Mikhail stood beside me on the brief elevator ride down. He hadn’t said anything to me since the moment we stepped foot out of the penthouse, and I didn’t know how he felt.
The ding announced our arrival, and the door slid open. We walked out and headed straight to the door furthest away from the elevator.
“Okay?” I asked Mikhail.
He nodded.
I’d never actually seen the man nervous before, but I imagined this was as close as I would get.
“We’ll deal with Luca when Damien’s better. I’m sure he would like a turn,” I said to distract him from his thoughts.
He made a small grunt in agreement. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. We have a doctor come in to check up on him, right?”
“Yup.”
We had aBoyevik, a soldier who went to medical school before he dropped out and joined the Bratva. The man was supposedly good, too, but I didn’t fucking much care about that. All he needed to do was ensure Luca remained alive while we waited for Damien to heal.
We opened the door, and Kirill looked up from where he was on the couch.
I would need to find a nanny soon, since babysitting wasn’t exactly in Kirill’s job description, but right now, I didn’t trust a lot of people with my kids.
When they heard us come in, two sets of identical green eyes looked up from where they were playing with toy trucks and cars on the floor.
My boys brightened when they found me, but dimmed immediately when they noticed Mikhail standing next to me.
I bent down and opened my arms. “Boys. Come here.”
Slowly, they stood up and walked over to me.
I wrapped my arms around their tiny bodies, reveling in the fact that they clung to me immediately.
“Hi, Daddy,” Dmitriy said, always the more vocal of the twins.
“Hi, buddy. Were you good for Kirill?”
They both nodded their heads simultaneously.
I grinned. “Thanks for watching them,” I said. “You can go.”
He hesitated a bit, his eyes taking in the boys before he nodded and left. They both waved bye to him. I picked them up in my arms and turned to a silent Mikhail.
“Boys, this is your Uncle Mikhail. Can you say hi?”
Konstantin immediately sucked on his thumb while Dmitriy buried his face in my neck.
I waited for them to get used to the idea of another strange man in the room, and Konstantin surprised the hell out of me when he spoke first.
“Hi,” he said softly.
Mikhail’s eyes widened comically before he relaxed and said, “Hi, boys.”
“Are you really our uncle?” Dmitriy asked, a tinged of suspicion in his voice.
Mikhail smiled a little, his eyes softened when he said, “Yeah. I am.”
I looked down at the floor, smiling.
I never doubted that they wouldn’t accept my kids as their own. But seeing this interaction—