Page 29 of Bratva Baby

That night, I sleep badly, wake twice, then drift back under into the kind of half-sleep that makes everything feel too close. I dream his mouth at my throat, his hand on my jaw, his voice rough in my ear, and when I wake, I’m hot and restless and furious about it.

I shove a hand under the blanket anyway.

My fingers slip under the waistband of my shorts, and the first touch makes my breath catch. I tell myself not to think about him, and then I do exactly that. His mouth. His hands. The way he told me to look at him. The way he handled me like he already knew I would take it.

“Anton,” I whisper into the pillow before I can stop myself.

That does it.

I come with my face turned into the pillow so I don’t make noise, and afterward I lie there staring at the dark ceiling, breathing hard and feeling worse instead of better.

In the morning, I make three mistakes before lunch.

I catch all of them myself, but the errors piss me off and the nausea is back by noon. A small refrigerated load from Bratislava gets held over a bad product code, our manager starts shouting at everyone in range, and I spend forty minutes cleaning up a lie someone else wrote badly.

By the time I leave, I’m done pretending.

That night, I count properly.

Then I do it again in the morning because I trust myself more before coffee.

The answer doesn’t change—I miss a cycle marker.

Stress can do a lot to a body, and I’ve got enough stress to explain almost anything, but I know what denial sounds like when it’s coming out of my own mouth. By the next afternoon, I stop in front of a shop window full of baby things and stand there like an idiot staring at tiny socks.

I walk away swearing at myself under my breath.

The clinic can wait. I don’t want a paper trail, I don’t want a receptionist asking questions, and I definitely don’t want some brisk woman in a white coat telling me my life in a voice that makes it sound ordinary.

What I want is privacy.

So after work the next day, I go the long way home, double back twice, make sure no one’s behind me, and stop outside a pharmacy on a side street near the tram line. A woman with dyed red hair is behind the counter inside doing stock with a pen between her teeth. She glances up. “Can I help you?”

I walk past the vitamins and the cold medicine to the shelf with pregnancy tests lined up in neat little boxes that make my stomach drop.

My hand hovers for one second, then I grab one, and for some reason also grab a shampoo and toothpaste. The woman scans everything without expression. “Cash or card?”

“Cash.”

I pay, shove the small bag into my tote, and walk out without checking whether anyone’s watching. I don’t breathe properly until I’m back in my room with the door locked, the chain up, and the gun on the table beside me.

I set the pharmacy bag on the bed, wash my hands twice, and stare at the box like it might open itself and spare me the part where I have to choose. Then I tear it open.

The instructions are in Hungarian. I understand enough and do exactly what it says.

Then I set the test on the edge of the sink and force myself to step back.

Waiting is uglier than fear.

I pace once across the room and back. The radiator bangs. Somebody runs water through old pipes, and the walls make it sound like the whole building is swallowing.

I think of Maks, of the drive hidden under the false bottom of my suitcase, of Anton in Prague and how he was the only man who felt like my match. I’ve dated, I’ve slept with men, but none of them split things cleanly down the middle. There’s a before him and an after him, and it’s annoyingly permanent.

With a grimace, I stop pacing and look and my heart skips a beat. The lines are there, clean and unmistakable, and the room goes dead quiet around me even though nothing has actually changed.

I grip the sink so hard my knuckles ache, and all I can do is stare. The birth control pill I took after slipping out of the hotel has done me zero favors.

I’m pregnant with Anton Reznikov’s baby.