Page 72 of The Pakhan’s Debt by Leona White

She looks at me with wet eyes and a steady mouth. “I thought you would protect us by taking over everything.”

The silence after that has teeth. I step back because if I stay close, I will touch her, and touching her now would turn into holding her still.

“How far?” I ask.

Her hand moves over her stomach, slow this time, protective. “Around ten weeks.”

Ten.

I walk away from her and stop in front of the file cabinets, hands deep in my pockets. The brass labels sit in neat rows, each drawer locked, each key accounted for. Useless. Men failed inside my own walls. Karpov walked a blade through my house and used my routines against me. Sergei sat somewhere alive while his daughter carried my child and kept the truth folded inside her bag.

I take out my phone.

Elena stiffens. “What are you doing?”

“Calling the doctor.”

“No.”

I don’t look at her. “Yes.”

“Maksim.”

I turn then. “You can fight me on many things today. That’s not one of them.”

I call Abramov and tell him to bring Dr. Yelena Markova through the east entrance, clean and fast, without leaving clinic records or staff chatter behind.

She pushes past me. I catch her elbow before she reaches the door, and she whips around so fast the color drains from her face. I loosen my grip at once, keeping my hand open against her arm, and her eyes drop to the change before she looks back at me.

“Let go,” she says, trying to pull her arm back.

“You’re dizzy.” I keep my hand open, holding only enough to stop her from swaying.

“I’m furious.” Her voice shakes on the last word.

“Both, then.”

Her eyes flash, wet at the edges now. “Don’t make jokes.”

I step in, and her back touches the door. My hand stays on the wood beside her head, and the printout hangs from my other hand between us, obscene in its smallness.

“I’m not joking,” I say. “You hid my child from me while men were dying to bring you home.”

Her eyes fill, but she doesn’t let one tear fall. “I hid my child from a world that turns women into paperwork.”

That one lands.

I lower my hand from the door and step back. “Then watch carefully, Elena. Every order I give now is because your father made a world where paperwork can kill.”

Dr. Markova arrives within the hour. She’s in her late forties, hair pulled back, coat buttoned, eyes practical. She greets Elena first, then introduces herself.

“I’ll examine you only with your consent, but I need to be clear. If there’s a serious risk to you or the pregnancy, I’ll say so,” she says, then gestures to the leather settee. “Lie back, please.”

Elena’s eyes flick to me. “And him?”

“I stay in the next room,” I say.

I step into the adjoining study and leave the door open by a hand’s width. Markova asks questions. Then I hear the portable machine open. Paper rustles, a soft instruction, then silence. My hand closes over the back of a chair.