He glanced at me with a polite smile and a nod that said, “Just a minute, please.”
Then he finished his examination with methodical precision—checking her pupils, her pulse again, asking her questions in a gentle tone that she answered in fragments.
When was the last time she ate? Had she been dizzy before? Any nausea?
“Mr. Lobanov,” Volkov said finally, straightening with the careful posture of a man about to deliver news he wasn’t sure would be well-received. “I’d like to run some tests, but based on the symptoms—”
“Tests for what?”
“I believe your wife is pregnant.”
Everything inside me stilled.
The warehouse burning. The body swaying in the flames. Moretti’s declaration of war. The leak in my organization. The thousand calculations and strategies that had been running through my mind like background noise—all of it faded beneath the quiet sound of that single word.
Pregnant.
Beside me, Anya made a sound that might have been a gasp or a laugh. On the bed, Mila’s eyes had gone wide, one hand moving unconsciously to her stomach.
“I—” she started, then stopped. “I didn’t realize. I thought it was just stress, or—” Her voice trembled, and she looked at me with something like uncertainty. “It must have happened after the first time. We didn’t—I wasn’t—”
“Yeah,” I cut in, nodding briskly.
We hadn’t been careful. Not that first night, lost in the unexpected intensity of finally giving in to the pull between us. And apparently not careful enough in the weeks since, despite my attempts at precaution that had grown increasingly half-hearted as my desire to claim her completely had overridden practical concerns.
Dr. Volkov was explaining something about blood tests and confirming dates and prenatal vitamins, but I barely heard him. I was looking at Mila—at her pale face, trembling hands, and the fear in her eyes that told me she had no idea how I was going to react to this.
And then I laughed.
Not the cold, sharp sound people knew me for—the one that usually preceded violence. This was different. The sound that burst out of my lips without permission was quiet and unguarded, like something ancient inside me had just found its purpose. Like a lock tumbling open after years of being sealed shut.
Anya stared at me like I’d lost my mind. Dr. Volkov paused mid-sentence. And Mila just looked confused and heartbreakingly vulnerable. It felt wrong to me that she’d be unsure of my reaction, even for a single second.
I knelt beside the bed, ignoring everyone else in the room, and cupped her face in both hands. Her skin was still too cool, still clammy with shock, but she was here. She was alive. And she was carrying my child.
Mine.
“Moya krov,” I whispered in Russian, my thumb brushing across her cheekbone. “Moya zhizn.Ty dala mne vse.”My blood, my life. You’ve given me everything.
I knew she didn’t understand the words—not yet, she was still learning the language, still piecing together phrases from what she’d overheard—but the way I looked at her must have conveyed something. Because the fear in her eyes softened, replaced by something that looked almost like hope.
“You’re not angry?” she whispered.
“Angry?” I said it in English this time, my voice rough with an emotion I couldn’t name. “Mila, you’re carrying my heir. My child. How could I possibly be angry?”
“I thought—” She bit her lip, and I watched a tear slide down her temple into her hair. “I thought it would complicate things. Make everything harder. The war with Moretti, the danger—”
“Everything was already complicated.” I pressed my forehead to hers, breathing her in—jasmine and fear and something essentially Mila. “This doesn’t change that. But it changes everything else.”
Because she wasn’t just my wife now. She was the mother of my child. She was carrying my blood, my heir, the future of everything I’d built and was still building. And for a man like me, who’d learned early that loyalty was the only currency that mattered, that blood ties were the strongest chains and the greatest gifts—that meant everything.
It meant I would burn the world to ash before I let anything happen to her. It meant Moretti had just made the fatal mistake of declaring war on a man who now had something even more infinitely precious to protect. It meant that the careful control I’d maintained, the surgical precision with which I’d been planning my response to Enzo’s provocations, was about to become something far more ruthless.
Dr. Volkov cleared his throat delicately. “Mr. Lobanov, I really should run those tests—”
“Run them.” I didn’t look away from Mila. “Whatever she needs. The best of everything. I don’t care what it costs.”
“Of course. I’ll need to take her to the clinic for—”
