Above it all, I feel as if my world has just exploded and remade itself within seconds. I don’t need to even look at the smiling little face looking up at me or see the blue eyes identical to my own to know that she’s mine.
I feel it in every cell, in every beat of my swelling heart.
“Papa.”
“My baby. My little cherub.”
I’m choked and crying like a woman as those little arms wind around my neck and she snuggles so deeply into me as if she’s afraid I’ll be ripped away. I hug her harder at the painful thought and look up to see a crying, smiling Irina looking back at me with so much love and joy, it humbles me to know that she is also mine.
John and Liza are there, too, both crying and laughing as I stand to my feet, with Minkie clutched to my chest. I call Irina forward to meet our daughter.
Later, when I feel like I can breathe again, I’ll think about it all and try to make sense of everything that’s happened and what is to come in the future. For now, I have my family and it’s all I need.
“Minkie, my angel face, I want you to meet Irina, your…”
“Aunty Liza already told me that I get a new mama. A good one who will love me and bake me nice things and give me pretty dresses and do my hair. We talked on the phone,” she cuts in, grinning at Irina. “I used to like the vanilla cakes and toffee things. My babushka also likes toffee. Do you know my babushka, Rina?”
Irina is shaking when she reaches out her arms and Minkie pulls her into a hug.
“I do. I love her, too, and I bake her lots of yummy things all the time. She loves sweet things, and…and she’s gonna be so glad she has you back to share her cakes with,” she wails, making me chuckle.
“That’s nice. Can we go now? I want to see my dedushka, too.”
Chapter Ten
Irina
I’m wrung out by the time Misha grabs my hand and pulls me up the stairs behind him, the sound of Mama’s laughter and Vadim’s chuckles still carrying out to us as he pulls me down the hall to the guest room we’ll be occupying for at least the next ten years if Mama has her way.
The day has been perfect yet scary as hell as we all tried to cram as much of Minkie into our hearts as possible. I should have been better prepared for the overwhelming joy and the love that I felt when seeing Minka for the first time, but honestly, I’m still so shocked by it all that it’s almost unbelievable to take it all in and process it.
After Misha left to make breakfast, Liza called me and spent twenty minutes telling me everything from the time Mina left the hotel to the time Liza and John and his security discreetly followed her.
She didn’t go straight to Minka, not that I thought she would, but instead went home to her parents’ place and tried to sneak out and drive to the beachside cottage where she’d been hiding her daughter for years.
They were prepared for it all, though, and thankfully one of John’s men spotted her in a grey Bentley and followed. I don’t even want to think about what she would have done if she’d reached that place without John or Liza on her ass every step of the way, because just the idea of the anger she must have felt will give me nightmares for the next twenty years.
They got there just as she was dragging the kicking, screaming, and sobbing little girl to the car, and I will forever live vicariously through Liza when John laughingly told me what she did to the bitch.
Turns out she’ll be facing the council in a neck brace, and no amount of plastic surgery will ever fix her face. I’m grateful, happy, and a little daunted by what’s happening.
I’m a mom to a gorgeous little girl who’s as crafty and manipulative as her father and as sweet as her beaming granny, and I feel so blessed right now that I can’t fully describe it all well enough.
“Come on, angel. You need to rest and get off your feet.”
I let Misha undress me down to my sports bra and panties and snuggle into the bed as he strips, too, and slides in beside me, spooning me and shoving his face into my neck.
“It’s all worked out in a way I never would have thought possible.”
I second that, and his awe has my eyes tearing up again at the dreams my pathetically sappy mind can’t stop weaving. Shopping trips and ballet recitals and teaching my little girl to bake a mean chocolate pie.
Slumber parties with her aunts and teaching her about being a good, decent woman and never, ever telling her daddy if she’s dating a boy.
It’s all so clear and attainable that I can almost reach out and touch the moments that are to come in the future. I see her doting on her baby brother or sister—God, let it be a boy or Misha will be insufferable to live with. I see her loving her cousins and driving Mama crazy with delight when she succeeds in beating Papa at chess.
I see Vika and Max spoiling the shit out of her as the first of many grandchildren to come, and I see Lincoln teaching her all his inappropriate tricks and that sometimes you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.
I see it all so clearly and I look forward to each and every moment with Misha by my side, obsessively watching over us all and bugging my panties, because let’s face it, the man is never going to be normal ever again. If he ever was.
These moments are ones I never saw coming, but I want them all—the good, the bad, and the ugly—because no matter which I get, I’ll just be grateful and happy to have them all with this man I love.
“I’m so happy, Mish. Leo and Tatty are happy. Vadim and Nikita are finally together again, and you and I have our family. I never once thought she was coming home, but I am so glad she’s here.”
“I feel as if I will wake tomorrow and realize this was all a dream, angel,” he rasps, pulling me closer with a shudder.
“It isn’t and you won’t. We’ve got this moment, Mish, God has given us all these moments to take what we need and to cherish the gifts that they are. Let them in, baby.”
He doesn’t reply but I feel his smile against my skin and I finally understand that it’s all so easy. You can choose to love. You can choose to forgive. You can choose to accept every miracle you find in life, and you can choose to keep them all.
I’m happy for every moment we’ve had so far, and as sweet and perfect as the nothings have been, it’s the future that I’m now looking forward to.
The End
BAD APPLE: The Complete Series (Parts 1-5) Page 32