d never bothered with that they were in the kitchen, eating bowls of cereal.
He stopped short in the kitchen doorway, his heart freezing with horror inside his chest.
Because the only one sitting at the island was his father, Sergei.
His father smiled at him in that predatory way of his. “Nikolai, you finally woke up. I thought you would sleep all day.”
“Where are they?” Nikolai demanded.
“Where is who?” Sergei asked him in Russian. “Only I’m here. Come with me now. I have a job for you.”
“Tell me where they are,” Nikolai growled, stepping forward, only to feel something slick underneath his feet.
He looked down. Blood. A puddle of it, covering his bare feet. For a moment, Nikolai couldn’t speak for the fear clogging up his throat.
But eventually he looked back up at his smirking father. “If you’ve hurt them…”
“You will what?” Sergei asked with an arrogant laugh. “Kill me? You had your chance and now you are powerless to do that to me, boy.”
It was hard to fully process Sergei’s words through his near blinding rage, but Nikolai managed to choke out. “Where are they? Tell me.”
Sergei’s voice suddenly turned dark. “You know where they are, you sniveling boy,” he sneered. “A black grandchild and a black wife for my only son? You knew I wouldn’t allow that. They are exactly where they should be now. At the bottom of river with four shots in each of their bodies.”
His father, who’d taken nearly every other family member who mattered to him had now taken his wife. His nephew. And his unborn child.
“No!” Nikolai roared. Despair tore through his insides and his entire body went cold with the realization he’d never see Pavel or his wife again. Never hold the baby he and his wife had created in his arms.
The next thing Nikolai knew, his hands were around his father’s thick neck “Bastard. Bastard!!”
His father only laughed, as if Nikolai’s choking hands were but a necklace around his muscular throat. “No, there is only one bastard here.”
“Nikolai…” Samantha’s voice said somewhere in the distance.
Nikolai let go of his father’s neck, his head whipping from side to side. That was his wife’s voice. But how? She was dead!
“Nikolai!” Her voice again, so close, but he couldn’t see her.
Sergei laughed behind him, a mean, cackling sound. “It is her ghost, boy. I put two bullets into her chest and two more into her kneecaps. The Rustanov way. I was not sloppy this time. And then I did same to fake Rustanov you were trying to make your son.”
“No!” Nikolai yelled, his chest exploding with grief and guilt that he’d let this sadistic demon anywhere near Samantha or Pavel. That he hadn’t able to protect them from Sergei, just like he hadn’t been able to protect his mother and brother.
“Nikolai!” his wife’s ghost called to him again. She sounded frantic, worried.
More derisive laughter from Sergei as if Nikolai in his despair was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. “You will never have what you want, boy. You will never have a family. You will never be rid of me,” he informed Nikolai.
Then his father slapped him.
But this action only served to confuse Nikolai. Not because it happened, but because the slap wasn’t that bad—almost on the dainty side. Also, Sergei didn’t slap. He backhanded.
That one detail alone made Nikolai realize…
He opened his eyes and found Samantha hovering above his prone body, her face pinched with worry.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m sorry about slapping you. I tried everything else to wake you up, but—”
In one abrupt move, he sat up and hauled her into his arms. She was alive! The first light of morning had come through the bedroom’s arched bow windows, casting a yellow halo around her beautiful face. And she was here, in his bed with him. Still.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You had a nightmare. It was just a nightmare.”
Her arms came up around his shoulders and to his great embarrassment, an involuntary shudder went through his entire body. Then another. And another.
He’d thought she was dead. He’d thought his father had killed her. He was trembling now, he realized. Like the scared boy his father had accused him of being in the dream. The opposite of the man he wanted to be for his wife and Pavel.
“It’s okay,” she whispered into his ear. “Just hold on to me until it stops. I’m here for you. I’m here.”
As much as he wanted to end the hug, to pull away and show her he wasn’t some helpless boy, he couldn’t. Just couldn’t. In fact, he held on to her tighter, desperately grasping at every word she whispered into his ear until he stopped shaking. And even after that, he kept holding her as his heart rate slid back down and eventually he was able to breathe again, not suck in air like a cosmonaut with a broken helmet.
“It’s okay. It was just a nightmare, just a nightmare,” she said again when he’d finally calmed down all the way.
She leaned back from him and stroked the hair that was now damp with cold sweat away from his forehead. “Do you want to tell me about your nightmare? It might help to talk—”