“I am sorry. It was a hard transition, but it was not my intention to make you think you couldn’t come to me. I’m still your big brother.”
“And I believed Tiana was my friend.”
“I am sorry you had to find out differently. Tiana really did not want to get pregnant. She must have seen Emma’s pregnancy as a way out of having to go through one of her own.”
“That’s like a plot out of a novel.”
“You know what they say...”
“Real life is stranger than fiction.” Konstantin certainly could affirm that cliché.
“It certainly is, but Konstantin, you have something more important to think about than the melodrama of five years ago. You have gravely insulted the mother of your child on behalf of a dead woman who was not who she pretended to be.”
“Gravely insulted?” What was his brother talking about?
“You doubted Emma’s word about what Tiana said to her. If I know you, that wasn’t the only thing you said that Emma could take offense to.”
“I’m not a bad man.” Though he hadn’t been feeling like a good one since meeting his son for the first time. “She calls him Mickey.”
“Mickey is a fine nickname. At least she named him after you.”
Konstantin nodded, though his brother couldn’t see it. “Giving him my second name was more than I deserved.”
“Listen, brother, you are not a bad man, but you are a man with a lot to make up for.”
“You’re so sure.”
“Since you were a small boy, when you feel guilty, you attack. Even if you did not do that, you broke up with your pregnant girlfriend to marry another woman.”
“But it was my duty! And I didn’t know she was pregnant.” He could wish he had until the end of time, but that would not change the past.
“Which makes you a guy she can trust. It’s just going to take her a while to see it.”
“I’ve got a plan for that.” He was going to ask her to marry him. What could be a more certain and binding commitment than that?
“Good. Just, be prepared to work for it.”
“You don’t think I know how to work for something?”
“In business? You’ll go without sleep for days and sacrifice your personal time for the good of the company, but you’ve never worked for a relationship.”
“And you have?”
“You know Nataliya. Can you doubt it?”
Konstantin had to smile at that. “No.”
“I think this is my fault, even if I didn’t have anything to do with the restraining order,” Konstantin blurted out as his thoughts finally coalesced on a possible motive for Tiana’s actions.
“What do you mean?” Nikolai asked, his voice lacking the condemnation Konstantin expected.
“I told Tiana I didn’t know if I was strong enough to walk away from Emma and stay away.” He hadn’t been.
Konstantin had gone looking for Emma, needing her comfort after Tiana’s death.
And he hadn’t been able to find his ex-lover. He’d thought about hiring a private investigator then, but that marriage contract had still been hanging over his head. Konstantin had believed it would be unfair to Emma to start something up again only to have to end it again somewhere down the line.
His every good intention had been turned back against him.