Page 31 of Sexting My Bratva Boss (Mafia Silver Foxes #1)

Audrey

I t happens in the early hours of the morning. A slow, curling pressure wakes me—not pain exactly, just something deeper than discomfort. Like my body is a bell being rung gently from within. I sit up slowly, holding my breath, and wait for it to pass.

Konstantin sleeps like the dead next to me, his large body stretched across the bed. The blackout curtains paint the bedroom black, but I sense him there—my protector.

The pain passes, eventually. A slow tide easing back.

I glance at the clock.

3:14 a.m.

The penthouse is dark, quiet except for the faint hum of the security system and the soft rhythm of Konstantin’s breathing beside me.

I’m too awake to sleep now, alert for—what?

Standing, I walk to the windows and gently shift one of the heavy shades.

The city glitters far below, a frozen sea of golds and silvers stretching to the horizon.

Another wave rolls through me. This one a little firmer. A little sharper.

I inhale. Exhale.

Okay.

I think… this is it.

And weirdly, I’m not panicking. Not even a little.

Maybe it’s the hours of breathing techniques I practiced.

Or the fact that I packed the hospital bag two weeks ago and triple-checked it last night.

Or maybe it’s just that the man sleeping beside me has made me feel safer in the last three months than I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

I reach out and place a hand on his bare shoulder.

“Konstantin,” I whisper.

He doesn’t stir.

I lean in closer, pressing a kiss to the space behind his ear. “Konstantin. Wake up.”

His body tenses immediately—habit. That instinct to protect hardwired into every nerve. His eyes open. Alert. Dangerous.

Then they soften the moment they meet mine.

“What’s wrong?”

I smile gently. “It’s time.”

His expression doesn’t change at first. Then he blinks.

“Time for what?”

I wait.

His eyes widen slowly as the words register.

“You mean?—”

“Yes.”

He sits up, completely awake now. “You’re in labor.”

“I can’t imagine what else this would be.” Another wave of pain rolls through me, slowly, hunching my body over. I brace both hands on the bed, breathing deeply. Konstantin watches, eyes wide and poised to do… what? The look of helplessness on his face makes me laugh breathlessly.

“Oh f—okay. Okay. Stay there.”

He bolts out of bed like it’s a hostage situation. Which, to be fair, might be the only other thing that would jolt him into this level of motion before dawn. I can’t help grinning as I watch him stumble into a pair of black pants, then hesitate like he’s trying to remember what clothes are.

“Konstantin,” I say gently, “I’m not going to give birth in the next five minutes. You have time to get dressed, grab the bag and everything.”

“You don’t know that. You said it’s time.”

“Well, it is. But early labor takes a while.”

He looks at me like I’ve just confessed I’m planning to climb Everest on a tricycle. He knows all these things, but in the moment they seemed to have escaped his mind.

I smile again. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look in pain.”

“I’m not. Yet. But we should probably go. Just in case. Oh—can you grab a snack? Just in case?” He gives me an incredulous look but tears out of the room in a way that makes me think he might just level the city trying to find me a croissant.

I waddle over to my cell phone, pull up Lev’s contact, and let him know. He’s technically off shift, but still in reach. Three little dots pop up, go away, pop up again… nothing yet.

Oh, how birth can bring these great men down. Eventually, Lev simply answers my text: Congratulations. Please tell the boss I will be at the hospital.

Who will get there first, I wonder, listening to Konstantin banging around.

The private OB team is being notified before I’ve even left the bedroom.

My go-bag is grabbed. My coat slipped around my shoulders like I’m made of spun glass.

There are several men positioned in the building, and the only one who isn’t panicking holds the door open for me on my way out.

He’s older—Konstantin’s age, or near it, and gives me a kind smile.

Must be a father, maybe even a grandfather.

In the grey dawn light, Konstantin beats his driver to the curb and looks ready to murder when the man takes too long to open the door for me. I apologize, slip inside, and smile at my fiancé when he tumbles in through the other door.

It’s endearing, honestly. This is a man who’s faced down assassins and coup attempts with less panic than the idea of his girlfriend having a baby.

My heart swells.

He loves this child.

He loves me.

And as ridiculous as it is, seeing him flustered—watching him shouting into his phone in Russian—is oddly comforting.

Because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, he’ll never let anything happen to us.

The hospital staff must’ve been warned.

We’re rushed through a private entrance by a nurse who’s clearly been threatened within an inch of her life to be cheerful.

I’m wheeled into the VIP suite, tucked into a bed that could probably rival most luxury hotel mattresses, and handed a silky green gown with the Martynov crest stitched into the chest.

Thankfully, it’s a different room than the one I was in months ago. Only a shiver of anxiety goes through me; but my focus is mostly on the baby, who is clearly trying to press here and there to find the way out.

“Jesus,” I murmur as I change. “Is this what birth looks like when you’re a mafia princess?”

Konstantin, sitting straight-backed in the armchair like he’s preparing for war, doesn’t crack a smile. His jaw is locked tight. “Queen,” he corrects, then asks, “How far apart are the contractions?”

“About ten minutes. Maybe eight.”

He doesn’t like that answer.

The nurse—a sweet brunette named Tabitha—comes in to check my vitals. Her hands are shaking. She accidentally brushes a wire against my arm, and Konstantin shoots to his feet like it’s a weapon.

“I swear to God,” he growls, “if you so much as bump her wrong again, I’ll have your license revoked and your retirement spent in an unheated box.”

“Konstantin,” I say firmly. “I need her to have functioning hands.”

He doesn’t sit back down.

But he does press his lips to my temple and murmur, “You shouldn’t be the one in pain. Not you.”

“I’m not in pain yet.” It’s a half-lie; the contractions aren’t exactly comfortable.

“I don’t care. You shouldn’t be.” He brushes my hair back with one hand and lays a palm reverently on my belly. “You’re everything. You hear me? Everything.”

My throat tightens.

Hormones are cruel.

So is love, sometimes.

But in this moment, with his forehead pressed to mine and his hand covering the place where our son is slowly readying his entrance into the world, I feel weightless.

Like there’s nothing else. Just this.

Just us.

Five hours later, I’m definitely in pain.

The contractions are stronger now. Closer. My back is screaming. My abdomen’s clenching like it’s trying to tear itself apart. Konstantin looks like he’s aged ten years in the last hour, his salt-and-pepper hair dull and standing on end from running his hand through it constantly.

The nurses, aware of him but more focused on me, are serious and thorough. They’ve realized that I’m the one in control; and I need to be. Already this feels so overwhelming that I can’t imagine the other side of it.

“Epidural,” I pant, clutching Konstantin’s hand. “I need—I need the anesthesiologist?—”

“They said ten minutes. It’s been fifteen,” he barks at the nurse.

“I’m sorry, sir, I?—”

“If you don’t find someone right now,” he snarls, “I will .”

Tabitha ducks out of the room.

Konstantin leans down and strokes my face again. “You’re doing beautifully.”

“I am sweating .”

“You’re glowing.”

“Glowing with rage. ”

He chuckles softly, and I watch the lines around his eyes crinkle. Then another contraction hits, and I crush his hand with a force that could probably dislocate a lesser man’s knuckles.

He doesn’t even flinch.

“Breathe, malen’kiy volk ,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”

Time fractures.

Everything blurs—doctors, needles, shifting positions, the hum of a fetal monitor. The epidural helps. But then the pressure builds again. Insistent. Unrelenting.

I’m told to push.

Konstantin is at my side the entire time, one arm bracing my back, the other gripping my hand.

He speaks Russian at one point, a quiet mantra I don’t understand but feel in my bones.

A blurry, silly thought goes through my head: at some point I should start Russian lessons, at the very least to understand his mumbling.

He’s scared.

He thinks I’ll break.

But I don’t. Because I have to do this.

The pain hits a fever pitch.

I scream.

And then—a cry. Not mine, surprisingly.

A real, sharp, furious new cry.

Our baby.

“Congratulations,” the OB says softly. “It’s a boy.”

The room vanishes.

All I see is the tiny, wet, furious thing placed gently on my chest. He’s squalling, fists balled, face scrunched and red.

He’s perfect.

Konstantin makes a sound I’ve never heard before. A shuddering, soft gasp. I turn to find his hand over his mouth, eyes glassy, staring like he’s witnessing something sacred.

“Here,” nurse Tabitha says, handing him a pair of shears. The look on her face, one raised brow—I laugh, realizing that I’m not the only one aware they’re witnessing the breakdown of a powerful man.

The softening of him.

He cuts the cord with hands that only tremble slightly, then he leans down and presses the gentlest kiss in the world to our son’s damp head.

“My boy,” he murmurs. “My son. My little wolf.”

And I cry.

I’ve never seen him look like this—like a man on his knees at the feet of something he worships. It’s in this moment that I know that no matter what kind of world we came from, our son is going to be so, so loved.