The Score (15 page)

Viviana forced herself to thank the man, but tears still prickled at her eyes. Panic waged a war through her insides, the anxiety making her sick to her stomach. The doctor didn’t miss her show of emotions.

“Viviana?”

“It’s Vine. Just call me Vine.”

“Okay, Vine it is. I know I work for your husband in a way, but if you don’t want to have this pregnancy, I can set you up with an abor—”

“No, no I do want this baby. It’s not that,” she rushed to say, wiping away the wetness streaking down her cheeks. “Of course I want this baby.”

It wasn’t just hers, it was Anton’s, too. There was no way in hell she would get rid of it.

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t want to lose it,” she answered in a breath. “I just lost a baby. I’m pretty fucking sure the stress killed me to the point where my body couldn’t care for it, so it didn’t.”

The doctor sighed, rubbing his forehead with a wince. “I doubt that was the cause, and if you’re still blaming yourself for the miscarriage, you’re not fully emotionally healed yet, either. Here’s what I can do to try and ease your concerns, sweetheart.

“We can do weekly blood tests to monitor your hormone levels from here on out. Usually if they drop below a certain number, it’s a good clue the pregnancy isn’t viable and is likely to terminate itself. Something else to consider is if you lose pregnancy symptoms suddenly, without much warning. I can order an early ultrasound to check for a heartbeat around nine, possibly even eight weeks. If we can see the heartbeat, the probability drops again. After twelve weeks, it drops by over half. Chances are, the first was a fluke, Vine. That’s all.”

“I can’t tell him,” Viviana whispered.

Cocking his head to the side with a furrowed brow, the man asked, “Anton?”

Viviana’s heart was racing, leaping into her throat with every beat. “I can’t tell him and then lose it again. Not now.”

“Okay,” the doctor said. “I get that. Leave your cell phone number with me and I’ll call you directly with the results of the blood work. You don’t have to tell him until you’re ready. Be here next week, and we’ll do a hormone check. Sound good?”

All Viviana could do was nod.

***

“Papa!” Demyan screeched so loud Viviana jumped at the counter, nearly slicing open her finger with the knife she was using. “I got to paint with my fingers and Reese gave me his car!”

“His car, huh?” Anton asked. “Are you sure you’re allowed to have his car?”

Viviana turned just enough to see their nearly three-year-old shrug. “I don’t know. He gave it to me, Papa.”

“Well, okay then.”

Viviana was pretty sure that wasn’t the right answer for Demyan and the car issue, but she didn’t correct her husband. By tomorrow, Demyan would have forgotten about the toy, and so would the other boy.

Viviana sighed into the kiss Anton pressed to her neck. “Missed you, baby.”

“Good day?” she asked him, keeping her attention on the vegetables she was chopping.

Because it wasn’t a Friday, or the weekend, he didn’t need to be at the club until late hours. Viviana was grateful. She needed him close after the news she received earlier, but she still couldn’t bring herself to tell him.

“Yeah, it was good. Quiet.”

“How’d the meeting go?”

“All right. Ivan just wanted to explain what was expected of all of the employees what with the trial coming up and everything.”

“No interviews.” Viviana tossed the potatoes into a colander to wash.

“Well, that and more. It’s not important. How’d your appointment go?”

Viviana tensed.

“Vine, everything okay?” Anton asked.

“Yeah, the doctor said all was normal,” she half-lied.

“So why do you feel like a block of ice all of the sudden?”

Viviana bit her lip to keep from spilling the news of the pregnancy. “I’m not. It’s just personal, all right? Jesus, last week you had a fit at dinner with Adrik when I mentioned the word period. Leave it alone.”

“That was different, Vine. You were talking about someone else’s daughter. You’re my wife, it’s not the same.”

“I’m fine. All is normal,” Viviana repeated quietly.

Without warning, Viviana felt her body being turned from Anton’s urging. Under his curious stare, she tried to be calm.

“You sure?” he questioned with a raised brow. “Did they check you, or anything?”

“Um—”

“Papa, come see my new car!” Demyan shouted from the living room.

Anton rolled his eyes and grinned down at his wife. “Later?”

Thank God
, Viviana thought. “Yeah, sure.”

When Anton was out of the kitchen, Viviana finally felt like she could breathe for a second. Hell, she was just glad she managed to delete the message from the doctor she’d received, and missed because she’d been changing Demyan’s day clothes into his play clothes, only a half an hour before Anton arrived home. The one that said she was four weeks along and the hormone levels gave the indication everything was good … and so far, viable.

That’s all it was, just one word: viable.

Chapter Twelve

Viviana braked the SUV, throwing it into park before slamming her hands back to the steering wheel. She was so overwhelmed. Torn apart from the inside out and wholly unsure of her surroundings. Never had she felt so totally useless and tattered. Like her soul and heart was a forgotten flag, ripped to shreds and flapping without protection in the tornado that had become her life.

The quiet, sleeping boy in his booster seat in the backseat was the only thing keeping Viviana from screaming her lungs out or punching her fists into a bloody mess. Instead, she balled her fisted hands to her eyes and panted through the tears that fell without permission.

Everything hurt. Everything ached.

Nothing in this poisoned mess was left untouched.

Absolutely nothing.

Why
, Viviana wanted to ask. Why hadn’t Anton been more careful? Why had he done what he did? Why couldn’t she and Demyan have been enough for him?

How could you leave me alone like this?

Viviana didn’t have a single clue of how much time passed her by as she sat in the front seat and cried for all she was worth. Not while her heart broke all over again, and the hiccupping sobs turned to chattering teeth and hyperventilating breaths that wouldn’t stop catching.

When the sounds of her heartbreak threatened to wake Demyan in the back, Viviana managed to unlatch her seatbelt with shaking hands before she opened the SUV’s door. Cool sand slipped into the soles of her sandals as she stumbled out into the warm, May air. Less than three feet from the SUV where her son slept unknowing of his father’s absence and his mother’s breakdown, Viviana collapsed.

Echoing, wrenching sobs shook her shoulders. Viviana dug curling fists into the sand.

Shattered and lost—that’s what she was without Anton.

Empty.

Broken.

So hollow.

***

“Vine?”

Viviana barely registered her name being called over the squawking seagulls above or the lapping waves of water rushing under the pier. The safe haven that was Little Odessa for her had once again been the place she sought out for comfort. It held so many memories sweetened by easier, happier times. Things that left a hopeful sentiment resounding through her emotions instead of the bitterness of the tragedy she was currently suffocated with.

Resting on the beach, her silk dress was surely ruined by the damp sand, her hair was already beginning to frizz and wave from the wet air, but she didn’t care. Instead, Viviana watched Demyan, so close to his third birthday, trip through the sand as he watched the water and birds.

The childish laughter coming from Viviana’s son was the only thing keeping her sane.

A form dropped beside her on the beach. She didn’t give Ivan any acknowledgement as he stared down the shore blankly. Gia, Ivan’s youngest daughter, with her summer dress swirling around her bare ankles, skipped past her father. She was only eleven months older than Demyan.

“They’ve got him placed back at Rikers.”

Viviana felt the bile rise into her throat. Anton hated being confined; couldn’t stand to sit still. He hadn’t been locked up more than a few days the last time before they got him out on bail. But now … What now? With bail revoked, there was no chance for that.

How could he have been so stupid and careless?

“What do I do?” Viviana asked.

“That depends,” Ivan murmured.

Dumbly, Viviana shook her head. His answer was far too ambiguous for her worn-out mind to pick apart and understand. “Don’t be vague, Ivan. Just get to the goddamn point, okay?”

“I’m here. I should be at Rikers beating off the feds demands for interviews again or at the office working on an appeal, but instead I’m here.”

Viviana watched with a small smile beginning to form as the children ran past, leaving pealing giggles in their wake. While Demyan had been acting moody after he woke up from his nap, Gia’s tiny presence seemed to make all of that disappear.

“Did you hear me?” Ivan asked.

What difference did it make? “No, not really.”

Ivan’s hand grasped roughly to Viviana’s elbow, shaking her arm. “Stop it, listen to me!”

“How fucking stupid did he have to be, huh?” Viviana turned on her new companion with fire burning in her eyes. Anger suddenly swept through her body with a wrecking ball’s force. What little bit of composure she managed to keep after Demyan awoke was all but lost with the simple shake of her arm. “A gun, Ivan. He was out on bail and he was caught with an unregistered, illegal
gun
in his car. He couldn’t even—”

“It was my gun,” Ivan interrupted quietly, releasing his hold abruptly. Shock fluttered through Viviana’s stomach like the beating wings of butterflies.

“What?”

“Mine, not his. I had an afternoon meeting at the courthouse and was late getting out of the house. I needed to drop the girls off at the babysitter because Eva was already gone. I was out of my mind busy, but I stopped to brief Anton on my plans for laying down the motions for a longer stay at the meeting. He was busy, too, handling somebody. I remembered my gun just before I left and tossed it into his glove box thinking he wouldn’t even get out of Seven Lights before I got back. I’m sorry.”

“Your gun,” she whispered.

Ivan nodded, meeting her heated gaze head on. “To the best of his ability, Anton was following the law to keep himself out of the prison during this trial. He has done absolutely everything he could, Vine. I screwed up, not him. Me.”

Viviana didn’t know what to say. For an entire minute, she simply stared at her husband’s lawyer, feeling choked and torn.

“You can’t just say it was yours?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ivan admitted. “Either way, he was in possession of a weapon, which in and of itself, is a breach of his bail release.”

“But … but, I need him here, Ivan.”

Now more than ever, Viviana needed Anton. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell him she was … Oh God, no. Even thinking about the little life just beginning to thrive and grow in her womb only made it worse. Suddenly her heart was cracking and splintering to pieces all over again.

What if Anton was found guilty for the crimes they charged him with?

“What’s the sentence possibility?” Viviana managed to ask, her mouth going dry.

Ivan cleared his throat, glancing at the two children standing hand in hand close at the water’s edge. What could she do for her little boy with no father to raise him? Would Demyan be who he was supposed to be if Anton wasn’t there?

“You know what it is. It’d be life, Vine. Twice over, no chance for parole.”

“
Life
.”

“The prosecutor isn’t seeking capital punishment. I believe it’s because he thinks it wouldn’t stick, or a jury wouldn’t go for it.”

He had lost her at capital punishment. Those words alone brought with them a cold shiver of dread. Viviana had purposely avoided discussing the charges, their specifics, or anything about the trial with Anton. For the most part, she had been far too angry to talk about it. Every time his face was shown on the news, or some reporter showed up at her bookstore, it sent her into another raging spiral.

Public opinion had already decided Anton’s guilt. Of that, Viviana was most sure. News reports labeled her husband a trafficker, the man who brought guns into their country and put drugs on their streets. The mothers and fathers of the kids using those drugs or being shot by those guns didn’t like that.

Was it true? Yes, Viviana didn’t deny that.

But she refused to see him as that man, too. She never had.

Anton was so much more.

A man with as many strengths as he had faults. Someone with a love so deep, so strong he only shared and showed it sparingly to those he felt it was most deserved. Tender with the same hands that had shown others their brutality. Honestly vulnerable behind the ruthless masks he wore. A father in his home. A friend with just a glance. A lover in her bed.

They didn’t know
him
.

Viviana wouldn’t let anyone poison the man she, or her son, knew. Never.

“Ma!”

Viviana willed away the wetness blurring her eyes as she forced a smile for her son. “Yeah?”

“Is Papa comin’?” Demyan asked over his shoulder.

Fuck, that hurt. What was she supposed to say?

“Later, baby,” Viviana lied. “Maybe.”

Ivan rested his arms over his knees as Demyan went back to searching the sand with Gia. “We can take him tonight, if you want. Eva won’t mind. It’ll give you some room to breathe, to think, if you need.”

“But what about tomorrow when he comes home and asks for him again? What then, Ivan?”

“That depends,” Ivan said.

He’d already told her those words once, and just like the first time, Viviana still didn’t understand. She also didn’t have the time or patience for word games.

“On what?”

“You have options,” he explained gently. “That’s why I’m here, not with Anton. We all knew this was a possibility, and we know very well how he’s likely going to fair in this trial.”

Ivan seemed to leave something unsaid, and Viviana didn’t miss it. “But?”

“But we do have a little breathing room here.”

“Oh, yeah? Because how I see it, I’m
drowning
.”

Ivan swallowed audibly, shrugging one shoulder. “I know. Trust me, I do. Those options I mentioned …”

“Go on,” she urged when he went still and silent.

“Anton was planning to leave the country if we couldn’t get the case tossed out before it went to trial, or if we couldn’t find Natalie before her testimony. He had identities bought and ready to go for all of you. A place set up where no extradition treaties could send him back. That’s still a viable option for you and Demyan, if you want to start over.”

Viviana’s heart stopped, she was sure it did. “He wants that?”

“He wanted what was best for you and his child. It would have, at the time, kept you all together. If right now, that is what you want, Anton will say nothing. He will let you go, Vine. I have the papers, documents, IDs, and the information for you to access any bank accounts associated with those names in my car. I will hand them over, you can follow the directions on the letter inside to do whatever you want from there on out.”

There was nothing about that option that felt remotely okay with Viviana. If anything, it make her feel like a coward just for considering it. New names, a new place, and a fresh start at life didn’t sound nearly as sweet as it might have to some.

“No.” Her answer came out just as sure and strong as it ever would. “I spoke my vows and I meant them. I’m not going to leave that man and start all over again somewhere else, hoping I can replace what I already have. I don’t want to; I don’t want someone else to raise my son. I want Anton. Absolutely not, Ivan, don’t bring it up again.”

Ivan leaned back to the sand. “Okay. The other option is my own. Anton had no say, I haven’t even suggested it to him. He’d undoubtedly kill me just for thinking about it.”

Well, Viviana didn’t like the sound of that, either.

“Is this the breathing room?”

“Could be,” Ivan mused, a little darkly. “But it could make things worse, depending on how it plays out …
If
it plays out, that is. We need a backup plan, one that would have the case put under a microscope, have the charges dropped due to judicial indiscretions, and would force them to release Anton, even for a short time.”

“Stop being an asshole and explain it to me,” Viviana snapped.

“How far are you willing to go, Vine?” Ivan tipped his chin in the children’s direction. “For him, what would you do to bring his father home?”

“What?”             

“It’s not a difficult question,” Ivan said. “A basic human need is love. What we’d do for it, or to keep it, is a whole other matter. I’m simply asking what you would do for yours. There has to be a worth you’d put on it or a limit you’ll draw. Is there? What would you do for it? That’s all I’m asking.”

No, he had a point there.

“Anything.”

“Your morals, the values you think you have now … your
vows
,” he finished with a pointed look at her. “All of those things, would you toss them aside? Would you risk them, for Anton, or for his son?”

“Of course.”

Ivan released a heavy sigh, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he considered her words. “Tomorrow, I’m making a motion to forgo a jury in the trial.”

Viviana’s head whipped in his direction. Anton had every right to forgo a jury and instead, have only the judge weigh in on his guilt or innocence. It wasn’t often that the option was chosen, and she couldn’t understand why they would do that at all for Anton.

“What, why?”

“Public opinion is tainted, Vine. He’d never get a fair trial with one.”

“And you think a judge and jury of only one is any better?” Viviana asked sharply.