“Cute. You should get it,” Tau said, leaning in before he straightened and scanned the store.
“Everything is cute,” I said, smoothing my hand down the outfit before stepping back from it with a sigh.“And it won’t be long until I find out whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
Everything outside the house had returned to cold and calm. The external danger neutralised. Other factions warned. Vadim had not laid his father to rest until the work was finished—the church had not been pleased about the delay. The Pakhan had not cared.
I moved to the table display.
“Do you have a girl? Family at home?” I asked, not looking up from the clothing that made my chest ache.
When he didn’t reply I tore my eyes away from the cardigans to stare at him.
His lips had tightened. His eyes were fixed on the back wall display—not seeing it, looking at something further away than the shop.
“A lifetime ago,” he said, through clenched teeth.
I didn’t ask anything further.
We wandered through the rest of the store while I collected ideas—colours, textures, the softness of things made for people not yet ready for the world. A nursery that Vadim was too busy to think about preparing. It should have been a happy afternoon for any expectant mother, browsing small things in a warm shop while the city went about its business outside.
Part of me felt disconnected from all of it.
It was the only way to protect my heart.
??????
On the way back I clutched my handbag, telling myself not to look at the scan picture.
I looked anyway.
Radovan and Tau were discussing their schedule in the front. I flicked the leather flap back and slipped my hand into the side compartment, pulling the picture out carefully.
With everything that had been happening I had only seen Ruslan a handful of times. Each visit brief. Managed. The kind of time that reminded me how much had been taken rather than how much remained.
My parents knew about the pregnancy. They had never reached out. I hadn’t expected Galina to. But my mother—I had expected something from her. Anything.
I traced my finger over the plastic coating of the picture. The tiny heartbeat that had pulsed on a screen. The hands becoming themselves.
I slipped it back into my bag and placed my hand over my bump.
I glanced out of the window.
A dark shadow fell over the car a fraction of a second before impact.
The truck hit us with a sound that was less like a crash and more like the world ending—metal against metal, the SUV lifting, rolling, the world tilting past the windows in a blur of sky and road and sky again. My neck snapped back and forth with each rotation.
Screaming. Shouting. I couldn’t tell whose.
Then warmth.
Blood, running from somewhere above my eye, tracking down across my face in a slow unhurried line.
My hand was still over my bump.
Clutching at the child I had spent months trying not to love.
??????
The constant beeping penetrated through to me and refused to stop.
