Chapter 26 Sima
SIMA
The hospital gown scratches against my skin.
I shift on the bed restlessly. Panic still bubbles up every five seconds, even though the medicine has settled in my veins.
The IV drips. Cool fluids flow into me. I feel better than I did when Petyr carried me in, but my mind won’t quiet.
What the hell was that? Why did it hit me so hard? Is my baby still okay?
I press a hand to my belly. She isn’t moving right now. I know that’s normal, that she doesn’t kick every minute of every day, but the silence makes my chest ache. Every little pause feels like a disaster waiting to happen.
My throat tightens.
Then I feel it. Petyr’s hand squeezing mine. I look over, and his eyes are locked on me. For once, they aren’t cold.
“You’ll be fine,” he says quietly. “I promise.”
A weak smile pulls at my lips. “How can you make a promise like that?”
“Because I’m your husband.”
“That’s it?” I huff out a short laugh. “That’s your logic?”
“More than logic. It’s fact.” His thumb brushes over my knuckles. “You’re my wife. My responsibility. That means I keep you safe. End of story.”
“You sound very sure of yourself,” I murmur.
He smirks faintly. “You married me. You should’ve known what you were getting into.”
I roll my eyes, but it feels good to banter with him again like old times. “Pretty sure I didn’t get much of a choice in the matter.”
“Doesn’t change the result.” His voice lowers. “You’re mine, Sima. You and our daughter. That means you’re under my protection. Always.”
Against my better judgment, my heart warms. Despite all the ugliness between us and the cage he’s built around me, right now, I feel like I can count on him. Like he’ll actually keep me safe.
I close my eyes and hold on to that warmth for a moment. But I know better. I can’t let myself be lulled into a false sense of security. Petyr is still the man who keeps me under lock and key.
If he hadn’t come home tonight, I wouldn’t have had the chance to ask for help. Without my phone, I can’t even call 911 on my own.
Relief mixes with bitterness, and the anxiety doesn’t fade. My hand stays pressed to my belly. I wait for a kick that doesn’t come.
“Feeling better?”
Dr. Agar’s voice snaps me out of my reverie. She walks back to our side of the curtain, smiling as she peels off her gloves and tosses them in the bin.
“A little,” I say. But despite my assurances, my hand wraps tighter around Petyr’s.
He hasn’t let go since we got here. His thumb keeps rubbing over my knuckles like he’s trying to anchor both of us.
“Excellent.” The doctor steps back in with a clipboard tucked under her arm.
Before I can say anything else, Petyr jumps in. “Did you find out what it was?” He’s been pacing holes in the floor waiting for this. “Will they pull through?”
“Of course.” Dr. Agar gives a firm nod. “Luckily, it was nothing serious. You’re both healthy. Mother and daughter.”
My body loosens all at once. I let out a shaky breath I didn’t even know I was holding.
I don’t even spare a thought for myself. She’s fine. My baby is fine.
Petyr squeezes my hand tighter, but I can feel the tension still rolling off him. He isn’t satisfied.
“What caused it, then?” he snaps. “She was on the floor, burning up. What the hell was that if not serious?”
“It’s hard to say for certain.” Dr. Agar purses her lips.
“Could have been something she ate. Food poisoning, plus a bout of Braxton-Hicks contractions set off by her panic. False labor. Sometimes, the body mixes signals, especially in the third trimester.” She shifts the clipboard.
“What matters is that she’s stable now. You’re both fine.
You’re free to go. If anything else happens, call me anytime, day or night. ”
Petyr’s jaw works like he’s ready to tear her apart. His eyes are hard. He’s not hearing the word “healthy” at all. All he hears is what could have been, and the fact that we still don’t know what it was for sure.
I cut in before he can start a fight with my OBGYN. “Thank you.” I smile at Dr. Agar. “That’s exactly what we’ll do.”
She nods again, satisfied, and leaves us with a list of instructions.
Once the curtain drifts again, I sag back against the pillows, every muscle worn out from the ordeal.
Petyr doesn’t let go of my hand, not even then. He’s still wired tight, ready to go to war with shadows, while all I can think about is how grateful I am that it wasn’t worse.
By the time we get back home, he’s already decided he’s taking care of me whether I like it or not.
Normally, I’d argue. Tonight I don’t have it in me. My body feels wrung out and heavy. I’m just grateful the nausea has stopped. No more running to the bathroom or shivering on the tile floor. That’s enough excitement for me.
He guides me upstairs with a steady hand at my back. When I start to move toward the bathroom, he shakes his head. “Sit. I’ll get what you need.”
I lower myself to the edge of the bed and give him a tired look. “Since when are you a nurse?”
“Since you scared the shit out of me,” he mutters, already in the bathroom. “Don’t move.”
He runs the water and brings me a damp cloth. The fabric is cool against my skin. I tip my head back and breathe slowly, letting myself find my balance again.
Once I’ve steadied a little, he helps me out of my clothes and puts me in a fresh pair of pajamas. His touch is careful, almost gentle. He brushes my hair back from my face and presses the cloth against my neck and chest until the heat fades from my skin.
“You don’t have to—” I start.
“Yes, I do.” His voice is low but certain. “You think I’m letting you collapse again? Not happening.”
I sigh, but I don’t argue. His hands are steady when they touch me, not rough or demanding. My cheeks heat remembering how those same hands weren’t gentle at all last night. How they pinned me, made me cry out until I couldn’t think.
I bite my lip, embarrassed by the way my body responds even now.
He catches the look on my face. “What?” he asks, brow raised.
“Nothing,” I mutter quickly and turn my head away. I’m too flustered to come up with a better excuse. Even just looking at Petyr is making me heat up for a wholly different reason.
He studies me a second longer, then goes back to dabbing my skin.
The tenderness feels dangerous. More than the cold version of him. It stirs something in me I don’t want stirred.
By the time I’m clean and dressed in fresh clothes, my eyes are half-shut.
He pulls the covers back and helps me settle against the pillows. His hand smooths the blanket over my stomach before he slips in on the other side.
“You comfortable?” he asks.
“Beats napping on the tiles,” I admit. “Thanks.”
He nods, but he’s staring at me like he’s still not convinced. “You’ll tell me if you feel off again.”
“Fine,” I mumble, though I know he won’t take my word for it. He never does.
I should resent it. The same man who locks me in rooms now tucks me into bed. But after the night I’ve had—after the fear twisting in me that something could have happened to the baby—I don’t resent it at all.
I let myself sink into the mattress, the warmth of his body close by.
For once, I don’t push him away.
As tired as I am, sleep doesn’t come. My body feels heavy, but my head won’t stop spinning. Every time I close my eyes, I see the bathroom floor again.
The fear that something was wrong with the baby sits heavy in my chest. Even though the doctor said we’re both fine, I can’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with that food. Someone tampered with it.
I just wish I knew who.
Beside me, Petyr shifts closer. For a while, neither of us speaks.
When he breaks the silence, his tone is surprisingly soft. “I don’t want to keep you locked up the way I have been.”
My breath catches. I turn my head and search his face in the dim light. “Are you going to let me out?”
“I don’t know.”
Disappointment spreads inside me. “Then what’s the point?” I ask before I can stop myself. “Why are you still keeping me here, Petyr?”
His jaw works before he answers. “Because I need to know you won’t run. I can’t protect you if you disappear on me again.”
I let out a quiet laugh. But it’s not a laugh, not really. It’s too bitter for that.
“You think I wanted to run?” I whisper. “I ran because you threatened to take my baby and send me back to my father. What choice did I have?”
His hand tightens on my waist, but he doesn’t argue right away. His silence is its own kind of answer.
Finally, he says, “I wouldn’t have let him touch you. You know that.”
“You said it yourself,” I shoot back. “You told me you’d take her from me. That you’d throw me back to him once you got what you wanted.” My throat feels tight. “You don’t get to rewrite that now.”
He exhales slowly. “I was angry,” he admits. “I said shit I shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean any of it, Sima.”
I stare at him in the dark. If he’s telling the truth, then it’s everything I ever wanted him to say. That he wasn’t serious about his threats—that he was lying.
But if he was lying before, why should I trust him now?
“You can’t keep expecting me to trust you when you act like this, Petyr.” My lips press into a thin line.
His brow furrows. “I’m trying.”
I shake my head against the pillow. The weight of his arm around me is heavy, comforting and suffocating all at once.
“You say you want my trust,” I whisper. “Then stop giving me reasons to run.”
He doesn’t answer right away. His fingers flex against my hip, restless. “Would you ever want to go back to them? To your family?”
Something about the way he asks makes me pause. His tone is strange, flat but hard to read. Like he’s not sure he wants to know the answer.
“Of course not,” I say firmly. “Never.”
That’s easy to say, because it’s the honest truth. After my father married my sister off to some old man, I knew I’d be next. I was twelve. That was enough to make me run. Better the streets than being sold like property.
Living alone at that age was brutal. I scraped by on whatever I could find, slept in places no child should. But even at my lowest, going back was never an option.
“My father isn’t a good man,” I say. “He’d have broken me down until there was nothing left.
Like he did with Lara. I didn’t want that for myself, just like I didn’t want it for her.
I chose the streets because they were safer than the fate he had in store for me, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. ”
These days, I keep thinking about Lara. I always have, but lately it’s constant. I wonder what her life turned into, if she ever found a way to be happy.
I hope she’s okay. That the man our father gave her to didn’t crush her spirit the way he would have crushed mine.
I stare at the ceiling, my voice softer now. “So, no, Petyr. I’d never go back.”
“Not even for your sister?”
Tears well up at the corners of my eyes. “She isn’t there anymore,” I whisper. “I think about her all the time. I’d love to see her again. But she wouldn’t be under that roof. And if she was…” I shiver at the thought. “Then I’d want to break her free.”
Petyr’s hold around my waist grows tighter, and I know it means something.
I’m not sure what yet. If it’s his way of saying he trusts me again, or that he’s still trying to.
God knows he’s fighting demons of his own.
He was raised in the same rotten environment I escaped, and that doesn’t go away overnight. I know that.
It doesn’t excuse him, but it makes me wonder what things would have been like if he hadn’t been Bratva. If we’d been just two people meeting over coffee.
Simple. Normal.
But that’s not what we are. And it doesn’t matter how much we want to, we can’t escape our pasts. We can only try to make our future better.
With that thought flitting through my head, and Petyr’s warmth at my side, I finally drift off to sleep.