My baby.
The thought stops me cold. Not Alexei’s baby.Mine.
Sweat trickles down my back. When did that shift happen? When did I start thinking of this child as mine instead of my brother’s? Is it because I’m the one who's been here for every doctor’s appointment and every moment of morning sickness? Because I’m the one who held her while she sobbed and bled and thought she was losing it?
Is this what a father feels? This fierce, overwhelming need to protect them both. Or is it just what an uncle should feel?
The distinction matters. Itshouldmatter.
Because if I’m thinking of myself as this baby’s father, then I’m taking something that should have been Alexei’s. The chance to be there for Vera’s pregnancy, to hold his child, to build a family.
He’s been dead two and a half months. Two and a half months, and I’ve already taken his girl and claimed his baby as my own.
Fuck me. I’m a horrible brother.
Alexei didn’t deserve her, I know that now after Vera told me about their relationship. He kept her a secret, like she was something to be ashamed of. He had this incredible woman who loved him and he treated her like an afterthought. How could he do that?
But she was stillhis. And this baby?—
I look at the ultrasound photo on the nightstand. That tiny form, barely recognizable as human but unmistakably alive. My nephew or niece. My brother’s child.
Mychild.
I drop my chin onto my chest. God, I’m so fucked.
I can’t separate the two anymore or draw a clean line between duty and desire, between protecting what’s mine and taking what was Alexei’s. It’s all tangled together until I don’t know where one feeling ends and another begins.
I just know that I love her. I love her in a way that’s all-consuming and entirely inappropriate given that she’s grieving my dead brother while pregnant with his baby.
And I know I can’t tell her.
Saying “I love you” feels like the ultimate vulnerability, and Dimitri Volkov doesn’tdovulnerable. More than that, it feelswrong, like I’d be forcing her to choose between her grief for Alexei and her growing feelings for me. It feels like I would be taking advantage of her isolation and dependence.
I’d be betraying my brother one more time.
So I stay silent.
I bring her meals, not trusting anyone else to make sure she eats and set out her prenatal vitamins each morning and watch until she swallows them. I’m here when she wakes from nightmares, when the cramping gets bad, and when she needs someone to just sit with her.
At night, I hold her and press my face into her hair and breathe in the scent of her shampoo and I think about if life were different. If we had met first, before she and Alexei got together. And I whisper everything except the words that matter most.
“You’re safe.”
“I’ve got you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
But never “I love you.”
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Because some truths are too dangerous to speak aloud and some feelings are too complicated to untangle. And some betrayals?—
A knock at the door interrupts my spiral.
I glance at Vera, but she doesn’t stir.
The knock comes again, more insistent.
