I lay back on the bed, one hand on my stomach, the other curled into the pillow that I wished was one that still smelled faintly like him. I missed his scent.
“Your father is dangerous,” I whispered to the life inside me. “But so am I, now.”
The thought didn’t frighten me.
It felt like coming home.
Chapter 9
Maksim
Unknown Safe House—Two Nights Later
She learned fast.
That was the problem.
I’d disagreed with the training, worried about her being pregnant. One of Viktor’s men—now my men—had boldly spoken up. “If she’s going to be one of us, she needs to be prepared.”
Reluctantly, I’d given in.
In the place Archer had arranged for us to stay, I stood in the observation room behind the one-way glass. Arms crossed, jaw tight, watching Sofia move through Archer’s drills, I had mixed emotions. She was no longer clumsy or hesitant. Instead, what I saw was determination. Focused. Deliberate.
Archer corrected her stance once. She adjusted without argument. He showed her how to break a grip using leverage instead of strength. She practiced until her breathing evened out, until fear no longer slowed her movements.
She was adapting.
Sofia twisted, ducked, and drove her elbow back exactly where he’d shown her. Archer grunted softly, yet on his face was—approval. She didn’t smile. She reset.
Pregnant. Bruised. Unyielding.
Pride rose in my chest—hot, immediate—and right behind it came something colder. Fear.
Because the moment a woman stops being afraid, she stops being a victim. And the moment she stops being a victim, she becomes a target of a different kind.
They paused and Archer entered the room, stopping next to me.
“She shouldn’t have to do this,” I muttered as I watched her grab a towel to wipe the sweat from her face and neck.
Archer didn’t look away from her. “No, but this is where we find ourselves.”
I pressed my thumb into my palm, grounding myself. I wanted to pull her out of that room, wrap her in my arms, tell her she never had to harden like this. That I would turn back the clock, or I would burn the world and everything in it so she wouldn’t have to learn how to survive like this.
But that world had already come for her.
And it appeared she’d answered.
“She’s strong,” Archer said quietly as she went back to our room to clean up.
“I know,” I replied, glancing in his direction. “That’s what terrifies me.”
The alarm tripped less than five minutes later.
Not the building-wide siren—worse. The silent alert. The kind that meant perimeter breach. Fuck, how did they keep finding us?
“Get her to the panic room!” But I needn’t have said a word; Archer was already moving. Weapon drawn, I was out the door before the warning finished registering in my bones. We split up. The two men I’d posted outside the small gym earlier divided and followed us.
Gunfire cracked through the night. One shot. Then another.
