Where my heir would soon rest and grow strong.
??????
I pulled my boxers up and gathered my clothing while she remained on the bed, both pillows stuffed beneath her hips.
“Do not bathe until the morning,” I said, turning to leave.
She said nothing. I didn’t require her to.
I opened the door to find Bogdan and Radovan in quiet conversation across the hallway. They straightened immediately and nodded as I walked past.
For once their gossiping would do some good.
I heard Bogdan move to follow and glanced over my shoulder.
“Give the house a final security check,” I said.
The realisation had settled somewhere during the evening—quietly, without announcement. Any child of mine would become a target the moment its existence was known. Heirs attracted threats the way power attracted envy. It was inevitable and it needed to be accounted for from the beginning.
Women came and went. Nothing would ever happen to my heir.
I pushed open my bedroom door.
Both wings of the house were identical in layout, twin master bedrooms at opposite ends of the upper floor. Mine was decorated in slate blue and gold—darker than her room, colder, chosen without sentiment. The bed was stark and empty and exactly as I had left it.
This was the way I preferred it.
My bedroom was the one place in the house that belonged entirely to me. No staff, nobyki, no advisors with phones already out before they’d crossed the threshold. The one place I was genuinely alone and uninterrupted. I had been precise about that from the day I moved in and I intended to remain precise about it.
I cracked my neck and tossed my clothes over the back of the couch.
After a moment I reached into my trouser pocket and set an alarm for the morning, ignoring the messages and emails waiting for me.
My alarm wasn’t for training.
Not for work.
It was to nail Iskra’s womb before the day started.
The thought of her hatred—that cold fury she wore like a second skin—and the image of her carrying my child regardless of it. Despite it. Her body doing what it was contracted to do while the rest of her raged against the arrangement.
It was almost poetic.
I carried that thought and the smile it produced to the shower. While I bathed, Iskra would be lying in her bed, smeared with my scent, both pillows still wedged beneath her hips on my instruction. The image was satisfying in a way that had nothing to do with sentiment.
Mentally I began to run through tomorrow’s schedule, already blocking out time to give my wife a proper Bratva honeymoon experience.
I chuckled to myself, washing every trace of her from my skin.
Then the image arrived without invitation—her belly heavy with my heir, those swollen breasts ready to nourish the next Pakhan—and my fist closed around my cock before I had decided to allow it. My dick twitched and I groaned at the ceiling.
Where were my years of discipline?
I finished bathing, dried off and settled into bed.
But when I closed my eyes she was there. Coming apart beneath my hands, that fury still burning underneath it, her body answering regardless.
I turned onto my side and checked my phone.
