Gabriel's Regret: Book 1 (The Medlov Men Series 2) (18 page)

Gabriel nodded but there was no kindness in his face.  “As long as it’s a safe place for the child, I’ll approve.”  He wiped a hand over his face.  “Goodnight.”  He wanted to end this before another argument erupted. 

“Goodnight,” Briggy said, hanging up on her end. 

As Briggy hung up the phone, Gabriel closed his laptop and noticed a crack in his door.  Someone had been eavesdropping on his conversation.  Olek?  Andriy?  Shit.  Valeriya!

Standing up, he stalked over to the door, flung it open and stepped out into the hallway just in time to see Valeriya disappear down the corridor almost in a dead sprint. His heart dropped, but he made himself speak.

“Valeriya,” Gabriel called out, but she did not turn around or respond. “Valeriya!” he called out again.  “Motherfucker!” Gabriel hit the wall with his balled up fist.   Of all the times he could have finally answered Briggy’s call, it had to be now.  It was confirmed right then.  Nothing good ever came with Briggy, not even when he broke up with her.

***

Despite her best judgement, Valeriya had gone to Gabriel’s room after nearly an hour of deliberation, just to find out that he was in a relationship with another woman and about to have a baby, no less.  Hook, line and sinker, she had fallen for his bullshit! What a complete fool she had been!  What an idiot!

Slamming the door to her bedroom, she covered her face in her hands and screamed into them.  How?  How had she been so STUPID? 

Wiping her hands down her face, over her lips and finally over her neck, she willed herself to gather her fleeting composure.

Her heart was still booming, hands still shaking, and her mind still racing.  But she had to center herself.  She had to…nope.

FUCK!

The reality of what had just happened was too heavy. 

Squatting down to the floor, she fell back on her bottom and threw her head back on the floor.  Looking up at the ceiling, she cried until she actually started laughing at herself.   Everything in her body was in conflict with everything in her spirit.  And all she could do was laugh. 

“What are you doing?” she asked aloud. “This is a war. There is no time for love.” 

The words came out and sounded true, but she did not believe them.  Her mind wanted to hate Gabriel and it had since he first arrived, but her heart wanted to love him.  Because for every wrong thing that had happened in their short existence with each other, there was something else more right.  

If Alexei could have seen her now, he would have been absolutely enraged at her loss of focus.  The last three years had been about sacrifice for him.  No dating.  Few sexual partners.  No commitment to anything, but the cause was too important to get comically complicated in love, but here she was despite her desire for the men in her camp to see her as an equal, behaving like a love struck teenager. It was ridiculous and embarrassing. 

Maybe they were right.  Maybe she was unfit to lead after all?  If she was such a bad judge in character, trusting Gabriel Medlov, allowing herself to feel something for him, then maybe she needed time for self-reflection instead of pretending that she could lead an entire revolution.

But another thought whispered in her ear as well. 
Maybe he is just what you need and maybe what you feel for him is real.

A knock on the door cut off her racing thoughts.  Sitting up, she rolled her eyes. “Go away, Gabriel,” she screamed out, voice trembling.  She said it, but she did not mean it. 

“It’s not Gabriel,” Andriy said with a snicker in his voice.

Valeriya stood up and wiped off her pants.  Opening her door, she found her brother standing there with the oddest look on his face.  “What is it?” Valeriya asked, turning and leaving the door open as she went back to her bed.  She could not face her little brother like this, looking a mess and feeling ridiculous. 

Andriy did not follow her inside.  “He wants to talk to you,” Andriy said, looking over at Gabriel, who was standing by the door out of Valeriya’s view. 

“Who wants to talk to me?” Valeriya asked, knowing very well who Andriy meant. 

“Gabriel,” Andriy said, raising his palm and wiggling his fingers at Gabriel to pay up.  

Gabriel placed a crisp American $100 bill in Andriy’s hand. “You don’t have any finesse, but you get the job done.” 

Andriy didn’t care about the finesse.  He hadn’t seen that kind of money in years.  When Gabriel came barreling into his room a few minutes before begging for help, he was at first hesitant, until he flashed a wad of cash. Then ideas quickly changed. Normally, he would never sell his sister out, but it was no big mystery that she liked the American as much as he liked her. 

Folding up the money in his hand, Andriy hit Gabriel on his back.  “You’re on your own now.  Walking into the lion’s den was not a part of the deal.” 

Gabriel walked inside and noticed that this wasn’t like the other rooms in the house.  It had personality, like she had lived her way before the war and then it occurred to him that she had.  It was painted in a muted pink, a rather odd choice for a woman like her in his opinion.  There were books stacked in corners, vintage trunks, feminine little what nots, paintings and silk flowers in vases and most of all candles.  With only candlelight, the room seemed bigger than most and smelled of strawberries and cinnamon. 

So you are a girl
, he said to himself.  A man could tell a lot about a woman just by one look in her room and this room told him that she had secrets. 

Valeriya didn’t protest as Gabriel stepped inside and closed the door behind him, mostly because she had a few questions that she wanted answered.  She looked up at him, standing there like a scolded child at the door waiting for her to say something.  There was no way after what she had just heard that she was going to disappoint.  “Is she your wife or your girlfriend?  I know many men like you have both.”

Gabriel smirked at her misgivings about him.  Not only had she been eavesdropping, but she wasn’t even going to pretend about it.  He couldn’t deny that that was refreshing after a lifetime of bullshit from women.  “She
was
my girlfriend. We’ve been breaking up for a while now.  Today it finally became official after some outside prodding.”

“And now you have a baby on the way,” Valeriya said, disgusted.  For some reason, just the thought made her extremely jealous.  A child meant that he’d always have a relationship with that whiny woman on the phone.  

“Yeah, I’m going to be a father.  May I?” he asked, gesturing toward the bed.

“Yes,” she said, scooting over.

He walked over and sat down on the bed beside her.  Distance would only make what he was trying to do harder.  Lacing his fingers together on his lap, he dropped his head, “You have to believe me; she is not the woman I saw myself doing it with.”  He clarified.  “Having a child with I meant.”

It was very clear to Valeriya.  “Then you should have used a condom,” she said, unapologetic for her disdain.  She had met so many men down through the years with the same story.  Not once had she been impressed, and she didn’t stand impressed with Gabriel now. 

“Have you never made a mistake?” he asked curiously.

“No,” she answered quickly.  “Some things are well within my control.” 

With any other woman, he might have argued, but Gabriel didn’t want her to approve of the relationship.  He wanted her to forgive it.  Giving a humorless laugh, he shrugged.  “In retrospect, I should have done a lot of things differently, but hindsight is 20/20 for us all.”  He wiped his chin with his thumb. “Briggy and I were just a thing.  At the time, I honestly thought it was more, but I was at a difficult point in my life.  When I fully transitioned into what I am now, I realized that she wasn’t what I needed.  I went to Africa and back,
literally
, trying to find myself, trying to fit in, trying to get things right, but I think I couldn’t because I was with the wrong person.”

“Transitioned into this life? You meant that you weren’t always a gun trafficker?” 

“No,” Gabriel said, laughing sardonically.  He knew she’d get a kick out of this.  “I was a federal agent.”

Valeriya looked at him and rolled her eyes. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?”  Gabriel asked.

“You look like a cop,” Valeriya said honestly. She didn’t delve too deep into it.  It was just a part of his life, like this was a part of hers.   “So why did you stop being one.”

“I was a cop on paper, but I was never one in my heart.  My mother was a freedom fighter; my father was in the Russian Mafia, and I was stuck somewhere in between.  Being an agent felt safe.  It gave me the structure and power that my family could not.”

Valeriya found his mix of two worlds interesting, especially considering her own past.  “And are you still stuck in the middle, Gabriel Medlov?”

He liked when she said his whole name like it was a curse word.  “I don’t think so.  No.  I know more about who I am as a person, but the side effect was that it changed some relationships around me.  Namely the one between me and Briggy,
which was a bad one in reality
.  She was more in love with my name, maybe even more in love with my cousin, than she ever was in love with me.” 
Why was he telling her all of this?
  He paused and let her take it all in first.  Maybe she didn’t hear anymore. 

Although he didn’t know it, Valeriya was very open to knowing who he really was.  It gave her some comfort about feeling the way that she felt for him.  “Being in a bad relationship can blind you from your purpose in the world.  I know this.  I have lived this, but somehow knowing this about you, that you have a life with another woman,” she shrugged as she tried to find the words, “it threw me for a loop.”  She looked over at Gabriel. “Did I get this American saying right?”

“Yep,” Gabriel said, poking out his lips.  “I’m sorry.”

“No, no.  You don’t owe me an apology.” Valeriya tried to hide her disappointment about the woman.  Her pride would not allow her to sulk in front of him.  “It’s not like we’re together.  We’ve only known each other a short time.  Anything that would have happened, would have been just for a moment.”

“I would take a moment,” Gabriel murmured.  “I just don’t want to pretend that I don’t feel anything for you, and I don’t want you to pretend that you don’t feel anything for me.”  He waited for her to at least acknowledge that.

Valeriya didn’t want to admit anything, especially anything that would make her more vulnerable.  “We are pitiful.  We just met.  There is nothing there.  Only smoke and mirrors.  My brother just died. Your ex-girlfriend is pregnant.  The combination made us want to…find a reason to run away from our realities.  It’s no different than what you did with the pregnant woman and I did with Olek. And we must not have learned anything from it, because here we were about to do the same thing again, if reality had not stepped in and gave us a wake-up call.  You’re a gun trafficker. I’m a freedom fighter.  It makes no sense.” 

It makes perfect sense
, he said to himself quietly.  It was, after all, the same thing that had happened between his mother and father.  Gabriel sat silently thinking.
Is Briggy going to cost him this too?
If so, he’d hate her forever for it. She had made a promise to him right before he left that he’d find love and have it ripped away from him.  If that was what was happening, he would never forgive her or her curse. 

Feeling Gabriel’s tension, Valeriya shifted the conversation.  “How far along is she?”

“Twenty weeks,” Gabriel answered.

“Boy or girl?”

“I don’t want to know until it’s here,” Gabriel huffed, feeling her glare at him. He tried to explain so that he wouldn’t sound like a total asshole.   “I’ve lost a lot of people. I’d rather not get close to a fetus before it’s here.  It will just be one more thing that I couldn’t hold on to,” he said, looking her in her eyes.  “Plus, I know that she’s using my child as a pawn before it even gets here.  It just makes me angry.” 

Valeriya had to look away.  It was his eyes that had caught her up in the first place.  “Life isn’t meant to be
forever
.”  Her brother crossed her mind and the fact that she missed him beyond words and would give anything including her life to bring him back.  “No matter how much a person loves their life or someone else’s, it is never forever. Eventually, we all die. So if you walk around refusing to love because you’re scared to get close and then lose them, you’re cutting your nose off to spite your face.”

“How so?” he asked, transfixed by her words and the soft melodic sound of her voice.

“Because of the fact that life is not forever, we are supposed to love with abandonment.  We are supposed to embrace our momentary existence by living each day like there won’t be another, because sooner or later there won’t be.”  Valeriya could feel the warmth of her feelings starting to surround her again.  She wanted to fight it, but she could not. 

“Considering my occupation, you’d think I’d have that concept of living life to the fullest down, but I don’t.”

“Really?” Valeriya asked.  “Why do you say that?”

“Because I never really lived until I was out there helping you feed people that I didn’t know and helping little old ladies and playing with the kids and cleaning up old men.”  Gabriel swallowed. “It felt really good to be alive.”