Cruel Paradise - A Mafia Romance Chapter 123

He pushes against my hold for a couple of seconds, still struggling in the thicket of his nightmare. I have to keep repeating myself before his eyes finally blink away the sleep and focus on me.

“R-Ruslan?” His voice is cracked with fear but there’s relief muddled in there, too. “S-sorry,” is the second thing out of his mouth.

“Why are you apologizing?”

He wraps his arms around himself. “I-I didn’t mean to disturb anyone. I usually don’t.”

I frown. “Josh, how often do you have these nightmares?”

The whites of his eyes are prominent in the gloom. “Most nights,” he admits, dropping his face down low.

Why didn’t Emma tell me about this? I’m so pissed off that the veins in my forearms bulge in protest. A part of me is aware that my anger is irrational. Kinda like it was two days ago when I overheard Emma’s conversation with her mother.

I stood in the archway, eavesdropping unrepentantly as her mother tore into her about being a bad guardian and not putting the children first. At first, she fought back. But then, the more her mother yelled, the more Emma basically shut down. It was like she believed all the vile things her bitch of a mother was spouting. It was like she felt she had to sit there and take it.

Then there was the moment Emma turned and noticed me standing there. I wanted to fucking roar at her: Why aren’t you fighting back? Why aren’t you defending yourself? Don’t you see how wrong she is?

But that look in her eyes—that hopeless, lost look—was too much to take. It was in danger of pulling me back in and I couldn’t let that happen. Not again.

I’m done being her savior. Or as Reagan liked to say, her knight in silver armor. She’s already in my home, taking up space, breathing my air. That has to be enough.

Hell, even that feels like too much.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” I ask the boy. He shakes his head, his eyes softening. I dab his sweaty brow with the back of my hand. “Your aunt didn’t tell me you were having these nightmares.”

His eyes go wide. “No, Ruslan! You can’t tell her. She doesn’t know.”

So she doesn’t know. Somehow, that doesn’t make me any less angry with her.

“Please,” he continues. “Please. You can’t tell her.”

His panic seems as irrational as my anger. “Josh, I think she should—

“No!” he insists adamantly. “No, I don’t want her to know. It’ll only make her more sad and she’s already sad enough lately.” That gives me pause. Josh plows onward, clearly worried that he hasn’t convinced me enough. “She’ll only worry about me and I don’t want her to worry.”

“She’s the parent, Josh. You’re the child. You’re not supposed to be the one protecting her.”

His forehead scrunches up. He looks less like a child now. I see the lines of the man he’ll become already sketched in his face. “You don’t get it. You weren’t there.”

“Josh—”

“Everyone always leaves us!” he interrupts. “Mom died and Dad… Dad doesn’t care about any of us. Aunt Emma didn’t have to l-look after us but she did. Dad was supposed to s-send us to school and buy us new shoes and books but Aunt Emma is the one who did that. Dad was supposed to make our dinners and put us to bed and, for a while, he did. But when he stopped, Aunt Emma did that, too. She’s always d-doing things for us. Even though she doesn’t have t-to. Even when she was w-w-working really late, she would figure out ways to do things for us. Like l-leave us little notes in our lunchboxes. Or pick us up from school early and take us to the p-park.”

The stammer is new. No guesses needed for why it’s popping up now. But as I listen to his speech, I can’t help but marvel at how much this eight-year-old has observed. He’s noticed every sacrifice Emma has made along the way. The work that’s supposed to be invisible to children.

She didn’t have to do any of it. She had the option of being the weekend aunt. The one who popped her head in once a week with presents and kind words. She had parents who were more than willing to take on all three children.

But she decided that they weren’t good enough to raise Josh and his sisters. And, based on that phone call alone, she was very fucking right.

“Please, Ruslan?” Josh begs. “Don’t tell Aunt Em.”

I grimace. “Okay. But that means you and I are gonna have to work on a solution together. We can get some night lamps installed in here.”

Josh chews on his bottom lip. “I don’t think that’ll help.”

“What do you think will help then?”

His eyes flicker to mine. “Boxing? We haven’t really done any more lessons since the… the k-k-kidnapping. I think I wanna start again.”

He’s not laying blame at my feet and yet I feel so guilty. I’ve been so distracted by my anger lately that I let his boxing lessons fall to the wayside. It’s just another example of the people in his life leaving him. The fact that Emma is the only constant, the only one who’s stayed through it all, makes me feel deeply ashamed of my own choices since I found out about what she’d done.

“I’m sorry, Josh. I shouldn’t have stopped our lessons. Of course we can continue them, if that’s what you want.”

He nods emphatically. “I want to be able to defend m-m-myself.” His cheeks redden as he fights his new obstacle. “I d-d-don’t want to be s-s-scared all the time.”

I nod, refusing to address it unless Josh does. “We’ll start tomorrow. Early morning.”

“What about Aunt E-Emma?”

“We don’t need to tell Aunt Emma,” I assure him. “This can be our little secret.”

He gives me a small, grateful smile and some of the tension eases out of his jaw. “Thank you.”

That soft little voice catches in my chest. It stays there. “Why don’t you try sleeping now, Josh?”

He lies back down but his eyes are still wide and alert. “Ruslan?”

“Yes.”

“Can you stay with me… until I fall asleep?”

And that’s how I end up curled on the side of Josh’s bed, watching the boy’s eyes flutter shut. It fills me with this vague sense of purpose. But there’s fear, too.

Is this the rest of my life?

No. After the baby is born, Emma and the kids will be moved to their own estate. I won’t be tasked with being the nightmare watchman. I won’t be watching them go to sleep every night.

Soon, they’ll be gone for good. That should give me some relief.

But it doesn’t.

19

EMMA

I shouldn’t be telling him about the appointment. It’s none of his business. And I don’t even want him there.

So then explain to me why I am currently ambling along through the confusing mess of pathways and rooms in search of Ruslan so that I can inform him of my next doctor’s visit.

Just trying to save myself some drama down the line. That’s all this is. I don’t want an excuse to see him. I’m simply being mature here.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the hot-as-sin dream I had about Ruslan last night. It involved a hot oil massage, followed by very intense foreplay. I woke up in the gray of the pre-dawn having soaked through my panties.

I ask one of the maids I run into if she’s seen Ruslan anywhere and she points me in the direction of the gym. It took me a couple of days to figure out that Kirill’s house tour when we first arrived had excluded the west wing—which just so happens to be Ruslan’s side of the house.

I take a petty pride in stepping right over that imaginary line in the sand.

The color palette shifts as I venture from our wing to his. It hardens, neutralizes. Less blue and green, more tan and gray. I come up to the gym and it takes some pushing to get the door open.

If I were someone who was remotely interested in gyms, I might have been impressed. As it stands, the space doesn’t do much for me.