Page 65 of The Mafia's Quintuplets

Days begin to blend together,marked only by the prenatal checkups and the steadily increasing movements of the babies inside me. I move through the safehouse like a ghost, performing necessary tasks with mechanical precision while my mind remains trapped in a loop of memories and regrets. I should have stayed. I should have found another way to make it work. I thought love wasn’t enough, but I was wrong. The litany of "should haves" haunts me through sleepless nights and hollow days.

The full complexity of my feelings for Mak confuse me with its intensity. He was a monster in many ways, the embodiment of everything I feared and rejected. He was violence personified, a man who killed without hesitation and commanded an empire built on blood and suffering. His world represented everything I never wanted for my children.

Yet he was also the man who held me at night with surprising tenderness, who built me a beautiful garden when words failed him, who kissed my belly and whispered to our unborn children in Russian, calling them his legacy with reverence in his voice. The contradiction of him—the violence and the vulnerability, the cruelty and the care—haunts me more thoroughly than any ghost could.

"You didn't eat again." Zina stands in the doorway of my bedroom one evening, a plate of untouched food in her hands. Her face shows the strain of the past weeks, with dark circles beneath eyes red-rimmed from her own private grieving. Unlike me, she channels her sorrow into action—ordering baby supplies online, converting the largest bedroom into a nursery, and researching quintuplet care with the same thoroughness she once applied to academic studies.

I look away from her concern, unwilling to see the worry etched into features that remind me so painfully of her brother. "I'm not hungry."

"The babies are." She crosses the room with quiet determination, setting the plate on my nightstand before sitting beside me on the bed. "They need you to eat even when you don't want to."

Her directness pierces through the fog of grief. The babies continue growing regardless of my emotional state, demanding nutrition and care I alone can provide. I reach reluctantly for the plate, forcing myself to take a small bite of the bland toast she's prepared, knowing the plainer foods are easier on my still-present morning sickness. I’m starting to think it will never end.

"That's better." She watches me eat with the attentiveness of a nurse, relaxing slightly as I continue taking small bites. "Dr. Wilson says you're still on track for weight gain, but he's concerned about your protein intake."

"Yeah." My medical training makes me acutely aware of the nutritional needs of a high-risk multiple pregnancy. "I'll try harder. It's just..."

"I know." She takes my hand, her fingers cool against my skin. "I miss him too. More than I thought possible."

The simple acknowledgment breaks something inside me, and fresh tears spill down my cheeks. "Why does it hurt so much? We barely knew each other. We spent more time fighting than anything else."

Zina's smile is sad but knowing. "Time doesn't dictate depth, Wil. Some connections form in an instant and last forever."

"He was going to change everything for us." I rest my hand on my growing belly, feeling the ripples of movement beneath. "He promised to find a way out, to create a different life. And now..."

"Now, we continue without him." Her voice carries the same resolute determination I heard in Mak's when he made difficult decisions. "We raise these children to know who their father really was, not just what he did."

Her words stay with me through the night as I lie awake, listening to the distant crash of waves against the shore. In rare moments of peace, usually at dawn when the house is quiet and the ocean is visible from my bedroom window, I talk to the babies about him.

"Your father had the most penetrating gaze," I tell them softly, running my hands over the stretched skin, where they press against the boundaries of my body. "He could look at someone and see straight through any pretense. It made him dangerous, but it also made him perceptive in ways few people ever develop. He knew when I was afraid even when I tried to hide it."

I share stories about their complicated father—how his smile transformed his entire face on the few occasions he allowed genuine happiness to show, how his hands could be impossibly gentle despite their strength, and how he loved them enough to send us away when he couldn't guarantee our safety.

I don’t know what else to say or how to explain their existence is both a miracle and a burden, the product of a love that never had the chance to fully form before violence claimed it like everything else in the Vorobev legacy. How do I tell them they were created in a moment of connection between two people from entirely different worlds that could never peacefully coexist?

As the days pass, Zina and I establish a routine that brings structure to the shapeless expanse of grief. In the mornings, we walk along the private beach, since the exercise is good for my circulation, and the salt air somehow making it easier to breathe. In the afternoons, we work on the nursery, painting walls in soft yellows and greens, or assembling furniture delivered under false names. Between all that, I rest a lot and try not to cry so much.

"Five cribs arranged in a semicircle," Zina muses as we unpack the fifth identical white crib. "They'll be able to see each other this way."

I run my hand along the smooth wooden rail, imagining tiny fingers gripping it someday. "They'll need to learn they're individuals from the beginning. It would be easy to treat them as a collective instead of as separate people."

"We could paint each crib a slightly different color? Subtle enough that it doesn't clash, but distinct enough for identification."

"Mak would have liked that." The words slip out before I can stop them, and for once, saying his name doesn't shatter me. "We should also add name plaques." It pains me that my babies will bear a different surname than Mak’s, or even mine. Zina and I are different people now, at least officially.

She smiles, and it’s a genuine expression that lightens her features. "He was obsessed with you from the first night, you know. I've never seen him so fixated on anyone. He called t to talk about you more than once, even before he found out about the pregnancy."

"Really?" I pause in unpacking onesies, hungry for any detail about Mak I didn't already know.

"Oh, yes. When he discovered you were pregnant, he was terrified but also...transformed. As if he suddenly had purpose beyond the next territorial dispute or business deal." She traces the pattern on a baby blanket with careful fingers. "When he brought you to the estate, he called me first thing. 'Don't frighten her, Zina. She's not like us.' As if I was some sort of monster who might scare you away."

The memory brings a reluctant smile to my face. "You were the least frightening person in that entire mansion."

"Except Mrs. Petrova,” she says, referencing the grandmotherly housekeeper who had fussed over my nutrition and rest with Soviet-era efficiency.

"Except Mrs. Petrova," I agree, and for the first time since receiving news of Mak's death, I laugh—a small, rusty sound, but genuine.

The moment passes quickly, loss settling over us again, but something has shifted. The grief remains, but alongside it grows a tentative acceptance. Mak is gone, but parts of him continue in Zina, in me, and most importantly, in the babies developing inside me.

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