Page 29 of Pregnant Virgin of the Bratva (Sharov Bratva #14)

It’s late.

The kind of late where the house is asleep. Guards outside, doors locked, lights dimmed to low glows in the halls. I’m in the study with a half-drunk glass of whisky, paperwork spread across the desk that I haven’t touched in hours.

I’ve been thinking about her again. About the way she looked at me this morning—tired, but calm. The way her hand never left the curve of her belly. Six weeks, maybe a little less. We were getting close. Not close enough.

I hear her before I see her. Light footsteps down the corridor. Slower than usual.

I stand before she even reaches the door.

Esme walks in wearing one of my shirts, loose over her legs. Her hair is unbrushed, falling around her face in soft waves. She doesn’t speak right away.

There’s something in her eyes. A softness I haven’t seen before. Not like this.

I step around the desk. “Esme?”

She takes a single step forward—then pauses.

She opens her mouth, as if she’s about to say something. Her hand lifts slightly, like she means to reach for me.

Then her face twists.

A sharp, sudden pain carves through her features. She gasps, hands flying to her stomach. Her knees buckle before I can process what I’m seeing.

“ Esme !”

I’m already moving. I catch her before she hits the floor, arms tight around her back and under her thighs.

She clutches my shirt, breath stuttering. “Something’s wrong.”

Then I feel it, warmth spreads across my arms. My chest.

She’s soaked.

It takes a beat—just one.

Then it hits me. Her waters broke.

“No.” My voice breaks out of me, sharper than I mean it to be. “You’re early. You’re not supposed to—fuck.”

Her eyes squeeze shut. She groans, low and deep.

“Yuri!” I shout, already pushing through the door. “Get the car, now!”

My voice echoes through the hall like a gunshot.

She trembles in my arms. She’s gone pale.

“Breathe,” I murmur. “Stay with me. Look at me.”

She lifts her eyes, and there’s panic in them now. I try to push mine down. I can’t let her see it.

The front door is already open when I get there. Someone heard me. Good.

“Move!” I bark at the driver as I carry her straight to the car. “Hospital, now. Go as fast as you can, I don’t give a fuck about speed limits.”

She clings to me as I slide into the back with her still in my arms.

The car jolts forward.

I press a hand to her belly. It’s too early, she’s only eight months in.

“Does it hurt?”

She nods, teeth clenched.

I kiss her forehead, trying to breathe. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m scared.”

I look her dead in the eyes. “I’m not letting anything happen to you. Or her. Do you hear me?”

Tears cling to her lashes, but she nods.

My hands are shaking. I’ve held a gun to a man’s head and never once felt my fingers tremble.

Holding her like this? This is different.

The car barely stops before I’m out, Esme still in my arms.

“Emergency,” I bark to the front desk as we push through the sliding doors. “Preterm labor. She’s early.”

They don’t ask questions. One look at her face, the soaked fabric, and they spring into motion.

A wheelchair appears. I lower her into it gently. Her hand doesn’t leave mine.

Nurses swarm, voices clipped and fast. A doctor appears, already shouting orders. Blood pressure. Fetal monitor. Prepare an OR just in case.

Someone gestures for me to move.

I don’t.

“She’s my wife,” I say flatly. “I stay.”

Behind me, I hear Yuri’s boots on tile. He pushes through the line of medical staff like they’re nothing but smoke. One of the nurses tells him to wait outside.

He doesn’t even blink. “I stay too,” he says. “She’s not going through this alone.”

I glance at him.

Yuri doesn’t meet my eye. Just stands at Esme’s other side, silent and steady. She grips both our hands, breath shaking as the contraction passes.

I almost smile.

Yuri doesn’t like her. He’s never said it outright, but I know him. Knows how much he distrusts anyone that shifts my focus, but right now?

He stands his ground. For her. In that moment, I’m almost proud of him.

Esme looks at me, eyes wide with fear.

“I’m here,” I murmur. “Not going anywhere.”

She nods, tears on her lashes. As they wheel her into the triage room, Yuri and I follow.

Hospitals are supposed to be places where people get better.

Places of healing. Of safety. But I’ve never trusted anything sterile.

Anything that hides blood beneath linoleum and death behind polite smiles.

I don’t trust the soft colors on the walls, the flowers at reception, the carefully muted tones of every nurse who passes us with a clipboard and a fake expression of calm.

Esme is lying on a narrow hospital bed, her knuckles white from gripping the railing.

Her hair is damp, stuck to her temple, her lips pale, her breaths coming faster than I like.

I sit beside her with one hand in hers and the other pressed flat over the swell of her belly.

It’s still hard. Still too high. The contractions come and go, and with each wave of pain, I feel her whole body tense beneath my touch.

She’s trying to stay strong, but I can see how much it’s costing her.

A nurse fiddles with a monitor, eyes flicking between screens.

She doesn’t meet mine. None of them do. They speak in shorthand, in murmurs and abbreviations, as though the technical language makes it less real, but I don’t care about the codes.

I don’t want numbers or probabilities. I want certainty. I want her safe.

The door opens and the lead doctor walks in, clipboard in hand, expression too calm for the weight of the room.

He’s older, well-practiced, wearing the kind of face you see after years of repeating the same terrible news with just enough detachment to survive it.

He looks first at me, which already puts him on the wrong foot.

“There’s a complication,” he begins, and the calmness in his voice makes my teeth clench. “The baby’s heart rate is dropping steadily, and your partner’s blood pressure has spiked. We’re concerned about placental abruption—”

“Fix it,” I say flatly. I don’t want his explanation. I don’t need the science.

“We’re going to perform an emergency cesarean,” he continues, unbothered. “It’s the safest way to protect both mother and child.”

“Now?” I ask.

He nods. “Immediately. We’ve already begun prepping the operating room.”

It takes effort not to react. I keep my face still, my voice even, but my eyes flick to Esme. She looks at me like she already knows what he’s going to say. There’s no fear in her voice when she speaks, only exhaustion.

“Will it hurt the baby?”

The doctor shakes his head. “We’ll do everything in our power to deliver safely.”

He turns to the nurse to give further instructions, rattling off orders like it’s just another shift, another procedure. I rise from my seat, stepping into his path before he can take another step.

He’s not small, but I’m bigger. Right now, I’m willing to burn this entire hospital to the ground if he gives me even a reason to.

I grab him by the lapel of his coat, close enough that I can smell the faint antiseptic on his scrubs. My voice doesn’t rise. I don’t shout. I don’t need to.

“If she dies,” I say coldly, “you’ll follow her.”

He blinks, but he doesn’t look afraid. Just serious.

“I understand,” he replies. “I won’t let that happen.”

I stare at him another second, then release him. He straightens his coat with composure, then nods once and turns away.

They begin to unhook the monitors and move the bed. Esme’s hand slips from mine and it feels like something inside me tears. She grips the side rail, trying to sit up despite the pain, and her eyes lock with mine.

“Kion.”

“I’m right here,” I say.

Her voice breaks. “You’ll be there, won’t you?”

“I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.”

I walk beside the bed as far as they let me. At the doors to the operating theatre, they stop me. I know it’s protocol. I know what’s coming, but still, I don’t move. I have to see her.

She turns her face to me, pale and trembling, and offers a weak smile that nearly undoes me.

“I’m not ready,” she whispers.

“You don’t have to be,” I tell her, voice steady. “Just keep breathing. Just keep looking at me.”

Her hand reaches out. I catch it one last time, press it to my lips. I can’t say goodbye. I won’t.

Then the doors swing shut between us.

I’m left standing alone in a corridor that smells like bleach and fear and faint traces of blood.

The sound of voices fades behind the walls, muffled by too much glass and too much distance.

My chest feels too tight. My fists clench uselessly at my sides.

I can’t follow her. I can’t protect her. I can’t do anything.

Yuri appears beside me, silent, as always. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t offer comfort.

He just stands there.

It’s enough.

I sit down heavily in one of the plastic chairs outside the OR, elbows braced on my knees, fingers laced tightly together. I stare at the floor like it might give me answers, but all I see is her face. Her eyes. Her pain. Her fear. And that goddamn helpless smile before they took her away from me.

I’ve faced down gunfire. Stood in front of armed men and laughed in their faces.

This—this silence, this stillness—is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever known.

I don’t pace. I don’t breathe too loud. I sit in a stillness that burns beneath my skin, my soul already halfway buried, waiting to know whether my world ends behind those doors.

The hallway stays cold no matter how long we sit in it. The plastic chair beneath me might as well be concrete. Every breath I take is shallow, and every second drags like it’s caught in barbed wire.

My hands are still clasped together, elbows braced against my knees. I haven’t moved in minutes. Maybe more. I’m too focused on the double doors ahead, the ones they wheeled her through, the ones that haven’t opened since.

Yuri stands against the wall across from me, arms crossed over his chest. He hasn’t spoken. Hasn’t paced. Hasn’t checked his phone or pulled out a cigarette like he usually does. He just waits. Like I do. Still. Tense.

Eventually, he exhales. “You’re doing that thing.”

I don’t turn my head. “What thing?”

“Your jaw,” he says. “You keep grinding it like you’re chewing stone.”

I force a smile. “What’s a few fillings matter?”

Yuri snorts, takes a drink of his flask and then offers it to me. “After tonight, you’ll owe me a new liver.”

I take a swig, enjoying the burn.

He pushes off the wall and crosses the hallway, dropping into the seat beside me with a quiet thud.

His knees fall open, elbows resting lazily on the armrests like this is any other night.

But I know better. I see the lines at the corners of his mouth.

The way his fingers flex against the upholstery.

“You’ve got blood on your sleeve,” he says, nodding toward my arm.

I look down. It’s dried, brown along the crease of my elbow where I held her too tightly in the car.

“I know,” I say.

He studies me for a second longer. “I didn’t like her at first.”

I look at him now.

Yuri shrugs. “Didn’t trust her. She was too… different. I thought she was going to fall apart the first time someone raised their voice.”

“You weren’t the only one.”

He nods. “She didn’t cry when she got dragged into this world. She didn’t run when things got ugly. She held your hand the whole way here and didn’t let go.”

“She’s not soft,” I say. “She’s steel under skin.”

He leans forward slightly, resting his forearms on his knees. “She’s yours, and she chose to stay. That’s more than most.”

There’s a long pause. The hallway hums with silence and distant machines.

“She better come back,” he says after a moment, voice quieter now.

I nod once, jaw tight. “She will.”

“If she doesn’t…” He trails off, then sighs. “Well, those doctors won’t see another day.”

I huff something close to a laugh, though it doesn’t reach my eyes. “You’ll have to get in line.”

He glances sideways. “I mean it.”

“So do I.”

Another pause. Then, softer, he adds, “You’re not used to waiting, Kion.”

“I’m not used to being powerless.”