Maksim: A Dark Mafia Romance (Akimov Bratva), Nicole Fox [love letters to the dead txt] 📗

She grins before using the toe of her shoe to flick the ball up to her hands. I grin back at her. She drops the ball between the middle of us. The moment the ball hits the ground, we both charge for it.

She’s fast and skilled. Those two qualities, along with my formal clothes and my hesitation over knocking her over, gives her a good advantage, but I’m not about to let her win when I know what’s at stake. It’s good to know that sometimes forgiveness is easy.

She dribbles the ball, nearly getting right in front of the two trees before I block the ball, sending it straight between her feet. I dribble it past her. She races ahead of me, our feet bumping against each other as she tries to get it away from me. She stops it right before the garbage cans, her foot pressing down hard on the ball. I kick it out from under her, grabbing her around the waist before she can fall. I set her back down.

“Two more points,” I say. I retrieve the ball.

“Can I ask you something?” she asks. She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Why isn’t Mrs. Cassandra with you?”

“She’s busy,” I say. I set the soccer ball down where she’d put it before. She slowly walks over toward it.

“But you two are married, right? You’re supposed to be with each other all of the time.”

“Sometimes that’s not how marriage works. Are you ready?”

She nods. I let her kick the ball first. She dribbles it a couple of feet before I take it from her. I only get it a few inches before she snatches it back from me, her feet moving gracefully. She turns her body, hitting the soccer ball with the inside of her foot, sending it between the trees.

“Two more points,” she teases. She runs to retrieve the ball. When she brings it back, she’s beaming, tossing the ball between her hands. “Are you and your wife lonely?”

“Lonely?” I ask. “No. I don’t think so. We tend to fill our time easily.”

The smile falters on her face. She sets the ball down. “Oh.”

“Why would you think we were lonely?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I thought that’s why couples adopt kids. They’re lonely and want someone else in the house.”

“Oh.” I take a deep breath. “That’s not always the case. Some couples are just very fulfilled and want to share that fulfillment.”

“So …” she says. “Are you two … are you going to adopt me?”

I shouldn’t have stopped by here. I’m only confusing her. I was being completely honest with Cassandra when I said I didn’t want to hurt Lily. She’s more innocent than anyone else in this situation. She doesn’t deserve to have her hopes raised and crushed, but I’m not prepared to break her heart right now.

“We’re preparing for a change,” I say. “But, like Cassandra told you, we have a lot going on. We don’t want to bring a child into a life where we’re too busy to take care of her. As soon as everything has settled down a little bit, you’ll be the first to know.”

“How long will that take?” she asks.

“It depends on a lot. Maybe a couple of weeks,” I say. She nods, her slumped shoulders and her jittery feet showing conflicting emotions. She’s more like her mother than she’ll ever know.

And just like her mother, it kills me to lie to her.

After she scores another point, I’m determined to beat her and earn her forgiveness. I get another point by tricking her into thinking I’m kicking the ball, instead of rolling it under my foot and dribbling it around her. The third time, we battle it out all over the yard, tearing up the grass as we steal the ball back and forth.

When I score, it feels like a cheap win. She deserved it for working harder than most people I’ve met. She must get her work ethic from her mother.

Bouncing on her feet, Lily’s disappointment has vanished. “Let’s play again. For something else.”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry, Lily, I’ve got to go. I have a lot of work to deal with.”

“So you can finish it and adopt me?”

“Something like that,” I say. I wrap one arm around her, giving her a quick hug before starting to head toward my truck. “I’ll see you again sometime.”

“Soon?”

I pretend to not hear her, getting into my truck. As I start the truck, I look at her through the windshield. She dribbles the ball a couple of feet before picking it up. She looks over at me and waves. I wave back.

I pull out, driving west. It’s disconcerting how attached I feel toward Lily. I barely know her. I know her even less than Cassandra. But the thought of her waiting for me to return hurts a lot more than it should. I could excuse it as empathy, but I never hoped for a foster parent to take me. I never wanted to depend on anyone after my parents died and after the line of bad foster parents.

But I almost feel dependent on Cassandra and Lily—which only feels detrimental and fucked up when I’m not around them. And when I’m with them, the emotional high is enough that I don’t mind being powerless.

I fucked up when I pulled Cassandra and Lily into my negotiations with Gianluigi. In my fear of dependency, I treated them both like they were disposable. I fucked up again when I forced my guilt onto Cassandra. I forced her to marry me. I forced her to face the worst of me because I couldn’t handle it on my own. And I sent her away, just to drive home the idea that she’s disposable.

For all my power I’ve gained over strategizing, my best tactics lost the only thing that truly matters. I deserved to lose her.

Natalie’s headstone stands taller than any of the other headstones around