I pulled back enough to look at her—really look at her. My wife. The mother of my child. The woman who’d somehow become the center of my entire world despite every instinct screaming that attachment was weakness.
She looked exhausted. Terrified. And still so fucking beautiful it made my chest ache.
“Come on,” I said quietly, taking her hand. “Let’s go upstairs. You need to rest.”
**********
I sat beside her, pulling her into my lap. She went stiff for a moment, then slowly relaxed against me, her head on my shoulder.
“Tell me about the letters,” I said. “Everything.”
So she did.
She told me about the first letter, delivered by mail. About the second, handed to her by a teenage boy who’d vanished afterward. About her father’s warnings, his promises, his insistence that she wasn’t safe. She told me about hiding them, about the guilt and fear that had eaten at her, about wanting to tell me but being too afraid of what I’d do.
I listened without interrupting, my hand resting on her stomach where our child grew. Processing. Planning. Calculating.
Her father was either incredibly stupid or incredibly desperate. Maybe both. Reaching out to her like this, using intermediaries, drawing attention—it was the behavior of a man with nothing left to lose.
Which made him even more dangerous.
**********
I didn’t sleep that night.
I couldn’t. Not with my mind racing through possibilities, contingencies, threats. Konstantin and Dimitri worked through the night, pulling surveillance and tracking communications.
Around 4 am, I went back upstairs. Mila was asleep, curled on her side with one hand on her stomach. Protecting those she loved even in sleep.
I stood in the doorway and watched her, this woman who’d become my obsession, my weakness, my reason for everything.
War had arrived—and she stood right at the center of it.
God help whoever dares to come close to her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mila’s POV
The night began quietly. Too quietly, maybe. I should have recognized it for what it was—a false calm, a lull that came before tumult. But I was tired of seeing threats in every shadow, exhausted from weeks of mounting tension that had pulled me so taut I thought I might snap.
So when the house settled into unusual stillness, snow falling in thick silence outside the windows, I let myself pretend it meant peace.
I was in the library, surrounded by books I wasn’t actually reading. Psychology texts I’d had brought from my old apartment, reminders of a life that felt like it belonged to someone else. I’d opened one on developmental psychology—thinking maybe I should start preparing, understanding what was coming—but the words kept blurring on the page.
Instead, I found myself thinking about Alexei’s face the night we’d found out I was pregnant. I thought of the way shock had flickered across his features, cracking the careful mask he always wore. How his hands had trembled—actually trembled—when he’d placed them on my stomach for the first time. The dangerous softness that had entered his eyes, something almost like wonder mixed with that ever-present possessiveness.
For the first time since he’d claimed me, since he’d made me his wife and dragged me into this world of violence and blood, I’d felt like I held power, too. Not just him. Not just his strength, his protection, his all-consuming obsession.
I was reaching for my tea—now cold, forgotten for the past hour—when I heard it.
A sound that didn’t belong. Too sharp, too deliberate in the peaceful quiet. I looked up just as the library window exploded inward.
Glass shattered in a spray of glittering fragments, winter air rushing in with enough force to send papers flying. I opened my mouth to scream, but rough hands grabbed me from behind before any sound could escape. A palm clamped over my mouth—latex gloves, I registered distantly, no fingerprints—and an arm banded around my waist like iron.
Three more men in black tactical gear poured through the broken window with terrifying efficiency. There was no wasted movement, no hesitation. I tried to scream anyway, the sound muffled against the hand covering my mouth. I tried to kick, to claw, to remember anything from the self-defense videos I’d watched in a fit of paranoia weeks ago. But my attacker was strong—too strong—and they’d clearly planned this down to the second.
No alarms blared. No guards came running.
