Chapter 39
Anton
The first thing I remember is the taste of iron in my mouth. The second is her name.
They tell me it’s been thirty-six hours since the freight yard. Two bullets out. Shoulder torn open. Missed the heart by less than an inch. Lucky, they said.
But what I see isn’t the freight yard. It’s her. Mary.
The sound of the gunshot still lives somewhere in my ribs. She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t scream. She just lifted the weapon with both hands and pulled the trigger like she’d been born knowing how.
Timofey’s body hit the ground before the echo died. Her face didn’t change.
That image won’t leave me—the shock in her eyes, the tremor in her fingers, the way she looked at me afterward, like she was the one who’d been shot. There was fear, yes. But underneath it—something else. Something that looked a hell of a lot like defiance.
She saved my life. And ruined the part of hers that was still clean.
I should feel guilt over that. Maybe I do. But what hits harder is pride. That she didn’t freeze. That she chose me. That she became a version of herself no one can ever take back.
It doesn’t feel like luck.
Dr. Vera leans over me, sleeves rolled, gloves stained, eyes sharp enough to cut through morphine fog. She’s been patching up men like me for years—too calm to be human, too steady to be afraid.
“You’ll live,” she says, tightening the last strip of tape across my chest. “Assuming you stop tearing the stitches open every time you breathe like a bull.”
“How’s Mary?”
The pause is small but sharp. “She’s still not awake.” Her tone stays even, clinical. “Vitals are unstable, but holding.”
Something claws up the back of my throat. “Was she shot?”
“No.”
Just that—flat, final.
She presses gauze against my wound, digs a thumb in to check the seal. It burns like fire under my ribs, but I don’t flinch. Pain’s familiar. Expected.
I watch her face instead. No expression, just focus. She tapes the bandage down, smooth and precise.
“She’s stronger than she looks.” Dr. Vera’s gaze flicks toward the glass partition dividing my room from hers. “But she’s fighting more than blood loss.”
I catch her wrist before she steps back. “What do you mean?”
She looks me dead in the eye. For a second, something flickers there—hesitation, maybe pity—but it’s gone before I can name it.
“The bloodwork came back.” A beat. “She’s pregnant.”
The word hits harder than the bullets.
Pregnant.
For a moment, I’m not in this room. I’m back in that freight yard, watching her kneel in the gravel with my blood on her hands. And now—hers.
I let go of the doctor’s wrist.
She straightens, adjusts her gloves, and reaches for a tray. The smell of antiseptic cuts through the air. She peels back the gauze on my chest and presses something cold into the wound. It stings deep.
I don’t move. She notices.
“She’s fighting for the little one,” she says quietly. “That’s why she’s still under. Her body’s choosing where to spend its strength.”
I push up an inch, ribs protesting. “What… the fuck do you mean?”
Vera shoves me back down with one hand on my shoulder. “Stay down, Reaper. You tear that line again, and I’ll sedate you myself.”
“Why isn’t she awake?”
“She’s not ready,” she says simply. “Her blood pressure dropped too fast. We had to keep her under. The trauma caused a uterine bleed—stress, shock, adrenaline. The fetus is holding, but barely. If she wakes too soon, her body might give up.”
A curse grinds out of me as I grab the bedrail and force myself up again, ignoring the fire tearing through my chest.
“She’s fighting for her life, and you expect me to just fucking lie here?”
Vera doesn’t flinch. She’s seen men die screaming and still kept her pulse steady.
“Yes,” she says flatly. “Because if you don’t, you’ll end up next to her, and I don’t have time to dig two graves.”
Her calm pisses me off more than the pain. I try to stand anyway. The room spins; the floor sways. She presses me back with one palm, firm, unshakable.
“Enough,” she mutters, taping a new dressing over my wound—quick, rough, impersonal. “You’re bleeding again. Congratulations. Sit still.”
I glare at her. “I’m not closing my eyes while she’s like that.”
Vera exhales through her nose, the sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh.
“You men. Always trying to die dramatically.” She reaches for a syringe, draws something clear from a vial. “This is enough sedative to drop a horse, and frankly, I’m tempted.”
“I’m not—”
“Save it.” She slides the needle into the IV before I can finish. “Sleep, Mr. Malikov. You’ll still be a pain in my ass when you wake up.”
I try to fight it, but the drug burns cold up my arm. My vision doubles, then softens at the edges.
Her voice drifts somewhere above me as the world folds in.
“She’ll wake when she’s ready,” she says. “Try not to bleed out before that happens.”
Sukin syn.
My jaw tightens. The sedative drags at my pulse, thick and slow. I dig my nails into the sheet, desperate for one more breath of control.
Not yet. Not until I see her breathing.
The room tilts. My vision fades. Her name burns behind my teeth like a prayer I’ll never say out loud.
Then the black wins.
I wake to the sound of a knife scraping against skin.
Not mine. Something softer. Organic.
My eyes crack open. The room is dim—fluorescents turned low, the kind of sterile quiet that comes with underground clinics and men who don’t ask questions. My chest burns. Shoulder’s locked up tight under bandages.
But I’m awake.
Not loudly. Not the way they imagine. Just enough to see, to hear, to taste the iron again at the back of my throat. Enough to know the room hasn’t burned down while I slept.
Across from me, my boys are holding what looks like a fucking board meeting, and somehow none of them notices I’m conscious.
Lev’s got an apple in one hand, paring knife in the other, peeling it in one long spiral like he’s performing surgery.
Dima sits beside him, stone-faced, methodically sectioning an orange with his fingers.
Boris leans against the wall, chewing on a grape, tablet balanced on his knee.
And Ray Bishop—ex-fed turned whatever-the-hell-he-is-now—slouches in a chair with a banana half-peeled, looking like he’s questioning every life choice that led him here.
“I’m just saying,” Lev says, waving the knife for emphasis, “if the kid’s a boy, I’m teaching him cards. Poker face by age five. Blackjack by seven.”
Dima doesn’t look up from his orange. “You will teach him nothing.”
“Why not?”
“Because you cheat.”
“That’s called strategy.”
“That’s called jail.”
Ray snorts. “Pretty sure teaching a toddler to count cards is the least illegal thing you guys have done this month.”
Lev grins. “See? The Fed gets it.”
“I didn’t say it was a good idea,” Ray mutters, biting into the banana. “I said it was predictable.”
Boris taps his screen, barely looking up. “If it’s a girl, she’s learning code. Encryption by age six. Bypassing firewalls by eight.”
“She’s not hacking the Pentagon before puberty,” Ray says flatly.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s how you end up on a list. And I’m trying to stay off lists these days.”
“Good luck with that.”
Dima finishes peeling his orange and sets the sections in a neat pile. “If it’s a girl, I teach her to fight. Properly. No guns until she can throw a man twice her size.”
Lev rolls his eyes. “So she’ll be a tiny Dima. Great. Terrifying.”
“Better than a tiny Lev.”
“Hey—”
“Accurate,” Boris says without looking up.
Ray drops the banana peel on the table, sighs like a man who’s given up on sanity.
“You guys know she’s not even born yet, right? Mary’s still—” He stops himself, glances toward the partition. His voice drops. “She’s still fighting.”
The room goes quiet.
Lev sets the knife down. The apple peel curls on the table like a question mark.
Dima’s jaw tightens. He stares at the orange sections like they offended him personally.
Boris closes the tablet. “She’ll wake up.”
“Yeah,” Lev says, but his voice has lost its edge. “She’s tougher than all of us combined.”
“Stubborn,” Dima adds.
“Reckless,” Boris mutters.
“She shot a man to save your boss,” Ray says quietly. “That’s not reckless. That’s—” He stops, shakes his head. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“Love,” Dima says.
Everyone turns to look at him.
He doesn’t flinch. Just meets their stares, calm as stone. “She loves him. That’s why she did it.”
Lev exhales and picks up the apple again. “Yeah. Well. Now we’ve got two of them to keep alive.”
“Three,” Boris corrects. “Mary, Anton, and the little one.”
Ray rubs his face. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
“You signed up the second you let us walk out of that freight yard,” Lev says. “Welcome to the family, Fed.”
“I’m not family.”
“You’re eating fruit in an underground clinic while discussing baby names,” Boris deadpans. “You’re family.”
Ray opens his mouth. Closes it. Picks up another grape instead.
Lev grins. “So… Boss as a dad.”
Dima murmurs, “He’ll be good at it.”
“Yeah?” Ray asks.
“Yeah.” Boris nods once. “He’s loyal. Protective. Doesn’t quit. That’s what kids need.”
Lev barks out a laugh. “Right? Man can dismantle a cartel but can’t work a diaper.”
“He’ll figure it out,” Dima says quietly. “He figured out how to love her.”
The room goes still for a beat.
Then Lev smirks. “Yeah, but love doesn’t shit itself at 3 AM.”
Ray chokes on his grape.
“I’m just saying,” Lev continues, waving his knife, “the man nearly bled out for her. Took two bullets. Killed half of Timofey’s crew. But a screaming baby? That’s the thing that’ll break him.”
“Good,” Dima says. “He needs breaking.”
Boris huffs. “He’s already broken. We’re just waiting for him to glue himself back together.”
“With what? Duct tape and bad attitude?”
“Works for the rest of us.”
“Fair point.”
Ray leans back, shaking his head. “You guys are insane.”
“And when he wakes up, he’s going to lose his mind.”
“He already lost it,” Dima says. “The second she pulled that trigger.”
My throat tightens. I close my eyes before they catch me watching.
Another beat of quiet.
Then Lev picks up the knife again, starts peeling a second apple. “So, we agree. Best uncles in the Bratva.”
“We’re the only uncles in the Bratva,” Boris says.
“Exactly. No competition. We win by default.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“It is now.”
I try to move. But my body’s pinned down.
These men—killers, all of them—are sitting in a clinic peeling fruit and planning how to raise a child that isn’t even born yet.
Because they’re not talking about the baby like it’s a problem.
They’re talking about it like it’s already theirs.
Good. They can help bury anyone who looks at it wrong.
I try to move. My body says no. Heavy as wet concrete, pinned by tape and stitches and Vera’s bad mood lingering in my veins.
I hook my fingers under the sheet and pull like I’m dragging a man across gravel. Fire rips through my chest. The room swims. Doesn’t matter. Pain is a language I speak better than sleep.
Vstavat, I tell myself. Get up.