Chapter 34 Konstantin
thirty-four
Konstantin
The hospital reeks of antiseptic and anxiety. Of people who die quietly while machines pretend they’re not.
I’ve never trusted them, and I never will.
It clings to my nostrils, wraps around my throat, and sets every nerve on edge. I pace the sterile tile floors like a caged animal while doctors and nurses bustle past, too slow and too fucking calm.
My hands are stained with blood that isn’t mine, but I can still feel it drying in the creases of my knuckles. I can still hear the crack of Giselda’s bones beneath my fists.
But none of it matters except my wife.
I almost lost her.
Tonight, I want to burn this one fucking down because Cressida is inside it, pale and shaking, her wrists bandaged from the where the chains torn them to shreds, her lips split, and our child . . . a heartbeat I haven’t heard yet.
I’ve painted entire cities in blood.
Burned empires to ash for less than what they did to her.
But now I’m standing outside a fucking sterile white room, shaking like a goddamn leaf while machines beep and I fucking wait for someone to tell me my wife and baby are okay.
I don’t think I have taken a full breath since I carried her out of that warehouse.
Misha leans against the wall nearby, arms crossed, a gash on his forehead stitched shut by one of our men like a crude joke. He’s got bruises blooming along his jaw, but the bastard is grinning. “You look like shit.”
I glare at him, but the tension in my jaw cracks. “You do not look any better, mudak.”
He chuckles. “She is fine, you know. Tougher than you give her credit for. And the baby has got your stubbornness. It is probably flipping off the ultrasound machine right now.”
I grunt, half-amused, but still half-feral. I tune into the bond, letting it lull me into a calmer state as I feel her on the other end, low and steady, alive, exhausted and safe.
“You are really going to be a papa, yes?” Misha muses, doing his best to keep me distracted.
I glance at him. “You are planning to be an uncle or a pain in my ass?”
“Why not both?” he smirks.
Before I can respond, the door creaks open and a nurse peeks out and nods. “You can come in now.”
I don’t wait because I should have fucking been there from the moment I brought her in.
She’s propped up in the hospital bed with pillows at her back, her hair messy and wild, like she just walked out of a war zone. Her eyes meet mine, and the relief in them almost buckles my knees.
I cross the room in three strides, and kneel at her side, taking her hand in both of mine. “You scared the shit out of me when you passed out in my arms.”
“You think you didn’t scare me?” She presses my palm to her round little bump. “We’re okay.”
A doctor enters and I swear, the man is either very brave or very fucking stupid, because he doesn’t even flinch when I stand.
“Well,” I snap.
He nods. “Minor bruising, some stress-induced cramping, but the baby is strong. Heartbeat’s good. No lasting damage to mother or child. We’d like to keep her overnight for observation. Nothing serious, just caution.”
I don’t like it, but I need to be sure she is okay so we will lock down the hospital as much as possible. “Whatever she needs.”
Then he smiles at me. “Would you like to see the baby for yourself?”
I glance at Cressida, and she smiles with a nod. “Yes.”
Someone rolls in a machine, and they prep her. I move behind the doctor, hovering like a goddamn gargoyle, arms crossed and jaw clenched, unable to breath freely until I see.
And then . . . the monitor flickers to life and there they are.
The ultrasound drags shadows into shapes.
A skull. A spine. A creature small enough to fit in my palm, but already defiant enough to kick against the walls of their mother’s body.
Fingers flex before curling into tiny fists and a mouth yawns wide, like it wants to curse a world it hasn’t yet entered.
Then I hear a sound that hits me harder than any bullet ever could.
The steady thump-thump-thump of our baby’s heart, a beat that echoes in my chest like it’s wired to me.
I don’t see fragility.
I see a future sharpened into bone and blood.
I see a reason for me to fucking kneel.
So small and perfect.
My knees go weak and tears I’m unashamed of fall.
Not from pain.
Not from rage.
Not even from relief.
Just . . . love.
The kind that cuts through bone and marrow and rewires your entire existence.
“Would you like to know the gender?” the doctor asks.
Cressida looks at me, her eyes glistening. “Do you want to know?”
“Da,” I rasp through a dry throat.
The doctor moves the little wand thing around and then smiles at us. “Congratulations. It’s a girl.”
Everything fucking stops.
I fall to my knees like I’ve been shot. The weight of it crushes me. A fucking daughter. I’ve killed men for less than looking at Cressida the wrong way. What the hell am I going to do when some fucker tries to date my little girl?
Terror and joy tear through me like twin hurricanes.
“I am fucked,” I murmur. “Absolutely, completely fucked. A daughter? In this dangerous world?”
She laughs softly, her fingers brushing over my hair. “She’ll have an entire Bratva empire at her back and the Bogeyman wrapped around her finger. I think she’ll be fine.”
“That’s ours,” I whisper, my voice wrecked. “That’s our girl.”
She’s crying now too. We’re a goddamn mess and neither of us care.
Misha, silent as a ghost pulls the door closed quietly, keeping the world out to give us this moment.
“She’s perfect and you already love her.”
“I’m still terrified,” I confess. “Terrified I will never be enough. That I will fail you both.”
When she speaks, her voice steadies me, sharp and soft all at once. “Konstantin, you are her father. You will scare the world into leaving her untouched. You’ll burn it down for her, the way you burn it for me. And she’ll never doubt that she’s loved.”
I lift my head and meet her eyes through the blur. “Calypso.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Her name,” I say firmly. “Calypso. She will rule with glitter and tiny fists. She will own me before she even breathes her first breath of this air.”
Cressida laughs through her tears, pressing her forehead to mine. “Calypso Kirovsky. Our girl.”
There’s a moment, quiet and full, where everything else fades. No enemies, no war, just us.
My palm rests against her belly as I little girl dances underneath it.
“I love you,” I tell her, the words raw and jagged in my throat.
She smiles softly, her hand cupping my jaw. “I know. I love you too, monster man.”
I kiss her slow and reverent.
I don’t deserve this, but I’ll fight for it every day until I die.
Outside the room, I hear Misha say something to someone and then Sunniva yelling back at him.
“What the hell do you mean, no more hot Cheetos? You tell that little soulless snack robot . . .”
Their voices fade as they drift farther away.
Sunniva, surprisingly, was not as injured as she appeared. Neither of the girls were. Lucetta, however, is still missing and I have my men scouring the city for her.
Cressida chuckles against my mouth, pulling back. “They’re going to be such a bad influence on each other and our daughter.”
I smile, but it fades slowly.
Giselda is gone. The threat is ended. But the scars remain, and in this moment, this quiet breath after the storm, I realize something.
The world can fucking burn.
I’ve already walked through hell, but I’ll walk through it again and again if it means coming back to her.
To them.
To my family.
I stare at Cressida’s stomach, at what we almost lost, and at what we still have.
And I swear it again.
Not to gods.
Not to the fates.
To her.
To the daughter I haven’t met but already bleed for.
I will burn cities before I let fear touch her. I will carve law into the bones of men who look at her wrong. I will end the fucking world before it can touch what’s mine again.
The Bogeyman has a daughter now.
And that doesn’t make me weaker.
It makes me fucking unforgivable.