Chapter Twenty-Five - Elena
The pregnancy changes things in ways I don’t expect.
Not externally—the world doesn’t shift on its axis, the sun still rises, the house still operates with the same controlled efficiency.
Internally, something is different.
I notice how Aleksandr stays closer now.
Not smothering, not obvious, but present in ways he wasn’t before.
He’s there at meals, adjusting my chair before I sit.
He’s in the hallway when I move between rooms, like he just happens to be passing by.
He watches who approaches me—guards, staff, anyone—with an intensity that borders on territorial.
His touch is different too. More careful. More reverent. Like I might break if he’s not gentle enough.
When he helps me into the car, his hand lingers at my elbow longer than necessary.
When he passes me in the corridor, his fingers brush my waist, just a moment of contact.
When we’re alone, he gravitates toward me without seeming to realize it, standing close, close enough that I feel the heat of him.
I tell myself it’s manipulation. Strategic care to keep me compliant, to ensure the pregnancy stays healthy, to protect his investment.
My body doesn’t believe that lie anymore.
When he looks at me now, there’s something in his eyes that wasn’t there before. Something raw and unguarded that makes my breath catch.
I matter beyond what I’m carrying. Like the pregnancy just gave him permission to show what was already there.
I don’t know what to do with that.
***
A week after the appointment, I can’t sleep.
The exhaustion that plagued me earlier has given way to restless energy. I lie in bed—our bed—staring at the ceiling while Aleksandr works late in his office.
He’s been doing that more. Staying up after I go to sleep, giving me space while still being close enough to reach if needed.
It should feel like relief. Should feel like the distance I’ve been craving.
Instead, it just feels lonely.
At midnight, I give up on sleep. Wrap myself in a robe and pad quietly toward the kitchen for water. The house is silent except for the low murmur of Aleksandr’s voice from his office.
I shouldn’t listen. Should just get my water and return to bed.
Something in his tone stops me. Not the cold control I’m used to. Something heavier. Strained.
I move closer to the partially open door.
“…understand the full scope now,” he’s saying in Russian. I catch maybe half of it, enough to piece together context. “The Petrovs manipulated everything. The Lawrence family was never the threat I believed.”
My blood goes cold.
“Yes, I know I should have verified earlier.” His tone is sharp. Defensive. “The intelligence was convincing. They played me perfectly.”
Silence while the person on the other end responds.
“What’s done is done. The Petrovs are eliminated. The threat is neutralized.” A pause. “The Lawrence assets will be handled appropriately now that I know the truth.”
Now that he knows the truth.
My hands are shaking. I press them against the wall to steady myself.
He knew. Or he found out, and he never told me.
“No, she doesn’t know,” Aleksandr continues, answering a question I can’t hear. “She won’t. Telling her accomplishes nothing except giving her ammunition against me.”
The words land like physical blows.
He knew my family wasn’t guilty. Knew they were manipulated, coerced, used as pawns. He kept it from me. Let me believe my father was weak, that we deserved what happened, that this was all consequences of our own actions.
While knowing the truth the entire time.
Rage and humiliation flood through me so fast I can’t breathe.
I shove the door open without thinking.
Aleksandr looks up sharply, phone still pressed to his ear. “I’ll call you back.”
He ends the call. Sets the phone down carefully. Watches me with wary eyes like he’s calculating how much I heard.
“How long?” My voice is surprisingly steady. “How long have you known?”
“Elena—”
“How. Long.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then: “Three weeks. Since just before you ran.”
Three weeks. He’s known for three weeks that my family was innocent. That everything I believed about their guilt was a lie.
He said nothing.
“You let me think—” I can’t finish. Can’t put into words the betrayal of it. “My father. You let me believe he was a coward. That he betrayed the Bratva willingly. That we deserved what you did to us.”
“He did cooperate with authorities—”
“He was coerced! The Petrovs gave him no choice!” My hands curl into fists. “You knew that. You knew it and you let me carry that shame anyway.”
Aleksandr stands slowly, moves around the desk. “I learned the truth recently. The Petrovs manipulated intelligence, made it look like your father was still a threat when he wasn’t. I was played. Used as a weapon against your family.”
“So you destroyed us by mistake.” The laugh that escapes is hollow. “Is that supposed to make it better?”
“No. It doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse.” He takes a step closer. “I made decisions based on false intelligence. Dismantled your family’s empire because I believed lies. That’s on me.”
“You knew. For weeks you’ve known the truth and you said nothing.” I’m shaking now, rage making my whole body tremble. “You let me think my father was weak. Let me believe I deserved this captivity, this marriage, all of it. While knowing none of it was justified.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Then what is it?” I demand. “Explain it to me. Make it make sense.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is low. Honest in a way that somehow hurts more than lies.
“I couldn’t let you go. Even after I learned the truth.
Even knowing everything I’d done was based on manipulation.
” He meets my eyes. “You were already mine. The pregnancy, the marriage, the bond between us; it was already real. Telling you the truth wouldn’t change that.
Wouldn’t set you free. It would just give you reasons to hate me that I couldn’t argue against.”
The honesty of it—the selfish, unapologetic honesty—makes something crack in my chest.
“You had no right,” I whisper. “No right to keep that from me. To let me carry guilt and shame for things that weren’t my fault. To steal my agency even in how I understood my own situation.”
“I know.”
“You destroyed my family based on lies. Forced me into marriage under false pretenses. And even now, knowing the truth, you won’t let me go.”
“No. I won’t.”
“Why?” The question tears out of me. “If you know this was all built on manipulation, if you know none of it was justified—why keep me prisoner?”
“I can’t function without you.” The admission is raw. Brutal. “The thought of you existing somewhere beyond my reach is unbearable. Justified or not, real or not, I need you here.”
“That’s not love. That’s obsession.”
“I know.” He doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t try to make it sound better than it is. “But it’s honest, and it’s all I have to offer.”
I should hate him more for this. Should use this revelation as the final proof that he’s exactly the monster I believed him to be.
Instead, I just feel… shattered. At least now I know. At least now the truth is laid bare between us, ugly and undeniable.
“I don’t know if I’m choosing you or just surviving you,” I say quietly. “I don’t know if any of this is real or just Stockholm syndrome and pregnancy hormones and exhaustion.”
“I don’t know either,” he admits. “We’re here regardless. Forgiveness—if it ever comes—has to be earned. I know that.”
I stare at him. This man who destroyed my life based on lies. Who forced me into marriage, into pregnancy, into a situation I never chose. Who just admitted he knew the truth and hid it anyway because letting me go was impossible.
I should leave. Should walk out of this office, this house, this marriage.
My feet don’t move.
He’s right about one terrible thing—I’m already here. Already bound to him in ways that go beyond legal contracts. Already carrying his child, already tangled in whatever this twisted thing between us has become.
I’m so tired of fighting it.
I shake my head. Can’t say it. Can’t admit that somewhere along the way, hate started mixing with something else. Something that feels dangerously like need.
He crosses the distance between us slowly. Stops just close enough that I’d have to step back to avoid contact.
I don’t step back.
“Hit me,” he says quietly. “If it helps. If you need the violence to process this. I’ll take it.”
“I don’t want to hit you.” My hands are shaking with the need to do something. To release the pressure building in my chest.
I shove him instead. Both hands against his chest, hard enough that he takes a step back.
He doesn’t fight back. Just stands there, letting me.
I shove him again. “You had no right—”
“I know.”
“No right to keep this from me!” Another shove.
“I know.”
“No right to keep lying and lying to suit your own ends.” My voice breaks.
He catches my wrists gently. Not restraining, just holding. “I know. I know, Elena. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix this.”
“I know that too.”
I try to pull my wrists free, but he holds firm. Not painfully. Just enough to stop me from retreating.
“Let go.”
“No.” He backs me against the wall, slow and deliberate, giving me time to resist if I want to.
I don’t resist. My back hits the wall. His body cages me in, hands still holding my wrists, pressed against the wall on either side of my head.
We’re breathing hard. Both of us. The air between us is thick with rage and desire and unresolved tension that’s been building for weeks.
“You drive me insane,” he murmurs, face close to mine. “Everything about you. The way you fight. The way you refuse to break. The way you look at me like you can’t decide if you want to kill me or—”
“Or what?”
His grip on my wrists tightens slightly. “Or let me touch you.”
“I hate how much I still want you,” I admit, the words tearing out against my will. “I hate it. Hate that my body doesn’t care about the lies or the manipulation or any of it.”
“I know.” His forehead presses to mine. “I hate it too. Hate that wanting you has made me weak. Made me compromise everything I built my life around.”
“Then let me go.”
“I can’t.” His hand releases one of my wrists, slides down to grip my hip. Too tight. Possessive. “I can’t and I won’t and you already know that.”
I should push him away. Should use my free hand to shove him back, to enforce distance, to prove I’m not giving in.
Instead, my free hand tangles in his hair, pulling him closer even as I glare at him.
The kiss is inevitable. Angry. Desperate. We crash together like we’re both trying to hurt and heal simultaneously.
His hand on my hip loosens slightly, becomes less bruising, more reverent. Like he’s remembered I’m pregnant, that I’m fragile in ways I wasn’t before.
I bite his lip hard enough to taste blood. He groans into my mouth, the sound raw and needy.
We break apart breathing hard.
“This doesn’t mean forgiveness,” I say.
“I know.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m okay with what you did. This just means I’m tired of fighting something we both want.”
He kisses me again, gentler this time. “I’ll earn it. The forgiveness. The trust. Whatever you need. I’ll earn it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet, but I will.”
I search his face for lies. For manipulation. For any sign that this is strategy rather than truth.
I find none. Only raw honesty. Selfish and possessive and completely unapologetic, but honest.
“I need time,” I tell him.
“You have it.”
“Space to process this. To figure out what I actually feel versus what I’m just surviving.”
“Okay.”
“You have to stop lying to me. No more hiding truths because they’re inconvenient. No more manipulation.”
“Agreed.”
The promises should feel empty. Should feel like words he’ll break the moment it’s convenient, but something in his eyes makes me believe him.
Maybe I’m a fool. Maybe this is just more manipulation, more clever control disguised as vulnerability. Or maybe he’s finally being honest about what this is. About what we are.
“Come to bed,” he says quietly.
“Are you going to touch me?”
“Only if you want me to.”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Then we’ll just sleep.”
He releases me. Steps back, giving me space to decide.
I could go to bed alone. Could enforce the distance I claimed I needed. Instead, I take his hand.
We walk to the bedroom together. He helps me out of my robe with careful hands. Helps me into bed like I’m something precious.
Then he strips to his boxers and slides in beside me.
We lie on opposite sides of the bed. Close enough to feel each other’s warmth. Not touching, but not letting go either.
“Elena?” His voice is quiet in the darkness.
“Yeah?”
“I am sorry, for what it’s worth. For the lies, for the manipulation, for everything I did based on false intelligence. I’m sorry.”
“I know you are. I just don’t know if it makes a difference,” I whisper.
“I meant what I said. I’ll earn your trust. However long it takes.”
“Okay.”
Silence stretches. I should sleep. Should let exhaustion take me. Instead, I find myself inching closer. Just slightly. Just enough that my hand brushes his.
He catches my fingers. Interlaces them with his. Holds on like I might disappear if he loosens his grip.