Chapter 38
Mary
Something’s wrong with my body. Too heavy. Too still. Like it’s not mine.
My heartbeat sounds wrong too; slow, dragging, uneven. Every thud echoes in my skull until I realize there’s another rhythm underneath it, faster, lighter. Not mine.
The thought barely forms before something else crashes through—memory or dream, I can’t tell. A flash of light. The kick of the gun. The taste of metal on my tongue.
I killed someone.
The words don’t sound real, even inside my head.
Did I?
It’s all shards—his face, the flash, the sound. The world folding in on itself after the shot. Maybe it’s a nightmare. My brain making up a story to explain the noise, the smell, the weight still stuck to my hands.
Because I don’t kill people. I work at a bank. I color-code spreadsheets. I cry during true-crime documentaries.
So this can’t be real. It can’t.
But then I see him. Timofey. That half-smile he wore like armor. His lips moving—some final taunt I’ll never hear again—and the recoil slamming up my arms.
The sound is deafening all over again. He falls back. Eyes wide. Shocked, like even he didn’t see it coming.
Everything happened so fast. Within seconds, before I could even think or react, something inside me acted on its own instinct.
I killed him.
The thought fractures under the next wave of pain that tears through my stomach. I want to move, to check, to see something real, but my limbs won’t answer.
I try to open my eyes. Nothing happens. My lashes don’t even twitch.
Everything hurts in layers. A dull pressure in my chest, a stabbing pull low in my stomach, a rawness in my throat that tastes like metal. When I breathe, it catches. When I think, it burns.
Then—voices. Faint, blurred.
The sound of boots on tile. A chair scraping. The low hum of machines.
The soft hiss of air conditioning. A door opens somewhere close. Hinges groan, footsteps echo against tile—two sets, then a third. The air shifts, heavier, filled with movement and worry.
“Tell me she’s waking up soon,” Lev says. He’s trying to sound casual, but his voice cracks halfway through. “She’s been lying like a corpse for more than forty hours, Doc. I don’t like it.”
“She’s going to be okay,” a deeper voice answers—Dima. I’d know that gravel anywhere. The sound steadies something in me for half a second before the pain pulls it away again.
There’s a pause, then another voice—female, calm, clipped.
“She’s stable, but her system’s still in shock,” the woman says. “There’s bruising along the ribs, a hairline fracture in the left forearm, mild concussion.”
Dima exhales. “But she’ll recover?”
“If she rests, yes.” The doctor hesitates, papers rustling in her hands. “But there’s a complication.”
“Complication?” Lev’s voice jumps, all nerves. “You just said she’s stable.”
“She is,” the doctor says slowly. “But the baby isn’t.”
Silence.
The word hangs in the air like it doesn’t belong there. For a second, I think I misheard it. The pain must be twisting sound.
“What did you say?” Dima asks. His voice isn’t steady anymore.
“The pregnancy,” the doctor says. “We ran her bloodwork when she came in. Her hCG levels are high—she’s early, maybe six weeks. The trauma triggered bleeding and uterine strain. We’re monitoring for fetal distress.”
The room goes dead quiet.
I can hear Lev mutter, “Holy shit.” He sounds like he’s been punched. “She’s… pregnant?”
“Yes.”
My heart stutters, the monitor beeping faster. Pregnant?
No. No, that can’t—
I try to lift my head, but the pain in my stomach flares sharp and mean. My throat burns. Nothing comes out.
“She’s reacting,” the doctor says quickly. “Keep her still. We can’t risk tearing the internal sutures.”
Dima’s voice drops low, close to the bed. “Mary, you hear me? Don’t move. You’re safe. Just breathe.”
Safe.
The word barely lands before Lev speaks again, voice tight. “You’re sure? About the baby?”
“Yes,” the doctor says softly. There’s a faint rustle—the scrape of her shoe on tile, maybe, or the shift of her coat as she moves closer to the machines.
“There’s a heartbeat. Weak, but still there.
If she rests, it might stabilize. But any stress—any sudden movement—could cause another hemorrhage. ”
Another silence, heavier this time.
Then Boris speaks, quiet and even, like he’s holding himself together by the syllable. “We keep her calm, then. No visitors. No stress.”
Lev clears his throat. “No one tells the boss yet. He’ll lose his mind.”
The doctor sighs. “Mr. Malikov’s already been notified. I’ll be checking on him next.”
Anton.
The sound of his name punches through the fog.
Alive. He’s alive.
It hurts to breathe, but I do anyway. I want to see him. To tell him— What? That somehow, between all the blood and bullets, there’s life?
My lips part. Nothing but a whisper slips out. “There’s life… inside me,” I think I say. Or maybe I just think it.
The darkness takes me again before I can find out.
I’m at my desk.
My badge dangles from my neck.
The chipped laminate. The drawer that sticks. The chair that wobbles if I breathe wrong. Fluorescents hum overhead like a headache you can’t swallow away. The printer coughs. Someone laughs three cubes down, the sharp, mean kind that sounds like a fork on a plate.
My inbox is a wound. Fifty-eight unread.
Dave has forwarded three client issues with “handle” in the subject line, no details, just attachments that don’t open unless you threaten them.
Stephanie walks by in those heels that announce her fourteen seconds before she arrives.
Her perfume is sugar and something sour.
She taps my mug with one nail, like she owns the ceramic, like she owns me.
“Mary, you know what you should try?” she says, already not waiting for an answer. “Foundation with yellow undertones. You always look kind of… tired. Or sad. Maybe a bit of both?”
She laughs like it’s friendly. “And a pop of color wouldn’t hurt. That cardigan’s giving ‘substitute teacher.’”
I’m pissed, but I laugh with her anyway. Because that’s what I do. I’d rather keep the peace than start a war I’ll have to clean up later.
That’s who I am.
Or was.
Something doesn’t feel right. I don’t know what. Just a faint hum under my ribs, like the air’s shifted a degree to the left and I’m the only one who noticed.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. The letters blur. For a second, I forget what I’m doing.
Evan texts:
Can’t do dinner tonight. Work thing. Rain check?
Rain check. My stomach makes that small, cold drop. Not a fall. Just a reminder that gravity exists.
The hum of the lights grows louder. My chest tightens. This can’t be real. It feels real—the weight of the chair, the air-con against my arms, the ache in my back—but I keep waiting for something else to happen, for the static to break.
I blink, and I’m somewhere else.
Rosa’s Corner. Grandma’s old diner. Plates clatter, coffee hisses. The smell of grease and sugar makes my throat ache. She’s at the counter, wiping it down.
“You’re gonna be late for work, Mary-Cat,” she says without looking up.
My throat closes. “Work?”
“The bank,” she says, like that’s the only answer that ever existed. She sets down the rag, turns to me, but her face flickers in and out like bad reception. “You look tired.”
“I—” The word dies halfway out. I don’t know what comes next.
The door chime rings. I turn. No one’s there. The street outside is empty, too bright, edges melting into white.
When I look back, the diner’s gone.
I’m at my desk again. The computer hums. The overhead light buzzes like it’s struggling to stay alive.
My phone sits beside the keyboard, screen lit with a photo of me and Evan. His arm around me, both of us smiling too hard. I stare at it until the grin feels plastic. My stomach twists. It feels wrong. Like I’m looking at a stranger. Like I’m wearing someone else’s skin.
I look around the office. People talk, phones ring, a pen clicks too fast, too loud. It’s all painfully normal.
That’s when it hits me. Something’s missing.
No—someone.
More than one.
A flash of green eyes. The scrape of a Russian curse. A laugh that always sounded like trouble. A voice that said my name like it belonged to him.
Anton.
Lev.
Dima.
Boris.
Their names land like stones dropped in water, rippling through this fake calm.
I stand, heart pounding. “Anton?”
No one looks up.
I walk through rows of cubicles, the air thick and wrong. “Lev?”
Phones keep ringing. Stephanie’s laughter cuts through the white noise.
“Boris?”
My voice cracks.
Nothing.
Even Dima’s silence isn’t here—and somehow that’s the loudest absence of all.
The office hums on like a machine that doesn’t know I’m missing parts.
I stop by the glass doors and see my reflection. I look exactly like I used to: neat hair, soft blouse, the smile that never meant anything. The woman who survived on “yes” and coffee refills.
My stomach twists. The silence inside me feels heavier now, emptier.
I press my hand to it—flat, still.
There’s nothing here.
Not them. Not him. Not… us.
The lights flicker overhead. The screen on my phone glows white, then dies. My cubicle fades at the edges. The world feels like paper burning slowly, curling inward.
The sound in the room flattens; no phones, no voices, no clicking pens. Just silence thick enough to choke on.
I blink hard. The lights smear. My reflection wavers in the glass like it’s breathing without me.
Were they real? Anton, with his hands that steadied and destroyed in the same breath. Lev’s grin, Dima’s steady calm, Boris’s quiet watching. Did I dream them?
A sound catches in my throat—half laugh, half sob. I press my palm harder against my stomach, like I can hold something there, but it’s empty. Hollow.
The ache starts small, then grows, spreading up through my ribs until it’s everywhere. My heart feels too big for my chest, beating against bone frantically.
If it was a dream, why does it hurt like loss? If it was real, why am I here?
My knees give. I grab the edge of the desk, breath sharp, uneven. The air tastes wrong—stale, recycled, fake. My vision blurs again, and the hum of the lights turns into something else—beeping, steady, too close to my ear.
Tears slip down without permission. I don’t even bother to wipe them.
“Anton,” I whisper, though I don’t know if I’m calling him back or letting him go.
No answer. Just that awful quiet.
Then, a sound—soft, low, impossible. A heartbeat. Two. One fading. One holding on.
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t stop the ache.
Maybe I’m still there. Maybe I never left.
The world folds in on itself—desk, lights, silence—all burning at the edges until nothing’s left but the pulse under my hand and the echo of his voice, low and steady in the dark:
“Stay with me, malyshka.”