Chapter 26
VIKTOR
I reach the hospital with the torn diary page still in my pocket.
I’ve read it so many times on the drive that the words feel burned into my hand.
How do I tell Viktor he’s the father of my baby?
My daughter.
Sienna knew. She has known for months. She tried to tell me, and I let every lie, every accusation, every ugly scene pull us farther from that truth.
I think of her in the hospital bed, pale and exhausted, trying to speak before Maksim came in.
I think of the way she looked at me when I said I was the father for the forms.
She almost told me then.
I should have stayed.
The thought follows me through the automatic doors, past the reception desk, down the corridor toward her room. I move fast enough that two nurses look up, then look away when they see my face.
Her door is half-open.
The bed is empty.
For a second, I stop.
The blanket is folded back. The chair beside the bed is pushed slightly out. Her water cup is still there. The monitor is off.
No Sienna.
I step into the room.
“Sienna.”
Nothing.
The bathroom door is open. Empty.
I turn back into the hallway. A nurse is walking past with a tray in her hands.
“Where is she?”
The nurse pauses. “Who?”
“The woman in this room.”
She looks toward the bed, then back at me. “She may have gone home.”
I turn my head slowly and look at her. “Gone home?”
The nurse’s confidence falters at once. “I don’t know, sir. I just came on shift.”
“Her baby is still in the NICU. Or do you discharge NICU babies in a day too?”
Her face goes pale. For a second she says nothing, and that silence is the first real answer she gives me.
“Take me there,” I say.
“To the NICU?”
“Yes.”
She nods quickly and starts walking, relieved to have a task. I follow her down the corridor, past the nurses’ station, past two doctors speaking quietly outside another room, past a family huddled near a vending machine with paper cups untouched in their hands.
Everything about the hospital feels wrong now.
“What name is the baby registered under?” the nurse asks.
“Her mother’s name is Sienna, and she was brought in this morning, I’m not sure about anything else.”
The nurse nods, as if that’s enough information.
She scans us into the NICU, and the warm, humming quiet of the room hits me first. Then the machines. The small beds. The impossibly tiny bodies inside them.
She leads me to the far side.
My daughter is still there.
For one moment, the fear in me changes shape. It doesn’t leave. It only bends around the sight of her.
She’s sleeping under soft light, a cap low over her head, one little hand curled near her face. The nurse says something about her vitals being stable, but the words barely reach me.
I lean closer to the incubator.
She’s smaller than anything has a right to be while still feeling this enormous.
I look at her face properly this time. Not in a blur of emergency. Not while the room is full of doctors and blood and Sienna’s fear. I look, and it hurts. There’s Sienna in her mouth, in the shape of her cheeks, in the softness of her face.
But there’s me too. The line of the brow. The dark hair, what little there is of it. The stubborn set of her tiny mouth even in sleep.
My daughter.
The truth is so obvious now that I almost hate myself for ever needing proof.
How was I so blind?
I stand there with one hand on the glass, staring at the child I nearly learned about too late, and every delay, every misunderstanding, every ugly word from Ethan feels suddenly obscene.
“Why would the mother leave her baby here?” I say, turning to the nurse.
She gulps, her eyes widening. “I’m sorry, sir. There must have been some kind of misunderstanding. I’ll get the nurse from the previous shift. She was here earlier. Maybe she knows.”
“Do that.”
She leaves quickly.
I stay beside the incubator, but the tenderness of the moment is gone now, replaced by something colder. Sienna would not leave this hospital while our daughter was here. Not willingly. Not without fighting half the staff if she had to.
A few minutes later, another nurse arrives. She gives me a professional smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Mr. Sokolov?”
I step away from the incubator. “Where is she?”
“She was resting when I last checked on her.”
“That’s not an answer.”
The smile fades a little. “Post-surgery patients can become disoriented. It’s possible she tried to move around or became overwhelmed. We’re checking the ward.”
“You said she was resting.”
“I said when I last checked.”
“When was that?”
She hesitates.
There.
Small, but enough.
“When?” I ask again.
“About forty minutes ago.”
Forty minutes.
My anger, until now held low and steady, begins to rise. “And no one noticed she was gone?”
“She may have stepped out.”
“She had emergency surgery. Her child is in the NICU. She was barely able to sit upright.” I step closer. “Do not stand here and tell me she stepped out.”
The nurse’s throat moves. She knows she has chosen the wrong lie. “Sir, I understand you’re upset—”
“No,” I say. “You don’t.”
Her eyes flick briefly toward the exit.
That’s her second mistake.
I follow her gaze, then look back at her. “Who told you to say that?”
The blood drains from her face. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.”
She takes one step back. “I should call security.”
“Call whoever you like.”
My voice is quiet enough now that she finally understands shouting would be safer.
I look at her badge, then at her hands. They’re shaking. Slightly. Not enough for most people to notice, but I’m not most people.
The nurse takes one careful step back. It’s nothing obvious. Nothing that would alarm anyone watching from a distance. Just a small retreat, a glance toward the corridor, the movement of someone trying to get away before the questions become too precise.
My instinct catches it before my mind finishes with it.
She turns and says, “I’ll check the desk again.”
I let her go.
For three seconds.
Then I follow.
She doesn’t head toward the main nurses’ station. She cuts left, past the linen cart, toward the service corridor near the staff elevators. Her pace is quick now. Not frantic, but too purposeful for someone simply checking a chart.
I keep enough distance that she doesn’t hear me.
She stops near a half-open supply room door and pulls out her phone. Her hand is shaking when she taps the screen.
I move closer, staying just out of sight.
Her voice is low, strained. “He’s here,” she says. “He’s asking about her.”
A pause.
“No, I told him she might have gone home. He didn’t believe it.”
My hand closes slowly around the edge of the wall, the blood in my body turning cold.
The nurse listens, breathing too fast. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers.
Then she says, “No. No, I didn’t tell him anything.”
I step into the corridor.
She sees me and freezes. The phone is still at her ear.
For one second neither of us moves. Her face drains of color so quickly it almost looks painful.
I hold out my hand. “Give me the phone.”
She doesn’t.
I take one step closer. “Now.”
Her fingers loosen.
I take the phone from her and put it to my ear.
There’s silence on the other end. Then a man’s voice, calm and unfamiliar, says, “Forget about Sienna.”
I don’t recognize him.
That makes it worse.
“Who is this?” I ask.
A soft laugh comes through the line. “Nobody you know.”
I look at the nurse. She’s crying now, silently, one hand pressed to her mouth.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
The man doesn’t hesitate. “Because I want to hurt you.”
Everything in me goes still. “If you touched her—”
“She’s alive,” he says. “For now.”
I close my eyes for half a second, then open them again. “Where is she?”
“You’ll get the address in a moment. Come alone.”
“No.”
“Then she dies.” His voice stays calm, almost bored, and that calm tells me more than shouting would have. This man has planned enough of this to feel safe.
He continues, “No Yuri. No men. No police. If I see anyone with you, she won’t live long enough for you to apologize.”
My grip tightens around the phone.
Behind me, the nurse makes a small, broken sound.
The man says, “You wanted a family, Viktor. Let’s see what you’re willing to risk to keep it.”
My own phone vibrates in my pocket.
The address.
He says, “Thirty minutes.”
The line goes dead.