Mikel studies my expression carefully. “That bad?” he asks quietly.
I hand him the note. He reads it once, his eyes moving across the page quickly before returning to the beginning. His jaw clenches when he finishes.
Ethan steps forward. “What does it say?” he repeats.
Mikel hesitates before handing him the paper. Ethan reads it faster, confusion crossing his face before the final sentence lands.
“What child?” he blurts.
I stare at Arkady’s body in the back of the SUV while the answer takes shape in my mind. Rowan didn’t tell me, which means she only found out recently.
Ethan lowers the note slowly beside me. “You’re telling me Rowan is pregnant?”
The word echoes through the night.Pregnant.My child. For a moment, the world around me seems to narrow, not quieter but more focused.
Ivan knows. Which means he intends to use it.
Ethan drags a hand across his face, disbelief still written across every line of it. “She’s carrying your baby and you didn’t even know?”
“No,” I answer, my voice lower now. “Which means she only found out recently and didn’t have time to tell me.”
“Jesus Christ.” Ethan stares at the paper again like the words might rearrange themselves if he looks long enough. “It says you have to go alone.”
I take the note, already thinking three steps ahead of the trap Ivan expects me to walk into. “That’s the condition he wrote down,” I reply evenly.
Ethan lifts his hand sharply. “You’re not actually considering that?”
I glance once more at Arkady’s body lying in the back of the SUV. Ivan has already removed one obstacle tonight, and the message pinned to Arkady’s chest makes it clear he intends to remove the rest just as efficiently.
“My focus is bringing Rowan home,” I reply, my voice firm.
“And your baby,” Ethan adds quietly.
The words change the shape of the moment. Until now, Rowan had been leverage in someone else’s plan, a piece on a board that men like Arkady and Ivan believe they control. But this is different. She isn’t a strategy, pressure, or anything that can be traded.
She’smine.
Mikel steps a little closer, his expression thoughtful as he glances from the SUV then back to me. “You’ll want time to think this through,” he remarks.
“I already have,” I reply, sliding the folded paper back into my pocket.
Mikel exhales slowly and drags a hand through his hair while looking out across the drive, the lights from the estate reflecting faintly off the SUV where Arkady’s body still rests in the back.
“You’re really going to walk straight into a trap?”
“Yes.”
Mikel studies me before giving a small nod. “Then we better bring her home.”
Ivan made one mistake tonight. He told me Rowan is carrying my child, and that means this is no longer a negotiation.
Now it’s war.
9
ROWAN
The building never truly quiets. Even when the corridor outside our door falls silent for a few minutes at a time, something deeper inside the structure continues to move. Freight cars connect somewhere beyond the walls with a hollow metallic impact that travels through the ground and into the concrete beneath my feet. Steel drags against steel in the distance, followed by the low rumble of engines dragging heavy loads along the rail lines. The sound carries through the building in slow vibrations that never completely disappear.
