Page 70 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

The words hit so hard that I feel them in my teeth.

“I didn’t know how to tell you.”

His eyes stay on my face, dark, hard, and unblinking. “No,” he says, and there’s no heat in it. “You knew exactly how to tell me. You chose not to.”

I shake my head, and my hand slides to my stomach before I can stop it. His eyes catch the movement, and the last of his stillness fractures. He comes closer, the printout in his hand, his face carved into something I’ve seen turned on other men and never on me.

“Elena,” he says, looking me dead in the eye. “Explain yourself.”

21

MAKSIM

Elena stands with one hand on the chair and the other pressed flat against her stomach.

That movement answers me before she opens her mouth.

I hold the clinic printout between two fingers, and the paper stays intact because if I crush it, I’ll do worse with my hands next. Folic acid. Foods to avoid. Warning signs. Early pregnancy. Seven weeks. A sweet pea written by her hand at the bottom in blue ink.

A sweet pea.

Christ.

She knew.

She knew while Karpov’s men dragged her out of my house and Moretti’s dogs moved her toward a transfer site. When I came for her, she looked at me with blood on her mouth and fear in her eyes. She knew it then. At the safehouse, in my bed, under my hands, with my mouth on her skin and my name in her throat, I was the stupid fuck who didn’t know.

“Elena,” I say, and the sound leaves my mouth stripped down to bone. “Explain yourself.”

Her chin lifts, proud even now. Pale, shaking, cornered, but still trying to find the cleanest place to stand.

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

Her fingers tighten around the back of the chair. “When I knew how.”

My mouth moves once, and there’s no humor in it. “You had a clinic report. You had a scan. You had a list folded into your bag.”

She keeps her silence.

I wait, my eyes on hers until she looks away.

“I needed time,” she says, almost under her breath.

My eyes keep pulling toward her stomach, and I force them back. Because if I don’t, I’ll say something I can’t take back.

I take a step around the table. “You walked into a clinic with one of my men at the door and confirmed my child while I was locking down streets, routes, doctors, houses, and anyone who could get near you?”

“You were also locking me in.”

There it is. She says it flat, and she’s not wrong. That doesn’t help her.

“That’s your defense?” I lift an eyebrow.

“That’s my reality,” she says. Her mouth tightens. Her knuckles go white as she grips the chair.

My hand closes around the printout. The edge creases under my thumb, and I force my fingers open. “How long?”