Chapter 23
VIKTOR
She collapses into me before I can catch the full shape of what’s happening.
One second, she’s upright, pale and staring at the wet front of her dress like her mind can’t quite catch up to it. The next her knees give, her body folding in on itself with a soft, shocked sound that goes straight through me.
I catch her under the arms and pull her against my chest before she hits the ground.
“Sienna.”
She clutches at my jacket with both hands, breath coming too fast now, face drained of color. Her weight is real in my arms in a way that turns everything else to noise.
“Look at me.”
She tries. I can see the effort of it.
Another pain takes her. Stronger this time. It moves through her so clearly that I feel it before she says anything, her whole body tightening against mine, her mouth opening on a small cry she doesn’t seem able to stop.
Fuck.
Another wave of pain goes through her, and she makes a broken sound against my chest.
I don’t think. I just lift her.
“Inside,” I say.
I’m already moving toward the terrace when the side door opens and Maksim comes out at a near run, phone still in one hand, coat half off his shoulders. He must have turned back the moment the shouting started.
He sees me carrying her and changes direction immediately. “What happened?”
“Her water broke.”
That gets him the rest of the way to us in seconds. “How far along?”
I look down at her. She’s trying to answer, trying to breathe through another pain at the same time. “It’s too early. Is my baby going to be okay?”
Maksim nods once, already thinking ahead. “Don’t take her upstairs. Nearest room on the ground floor.” He grabs the terrace door wide open and steps ahead of me. “Yuri!” he shouts over his shoulder. “Clear the hall and get towels and water.”
Yuri is there almost at once.
Good.
Maksim moves quickly down the corridor, opening the blue sitting room we used yesterday. He pushes a side table out of the way and turns back to me. “Put her down here first.”
I lower her carefully onto the sofa. She grabs for my wrist before I can straighten fully, and I let her hold on.
Maksim kneels in front of her. “Sienna, I need you to stay with me for a minute. Can you do that?”
She nods, eyes squeezed shut.
“When did the pains start?”
She swallows. “This morning. A little. Then worse just now.”
“Any bleeding?”
“No.”
He checks her pulse while she breathes through another contraction, then looks up at me. “Stay with her.”
As if there is anywhere else I would be.
I sit beside her and take her hand properly this time. She feels cold from shock, though her skin is damp with sweat.
Yuri appears in the doorway with towels and water. Behind him, I can see Alina and Anna in the hall, both of them pale now for entirely different reasons than before.
Maksim takes the towels, glances once at the wet dress, then back at Sienna’s face. “All right. We’re not doing this here long. I just need to know if we have time to move or if we have to start dealing with this on the floor.”
That gets her attention even through the pain.
His voice softens by half a degree. “You’re fine. I just need you to answer me.”
She nods again.
Another contraction takes her then, stronger than the last, and she folds toward me on instinct. I put my arm around her without thinking and hold her there while she grips my hand hard enough to bruise.
“That’s it,” Maksim says. “Breathe. Don’t fight it.”
She does her best.
He waits until it eases, then says, “We’re going to the hospital. Now.”
I look toward Yuri. “Car.”
He nods once. “Already coming around.”
Maksim stands and picks up his bag. “I’m riding with you.”
Good. Because even with him here, even with his voice level and his hands steady, I can feel how quickly this could become something worse.
Sienna looks up at me then, dazed and frightened and trying very hard not to show either one. “Viktor.”
I bend closer. “I’m here.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “Don’t let anything happen to my baby.”
The words go through me like a blade. I put my forehead briefly against hers and say the only thing I know with complete certainty. “Nothing is happening to either of you while I’m standing here.”
Then I lift her again. This time she doesn’t argue. Her arms go around my shoulders at once, her body curling instinctively toward mine as I carry her into the hall.
Maksim is already ahead of us. Yuri is clearing the path. Anna opens the front door herself. Alina steps back without speaking.
The morning has stopped being a wedding altogether now. It’s just wreckage and flowers and frightened faces moving out of my way while I carry her through them.
The car is waiting at the steps. I’m halfway there when she goes rigid in my arms and a new sound tears out of her, low and frightened enough that every part of me locks.
“Maksim.”
He turns immediately.
And then I feel it.
Warmth. Too much of it.
I look down.
Blood.
“Stop.”
Maksim is beside me before I finish the word.
He looks once at the blood, then up at Sienna’s face, and whatever he sees there makes his own change. Not panic. Never that. Just urgency becoming something heavier.
“Get her into the car,” he says. “Now.”
I don’t waste another second. I move the rest of the way down the steps and lower her into the back seat as carefully as I can. She’s breathing too fast, one hand locked around my sleeve, the other pressed low over her stomach as if she can hold everything in by force.
“I’m here,” I tell her.
She nods, but I don’t know if she’s hearing me.
Maksim climbs in beside her and immediately starts giving instructions. “Lie back a little. No, not flat. Good. Sienna, look at me.” Her eyes flick to him. “How much blood?”
She swallows. “I don’t know.”
“All right. Don’t try to figure it out.” He takes a towel from his bag and presses it into her hands. “Hold this there. Firmly. Not hard enough to hurt yourself.”
I get into the car on her other side without thinking. Yuri slams the door behind me, and the driver pulls away so fast the gravel spits from under the tires.
The house disappears behind us. For a moment all I can hear is the engine, Sienna’s breathing, and the sound of Maksim opening and closing pieces of his bag.
“Talk to me,” he says to her.
“I’m trying.”
“I know. Keep trying.” He checks her pulse again, then her color, then looks at me. “Keep her awake.”
As if I need to be told.
I take her hand. It’s cold. Damp. She’s still trying to hold itself together with sheer stubbornness.
“Sienna.”
Her eyes move to mine.
“When was your last appointment?”
She blinks, confused by the question. “A week and a half ago.”
“And everything was fine?”
“Yes.”
Maksim says, “Any bleeding before today?”
“No.”
“Any strong cramps before the lawn?”
She shakes her head, then stops and winces as another pain takes her.
This one is bad. She folds toward me, fingers crushing mine, face twisting with effort as she tries not to cry out.
“Breathe,” Maksim says. “Don’t hold it. That makes it worse.”
She does as he says, but barely.
I can feel how frightened she is now. Not in the obvious way. In the way her whole body is trying to pull in around the pain and the blood and the terror of not knowing whether this is labor or something worse.
“How far?” I ask him quietly.
He doesn’t answer immediately.
That’s answer enough.
“I don’t know yet,” he says at last. “But I don’t like the blood.”
Neither do I.
The drive feels endless even though we’re moving too fast for any of it to be safe. Sienna’s head comes to rest against my shoulder between contractions, and every time she goes quiet for more than a few seconds, I say her name until she looks at me again.
At some point she whispers, “I’m sorry.”
I stare at her. “For what?”
“For ruining everything.”
The words hit me with such force I almost don’t understand them.
Then I do.
The wedding. The lawn. The blood. My family. The fact that this entire day has turned into something violent and broken and she’s found a way to make herself responsible for it.
“No,” I say. Her eyes close. I tighten my hold on her hand. “Look at me.” They open again. “This is not on you.”
Another contraction cuts off whatever she was going to say. She makes a helpless sound and turns into me, and I put my arm around her without caring whether Maksim thinks it useful.
“Good,” he says. “Stay with that. Don’t fight your body.”
She gives him a look through the pain that would almost be funny in another life. “Very inspiring.”
Maksim nearly smiles. “I’m not here to inspire. I’m here to get you through the next twenty minutes.”
That, at least, seems to reach her.
The blood on the towel is darker than I want it to be. I don’t look at it twice. If I do, I’ll stop thinking usefully.
Instead I ask, “How long?”
“Ten minutes,” the driver says.
Too long.
Maksim checks the towel again and says, “Still with me, Sienna?”
“Yes.”
“When you feel the pain coming, tell me.”
She nods weakly.
I brush damp hair back from her face and feel the heat of her skin under my palm. Too warm now from stress, from effort, from fear.
Then she says, very quietly, “The baby’s not moving.”
Everything in the car changes.
Maksim looks up at once. “When did you last feel movement?”
“On the lawn.” Her voice cracks. “Before. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I hear myself say, “No.”
Not to her. To the car. To the morning. To the possibility gathering shape around us.
Maksim is calm. Horribly calm. “That doesn’t mean the worst thing you’re thinking.”
She looks at him like she wants to believe him and doesn’t know how.
“It doesn’t,” he repeats. “It means we get there faster.”
Another minute. Maybe two. Then the hospital entrance appears through the windshield, bright and ugly and too far away until suddenly it’s right in front of us.
The car stops hard.
Orderlies are already moving toward us. Maksim must have called ahead from the back seat because they have a wheelchair, a stretcher, too many hands, and not enough time.