Elevated HCG levels detected. Consistent with early pregnancy.
The words blur as I read them again. And again. My hands grip the edge of my desk, knuckles going white against the dark wood, and I feel the room tilt sideways like the deck of the Tsaritsa during the storm.
Pregnant.
Aria is pregnant.
The data doesn't lie. The watch tracked her body for three weeks with sensors designed to detect the subtlest changes in human physiology. From themomentof conception! Changes too small for her to notice yet, too early for a standard pregnancy test to confirm. But the technology doesn't care about timing or convenience. It simply reports what is.
Twenty years of certainty crumble like sand through my fingers.
I was nineteen when a rival Pakhan’s men cornered me in that Moscow alley, when they put three bullets in my chest and one lower, in my abdomen. The doctors saved my life, but they were absolute about the damage. The internal injuries, the scar tissue, the complications that would prevent me from ever fathering children. I built my life around that truth, never allowing myself to want what I couldn't have, never letting myself imagine a future that included a family.
Except the data on this screen says otherwise.
"This is accurate?" My voice comes out rougher than intended, the Russian accent thickening until the English words feel foreign on my tongue.
Yaroslav nods, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows. "The sensors are medical-grade, Pakhan. Used in fertility clinics and hospitals. The margin of error is less than one percent."
One percent. Not enough to hope for a mistake, not enough to dismiss this as a glitch in the system. Aria is carrying a child. My child. The miracle I never thought possible, the future I'd convinced myself I didn't want because wanting it would mean acknowledging the loss.
My hand moves to my phone before conscious thought catches up, Aria's number already pulled up on the screen. I need to tell her. Need to hear her voice, need to know if she's experiencing symptoms yet, need to… what? Claim her? Demand she acknowledge what's growing inside her?
Logic reasserts itself with brutal efficiency, and I set the phone down with more force than necessary.
She doesn't know. The watch detected changes too subtle for her to notice yet, hormonal shifts that won't manifest as obvious symptoms for days, maybe weeks. I could tell her, should tell her, except doubt creeps in like poison through my veins.
What if the child isn't mine?
The thought makes my stomach turn, but I can't dismiss it. I don't know Aria's history. I don't know if she was seeing someone before the yacht party, nor do I know if she could have been pregnant before arriving on the island. The timing works, barely, if she conceived just before we met. And if that's true, if fate played the cruelest joke imaginable by making me believeI'd finally achieved the impossible, then claiming this child would make me look like a fool.
Worse, it would make me look weak.
My men will ask these questions. Cyril already watches me with suspicion, measuring how much the island changed me, calculating whether his Pakhan has gone soft. If I claim this child without proof, if I show weakness by trusting blindly, my enemies will use it to destroy me. Matvey Ignatyev would have a field day with it, spreading rumors that the great Nikolai Alekseev was cuckolded by a caterer, that he's so desperate for an heir, he'll claim another man's bastard.
The rage that thought ignites surprises me with its intensity. The idea of Aria with another man, of her body responding to someone else's touch the way it responded to mine, makes violence surge through my veins hot enough to burn. But beneath the rage lives something more dangerous. Fear. Fear that I'm not the father. Fear that this miracle isn't mine to claim. Fear that I've already lost something I didn't know I wanted until this moment.
"The conception date," I say, forcing my voice into something resembling calm. "Can you narrow it down further?"
Yaroslav's fingers fly across the keyboard, pulling up more detailed analysis. "Based on the hormone progression and the sensitivity of the sensors, it can't be that detailed. Just that conception occurred within the last three or so weeks."
The certainty settles in my bones with a weight that feels both terrifying and exhilarating. I'm going to be a father.
My phone feels heavy in my hand as I stare at Aria's number. I should call her right now, should tell her what the data revealed,should hear her reaction to news that will change both our lives irrevocably. But something stops me. Maybe it's the memory of how she looked when I put her in that car, the barely concealed hurt in her dark eyes when I treated her like a stranger. Maybe it's the knowledge that this conversation can't happen over the phone, that news this significant deserves to be delivered face to face.
Or maybe it's the coward in me, the part that's terrified of her reaction. Will she be happy? Horrified? Will she see this child as a blessing or a curse, a miracle or a trap that binds her to a man whose world is built on darkness?
"Pakhan?" Yaroslav's voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. "Would you like me to delete this file?"
17
ARIA
The plastic stick rests on the edge of my bathroom sink like an accusation. I stare at it until my eyes water, until the two pink lines blur into a single smudge of color that might mean nothing or might mean everything. I blink hard, forcing my vision to clear, and the lines remain. Unmistakable. Undeniable. Two parallel streaks of pink that rewrite my entire future in the space of three minutes.
I'm pregnant.
The words echo in my mind, foreign and impossible, even as my trembling hands press against my still-flat stomach. There's a baby growing inside me. A tiny cluster of cells that will become a person, a life I'm responsible for creating and protecting. The magnitude of it steals the breath from my lungs.
