Page 20 of A Surprise Baby for the Russian

His jaw is tight, his eyes now reflecting the faint moonlight cutting through the blinds, the gray looking very much like a storm brewing.

“He’s weak, Raya, like all bullies. People look at his compound, his money, his secrets, and they think it’s power. It isn’t. It’s fear. He is a pathetic old man running on the terror of losing control. He’s terrified of not being seen as strong. He’s terrified that if people stop fearing him, he’ll disappear. He’s nothing but a man hiding behind a curtain, desperately pulling strings so nobody notices how small he actually is.”

He sighs deeply as he meets my eyes. “I used to think he was a monster. Now I know exactly how to break him. I will destroy him for what he did to Selene, what he did to us kids, and especially for what he has done to you.”

Neither of us says anything else; there’s not really a lot you can say after such a declaration. I lie there and let the comfort in his words settle over me. Then I share something too, as that’s what we’re doing. “My mother used to tell me and Sofie bedtime stories. Our favorite was about a girl who lived at the edge of a forest who kept finding doors. We’d make her tell it again and again.”

“Doors?”

“Every day there’d be a new one, but she would have to go out on an adventure to find it. It could be on the side of a hill, at the bottom of the garden, once in the middle of a field with nothing around it for miles. Whenever the girl opened a door, there would be something good on the other side. Not treasure or magic… good things. A warm kitchen with a freshly baked pie. A garden in summer. Her grandmother’s voice.” I pause. “My mother wasn’t a complicated woman; there were no great moral lessons. She wanted us to know that the world had good things in it and you had to be willing to open the doors.”

Yakov doesn’t say anything. I look over at him, and his eyes are closed, or almost closed, as he’s listening, the way he listens to everything I say, like there’s nothing else in the room worth attending to.

The distance between those two stories is the distance between two entirely different childhoods, and it is in the room with us without either of us saying so.

I lie there in the quiet, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath the covers. The darkness of his world should terrify me. By all rights, I should be repulsed by the violence that follows him like a shadow. But as I look at his profile in the moonlight, a heavy ache opens up in my chest. He spent his entire life building invincible protectors out of nightmares to survive his own family. And now, he’s using that same dark, lethal engineering to protect me.

At some point, his hand finds my hair, his fingers moving slowly, the way you do something without deciding to. I should say something about it, but I don’t. I stay on my side facing him, close my eyes, and let myself be still for the first time in what feels like weeks. The room is quiet, his hand is warm, and I am almost asleep when I hear him shift closer. His breath is a warm puff against my forehead, the scent of him enveloping me, drawing me into his orbit until the space between us feels nonexistent.

He strokes my hair with a slow, hypnotic rhythm, his thumb lightly brushing my temple. I feel his body heat seep through the duvet. The bickering, the sarcasm, and the anger of the last week dissolve into the dark.

I hear him say something, very quietly, in Russian.

“YA ne pushchu monstrov k tebe, rodnaya.”

I don’t catch all of it. What I think I hear is something about monsters and not letting them near, while he continues to stroke my hair. I take a small, trembling breath, my forehead drifting closer until it is resting against the solid warmth of his collarbone. I let myself sink into his hold, surrendering to the safety of his shadow.

Chapter 9 - Yakov

The bandage changes are the only part of my day that matter.

We’d barely got through the door of the second safe house before my body tried to give out on me. The adrenaline from getting shot hadn’t just faded; it had tanked, leaving me dizzy and close to hitting the floor. But once that auto-injector slammed into my thigh and muted the screaming in my shoulder, the pain didn’t dull—it mutated into pure, lethal focus. I was livid. The moment the chemicals cleared the haze from my head, I didn’t waste another second. I was straight onto the burner phone, hitting up key contacts I’ve quietly cultivated within the syndicates for years. I started snipping at my father’s throat from the dark.

I know the setup of his contacts in the East. I know every vulnerability in his cash-flow situation, the black-market routes, and the politicians he pays off to keep his compound running. I spent the last forty-eight hours bleeding his empire—not dry, there’s no fun in that—but the slow drip, drip that’ll drive him fucking loopy. Freezing certain accounts, rerouting his gun shipments in a way that fucks his clients over, making him look like he’s lost control. The beautiful part is, he won’t know where the hits are coming from. My contacts are already calling me, laughing about how the old man is losing his mind, screaming at his inner circle, going insane trying to figure out who is bleeding him out.

Eroding him bit by bit is immensely satisfying. Watching a god fall to his knees is a hell of a pastime. But as good as it feels to watch him lose his shit, absolutely none of it compares to this. None of it matches the suffocating heat of sitting on the end of this mattress, waiting for Raya to touch my skin. Being together like this, trapped in this dimly lit room with her, makes the war outside seem insignificant.

Twice a day, morning and night, she works behind me while I sit on the edge of the mattress. For ten minutes, her hands are on my bare skin, and it takes every single ounce of my training to stay perfectly still. In the beginning, it was pure agony—the silence between us stiff and slightly awkward. But lately, it feels like she’s softening. Yesterday, I managed to crack a dry joke, and she actually laughed. I’d take another bullet to the chest right now if it meant keeping her this compliant, this close.

Tonight, I’m sitting on the bed in nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants while she kneels behind me on the bed, finishing up the evening change. Usually, by now, I’d hear the sharp rip of the medical tape. Instead, the room is dead silent. Her hands are frozen, resting lightly on the skin right above the wound. Her fingers are warm, and my entire nervous system dials in on that exact point of contact. I don’t breathe. I don’t move. I am a predator playing dead, waiting to see what she does next.

Then her fingertips drag. Slowly, tracing the bruised, swollen perimeter where the bandage meets my bare skin. I reach back with my left hand, covering hers, anchoring her palm flat against my shoulder. I feel the tiny puff of her warm air hit the nape of my neck. Very slowly, I tilt my head back, looking up at her over my shoulder. She’s already staring down at me, her face inches from mine. For so long I watched her through digital screens, decoding every micro-expression, but up close, her dark eyes are blown out, giving her feelings away.

My gaze drops to her mouth. Her eyes instantly track down to mine, and she closes the distance herself. When those soft, plump lips hit mine, my brain short-circuits. She isn’t just kissing me; she’s decided to kiss me. It’s an active choice, and knowing that Raya Volkov chose me sends a wave of pure, possessive heat straight to my gut. Every single caveman instinct I have is screaming at me to twist around, pin her to the mattress, and take what’s mine, but I force myself to stay put. For this to work, it has to be all her. She pulls back, her lips moist and parted. She looks bewildered by her own body, her eyes darting like she’s about to panic and bolt.

“Don’t,” I growl, my voice rougher than I intended.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t think your way out of this, rodnaya.”

She stares at me for a split second, something dark and reckless flashing in her eyes. Do it, I’m willing her. Come on, baby, do it.

She steps around the side of the bed and slides one leg over my thighs, straddling my lap. The sudden weight of her against my groin makes me let out a ragged grunt. My left hand grabs onto her waist, fingers digging deep into her skin, keeping her securely against me. She rests her hands flat on my chest, right over the heavy thud of my heart, looking down at me. I let her look. I’ve waited months for this; I can survive another ten seconds.

She leans down and kisses me again, deeper, parting her lips and inviting me in. The second her tongue brushes mine, I lose it. I slide my left hand up her spine, burying my fingers deep into her hair, pulling her head back to feast on her mouth. She makes a tiny, whimpering sound against my lips that goes straight to my cock. Oh yeah, I think my girl likes it a little rough; wait till this shoulder’s better.

I shift my weight to pull her closer, but my right shoulder takes that exact moment to remind me that a piece of lead tore through it days ago. Pain shoots down my arm, and a sharp, breathy hiss escapes through my gritted teeth.