Chapter Twenty-Eight - Rostya
The mansion feels smaller tonight. Every corridor narrows as I walk it, pressing in, suffocating. The chandeliers hang lower, the walls hum with tension. Even the air is thick, heavy, as if the house itself knows what’s coming.
I pace the halls like a predator caged, each turn sharper than the last, each step echoing louder than the one before. My skin crawls with restless energy, but there is nowhere to put it.
Men appear in my path, their reports spilling from their mouths; enemy strikes against our fronts, Volkov’s stragglers clawing for scraps, accounts unsettled, debts needing answers. I silence them with a look, one glance sharp enough to cut steel. The words die on their tongues. None of it matters.
Not tonight.
Tonight there is only one door at the end of the hall, closed and waiting.
I tell myself this is madness. That I am breaking every rule I built my life on. A man like me doesn’t circle a bedroom like it’s the center of the world. Doesn’t ignore war for a woman. Doesn’t hold his empire at arm’s length because of the sound of her breathing on the other side of the wall.
I don’t care.
Let the accounts bleed, let the remnants howl, let the empire burn itself to ash.
Nothing would pull me from this hall, from this night, from her.
My men watch from the shadows, uncertain, whispering, but no one dares speak it aloud: Rostya Sharov has left the battlefield for something larger, something more dangerous.
My pacing turns into a rhythm, steady, relentless, like the countdown before an explosion. Every turn of my body, every strike of my boots on marble, is a second ticked away. The calm before it all breaks apart. Only this time, the explosion waiting for me isn’t war.
It’s life itself.
My breath comes heavy, controlled, the way it does before I pull a trigger, except there’s no enemy here, no target to cut down. Just the memory of her smile when she felt the kick. Just the weight of her hand guiding mine to the place where our child moved beneath her skin.
A memory that has left me more unbalanced than a dozen battlefields ever could.
I stop outside her door, shoulders squared, every nerve raw. My hand hovers, the same hand that ended Denis Volkov, the same hand that has ended countless others. For the first time in years, it trembles.
I have faced bullets, betrayal, blood. None of it ever made me falter. This—this waiting, this knowing—has stripped me down to something bare and human.
The mansion holds its breath with me. The countdown has reached its final second. And when the door opens, the explosion will not be of violence but of something I can’t name, something that terrifies me more than war ever could.
The convoy of cars pulls up the drive at a speed too fast for the gates, headlights slashing the night. Doors slam.
The doctor and two midwives hurry inside, their bags in hand, their movements efficient, calm, practiced. They’ve done this a hundred times, a thousand—but never like this. Not in this house. Not under my roof. Not with me seated at the bedside like a sentinel waiting for battle.
The room shifts the second I sit down, the air tightening. Their eyes dart toward me, skittish, unsettled. They know who I am, what I am. Bratva king. Executioner. They’ve heard the stories.
Now here I am, not pacing halls or giving orders, but planted beside her, hand gripping hers so tight it’s as if I can anchor her through sheer force of will.
They move around us, laying out cloths, arranging tools, whispering to each other in the clipped shorthand of those used to crisis. None of it touches me. My whole world has narrowed to Karmia’s face, her sweat-slick brow, the tremor of her lips as she fights her own body.
I refuse to wait outside. No one dares suggest it.
When her nails dig into me—sharp, desperate—I don’t flinch. I’ve withstood knives sliding between ribs, bullets tearing through muscle, fire crawling over skin. Pain is nothing.
This agony isn’t mine. It’s hers. Watching her body tear itself apart to bring life into the world makes me feel powerless in a way no battlefield ever has.
Time breaks. Minutes stretch into hours, hours into an eternity I can’t measure.
Her cries rip through the air, shredding me open with every sound.
The sweat that beads on her brow, the way her chest heaves, the way her grip tightens until my hand throbs; each one is an enemy I can’t strike down, can’t erase.
My chest rises with hers, falls with hers. Each contraction ties my lungs to hers, binding me in pain I can’t feel but can’t escape either. I’ve lived a life of control, but here I am helpless, caught in the storm of her body’s war.
At moments she seems nearly gone, her breath shallow, eyes glazed, voice cracking into broken gasps. Panic grips my throat like a fist. I lean in, snarling at the doctor, my voice stripped raw.
“Do something. Now!”
The command fractures on my tongue, part fury, part plea. It’s not just order, it’s desperation. The sound of it startles even me. I don’t beg, I don’t break. Here, with her slipping away before my eyes, I would tear the world apart for one more breath from her lungs.
The doctor meets my glare, steady but strained. “She’s fighting. Give her space to fight. There’s no blade for this, no bullet to dodge. Only time.”
Time. The one thing I can’t command, can’t buy, can’t bend. I squeeze her hand tighter, bend my head close to hers. My lips hover at her temple, my words a growl meant for her alone.
“Stay with me. You hear me? You don’t leave. Not now. Not ever.”
The mansion beyond this room doesn’t exist. The empire doesn’t exist. Only her. Only the rise and fall of her breath, the battle raging inside her, and the helpless fury tearing me apart because I can’t fight it for her.
I would trade every drop of blood I’ve ever spilled for this pain to be mine instead, but it isn’t. It’s hers. It’s killing me one breath at a time.
The hours blur into one another until I no longer know the shape of time. Her cries, my fury, the endless rhythm of her breath tearing itself raw—it all becomes a haze I can’t escape. Then, at last, it breaks.
A sound splits the air. Sharp. Shrill. Alive.
The newborn’s cry slices through the room like lightning. Everything stills. The midwives’ hands freeze, the doctor exhales, Karmia collapses back against the pillows. The walls, the air, the weight of the world—all of it halts around that sound.
And I… I feel the ground shift under my boots. The unshakable ground I’ve built on blood and fear, the empire that has never bent, tilts beneath me for the first time in years.
A midwife turns, the swaddled bundle in her arms. She leans toward Karmia, but my hand shoots out, intercepting. No hesitation. The child is mine before he ever touches her skin.
My hands, scarred and large, cradle him with a care I didn’t know I had in me.
He is impossibly small, warm and damp and squalling, his fists no bigger than the joints of my fingers.
Fragile. Breakable. And yet the weight of him is heavier than anything I’ve ever carried. The weight of the future itself.
Karmia’s voice is faint, worn to threads, but certain when she whispers, “Damian.”
Damian.
The name sinks into me like steel driven into the earth, anchoring me. I look down at him, his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth open in protest, and for the first time in my life, I feel something closer to reverence.
I bend, bringing my mouth near his tiny ear, my voice low, raw. “I’ll protect the two of you as long as I live.”
The words should feel like threat, like every declaration I’ve spoken before—sharp-edged promises drenched in power. But they don’t. Not this time. The sound of them surprises even me. They are vow. Blood-deep. Unshakable.
Damian quiets, just a fraction, as though he hears me. My chest constricts, unprepared for the force of it.
Karmia watches through half-lidded eyes, her body trembling, face pale with exhaustion. But I see the shine of tears, the curve of a smile. For this moment, there is no empire, no Bratva, no war waiting beyond these walls. There is only us—the three of us—bound by something no enemy can touch.
Yet in the same breath, shadow curls through the reverence. He is love, yes. But he is also empire. Legacy carved into flesh and bone. The line that will not break.
I hold him closer, my vow ringing in my chest like a tolling bell. Damian Sharov. My son. My heir. My future.
God help the man who ever tries to take him from me.
At last, when the storm of the child’s arrival stills, I turn back to her.
Karmia lies against the pillows, her skin pale, almost translucent in the lamplight. Her chest rises weakly, each breath shallow, fragile, as though even air costs her more than she has left. Her lips are cracked and dry, but when her eyes flutter open, she finds me.
“Rostya,” she breathes, the sound faint, half a ghost of a word. Then her lashes lower, and exhaustion pulls her under.
The sound of my name from her lips twists something inside me I cannot name. Not victory. Not conquest. Something deeper, more dangerous.
I look down at the child in my arms. Damian stirs, his small mouth open in soft protest, his fists clenched tight.
I move toward the cradle—a piece of furniture carved with old wood and older promise—and lower him into it as if I am setting down a crown.
My heir. My future. My blood. He quiets there, swaddled in blankets finer than most men will ever touch.
My eyes are already back on her. As though leaving her side for even a second is unbearable, I return.
The chair scrapes the floor as I pull it close to the bed, sitting where I can see the weak flutter of her pulse at her throat.
My hand hovers, then lowers, brushing damp strands of hair from her forehead.
I bend and press my lips there, gentle, tender, so unlike the man I am.
For once, the blood on my hands feels irrelevant, erased by the heat of her skin.
This is what matters. This woman. This child.
Everything else—the empire, the wars, the endless weight of my name—feels distant, shadows against the flame of this room.
I settle into the chair, body rigid but unmoving, every muscle strung tight. I do not pace, I do not command, I do not strike. I watch. My eyes never leave her, sharp as any blade I’ve ever held. The estate outside breathes in silence: guards at their posts, engines cooling, the city beyond asleep.
Inside me, everything has changed.
I will never admit it aloud—not to my men, not to my brother, not even to myself when dawn comes—but the truth coils through me with the certainty of steel: Rostya Sharov has been remade tonight.
From this moment on, I am not only Bratva king. I am a man who has something more dangerous than power. I am a man with everything to lose.
The soft cries of Damian echo from the cradle, high and insistent, filling the room like a reminder. My son. My heir. My blood.
I look from the cradle to Karmia’s pale, sleeping face, my chest heavy with something I can neither command nor kill. My eyes burn, sleepless, with determination.
Empire. War. Blood. All of it pales beside this room.
The king of the Bratva sits at a woman’s bedside, the sound of his child’s cries in the air. He is something else. A father. A man bound by a vow no blade could ever break.