He nods. “I’ll be right back,” he tells me. Within a few moments, he returns with his laptop and sets up in the chair beside my bed.He starts working with the kind of intense focus I’m starting to recognize as his default mode.
But every few minutes, his eyes flick to me like he’s checking and making sure I’m still breathing. Still okay.
When sleep finally pulls me under, the last thing I see is Dimitri bathed in the blue glow of his laptop screen. Still there. Still watching over me.
Protecting what’s his.
I don’t have the energy to wonder anymore when I became part of that category. When the baby became ours instead of just Alexei’s.
When everything changed.
I just close my eyes and let sleep take me, knowing that when I wake up, he’ll still be there.
And somehow, that’s enough.
18
DIMITRI
It’s been two days since the bleeding. Forty-eight hours since I thought I might lose them both.
I’m supposed to be reviewing security protocols—the file is open on my laptop, cursor blinking expectantly—but instead I’m watching Vera sleep.
She’s on her side facing me, one hand tucked under her cheek. Her auburn hair spills across the white pillowcase in waves, catching the afternoon light streaming through the window. Her long lashes cast shadows on her cheeks, and her lips are slightly parted with each slow breath.
She’s beautiful.
The thought isn’t new. I’ve always known she was attractive, even when I hated her, but this is different. This is watching the way her nose scrunches slightly when she dreams, the way her fingers twitch against the pillow, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest that tells me she’s here, alive, andsafe.
This is memorizing every detail like I’m afraid I might forget, like she might disappear if I look away.
My eyes drift lower, to where her other hand rests on her stomach. There’s only the slightest sign of the twelve-week-old life growing inside her. If you didn’t know her body the way I do, you would never know that she’s pregnant. ButIknow it’s there. I’ve seen the grainy ultrasound image that’s now tucked in my wallet, and heard that impossibly fast heartbeat.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The memory makes my chest tight. Those moments before Dr. Petrov found the heartbeat—when Vera was sobbing in my arms and there was so much blood and I thought?—
I force the memory away. She’sfine. The baby isfine. Dr. Petrov said so.
But I haven’t been able to leave this room for more than a few minutes at a time since. Mrs. Kozlov brings meals. I work from the chair beside Vera’s bed. At night, I lie next to her and barely sleep because I need to know she’s still breathing and okay.
It’s excessive. Obsessive, frankly. But I can’t stop.
The thought of losing her—losingthem—rearranged something fundamental inside me until I can’t pretend anymore.
I’m in love with her.
With Vera Ashford. The woman I married for revenge. The woman whose family killed my brother. The woman who is pregnant with his baby.
The realization should horrify me, and it does. But it’s also so obvious I don’t know how I missed it.
When did it happen? I try to trace it back and pinpoint the exact moment. Was it at dinner when she threw my own words back in my face and refused to be cowed? Or when she looked at me in the library with understanding instead of fear? Or the night we had sex in my office and she told me she cared about me despite every reason not to?
Or was it two days ago, when I saw her doubled over and bleeding and the bottom dropped out of my world? When I realized I would burn everything to the ground—every alliance, every carefully laid plan, the entire fucking city—if it meant keeping her safe?
Maybe it was all of those moments. Maybe it was none of them. Maybe I’ve been falling since the moment she walked down that aisle in her white dress, scared shitless but meeting her destiny head on.
Vera shifts in her sleep, her hand moving unconsciously over the barely-there swell of her stomach. Protecting. Even unconscious, she’s protecting the baby.
