Chapter 20 Truth Like A Bullet
TRUTH LIKE A BULLET
DANI
The apartment looked almost normal.
If you ignored the faint red smear on the fridge where Maksim’s face had hit, and the hairline cracks in the marble where Konstantin had bounced his head off the floor.
The cleaners had come and gone. New wineglasses in the cabinet. Fresh shirt on my body. His coat folded over the back of a chair instead of around my shoulders.
But the air still felt wrong. Like something had been burned here that no amount of industrial cleaner could scrub out.
Konstantin stood in the middle of the living room, wrapped tight in his own fury.
Hands loose at his sides, but only because they were bandaged—white gauze wrapped around split knuckles, little spots of fresh red seeping through.
Jaw locked. Those pale eyes cutting over every inch of the penthouse—the island where my shirt had torn, the path of dried droplets they’d missed between kitchen and door, the stupid white tree blinking in the corner like it wasn’t part of a test I hadn’t signed up for.
He wasn’t looking for evidence anymore. He’d seen everything.
He was looking for something else.
“What else did he say to you?” he asked.
His voice was calm in that way that made my stomach knot. The Russian slipped a little stronger around the consonants.
“Not much,” I said. I was on my knees with a dish towel, wiping at a stubborn speck of wine by the baseboard like it mattered. “Mostly bullshit. He likes the sound of his own voice.”
“He said door opened for him.” Konstantin’s gaze stayed on me. “That cameras go dark when they want. ‘They’ being council.”
“They overrode the lock,” I said. “Panel even announced it. I watched the light change.”
He went even stiller at that. “They used my wife to test me,” he said after a heartbeat. “They wanted to see if I would put bullet in my own blood.”
Put more simply: they’d opened the door and turned off the witness so they could see what their pet Pakhan-to-be would do with a cornered woman and a cousin with his hands on her.
“They also wanted to see what I’d do,” I said quietly. “How I’d react. What I’d be willing to survive.”
His mouth tightened. “You did well,” he said. “You hurt him.”
Small trophy. Bloody, expensive Bordeaux-shaped.
I sat back on my heels, towel dangling from my fingers. “He said you told them I was untouchable,” I said. “Nice word for it.”
Something flickered behind his eyes. Anger, yes. Guilt, maybe. It looked a lot like the moment in the hallway after the photo, when he’d told me I breathed because he allowed it.
“You are safer than you were in that lot,” he said quietly. “You are not safe from them. That is different.”
I exhaled, a thin, humorless sound. “Right. Safer. Just not safe.”
I pushed to my feet, tossed the towel in the sink, and turned to find him leaning in the doorway, blocking most of the kitchen with his body.
Up close, he looked worse than the room.
Small cuts on his cheek. Bruise building along his jaw. Bandages on both hands. Snow-damp hair pushed back like he’d run bloody fingers through it more than once.
“You’ve been different,” he said. “Since before today. Distant. Secretive.”
My heart thumped against my ribs.
Of course I’d been different.
Try carrying a mob boss’s baby while his family used you as a lab rat and see how well you did at light conversation.
“I just got choked and groped in my own kitchen by your cousin while your bosses watched to see if you’d snap,” I said, voice flat. “Trust isn’t really on the menu.”
“That is part,” he said. “Not all.”
He pushed off the frame and came closer. The faint, clean spice of his cologne rode under the sharper scents of cleaner and old wine.
“The bag in lobby,” he went on. “The way you look at me like you are planning escape. The way you almost ran instead of talking to me.” His eyes narrowed. “You are hiding something, Dani.”
Everything.
The test in the trash. The calendar math. The way my body had already started to feel not entirely like mine.
My chest felt too tight. I wanted to lift my hand to my stomach; I made myself curl it into a fist instead.
“I’m hiding that I hate your family,” I said. “I’m hiding that your cousin’s fingers were just on my throat. That should be enough.”
His gaze swept my neck, where I knew the bruises would come up later, then dropped back to my face.
“Those things I can fix,” he said. “I already started.” The faintest ghost of something like humor touched his mouth; it died fast. “This is different. You are… somewhere else. In your head.”
Of course I was. I had a second passenger up there now, running worst-case scenarios with me.
“Maybe I’m just tired,” I said. “This world of yours is exhausting.”
He stepped in until the counter edge pressed against my lower back. His bandaged knuckles brushed the side of my arm, the gentleness at odds with the damage.
“You are not just tired,” he said. “You are scared. Hiding. I do not like it.”
My laugh came out brittle. “I don’t like it either.”
He held my gaze. “I cannot protect you from what I do not see,” he said. “What I do not know.”
The irony of him saying that—Mr. Cameras Everywhere—would have been funny if it didn’t land so heavy.
“You want answers?” I asked. The sharpness in my voice surprised even me. “You really want to know what’s ‘wrong’?”
Something moved in his eyes. Not fear exactly. Anticipation with teeth.
“Da,” he said simply. “Tell me.”
The words jammed in my throat.
Saying it out loud made it real on a different level. No going back to pretending my late period was trauma or diet or stress. No more telling myself it was just “probably nothing.”
I thought of Maksim’s hand on my throat. The council watching doors open and cameras go dark. The crosshair photo. The way Konstantin had thrown himself between me and every threat so far without asking if I wanted to be there in the first place.
Fuck it.
Let the whole thing burn.
“I’m pregnant,” I said. The words dropped between us like a pistol shot. “You cold-blooded psycho. I’m pregnant.”
Silence.
The real kind. The kind that sucks all the air out of a room and hands it to someone else.
Konstantin went very, very still.
His face—usually so controlled it might as well be carved—went loose. The color drained. His eyes went wide, pale and sharp all at once.
For the first time since I’d seen him in that tree lot, he looked like someone had actually surprised him.
“There it is,” I said, heat rushing up my neck. “The truth.”
His mouth opened.
Closed.
When he finally managed words, they were the wrong ones.
“Is it mine?” he asked.
It hit like getting slapped.
My eyebrows shot up. “Are you serious right now?”
We stared at each other across the kitchen island and the wreckage of everything we’d already done together. Tree lot. Shower. Wall. Bed. Car. That ugly, cheap cabin of a church.
“I don’t sleep with murderers casually,” I said. “You’re the only homicidal maniac I’ve been stuck with.”
My laugh came out short and rough. It didn’t feel like humor. It felt like something breaking.
Something in his face flinched, like the words had actually cut.
“I had to ask,” he said quietly. “This is…big thing to say.”
“Yeah, well.” My fingers dug into the edge of the counter. “Next time maybe lead with something better than a paternity test.”
He raked both bandaged hands through his hair, wincing when the gauze caught. For the first time since I’d known him, Konstantin looked less like a machine and more like a man who’d just had the ground rearranged under his feet.
“You were never supposed to stay,” he said, almost too low to hear.
There it was.
The truth under all the mines and the threats and the wedding vows.
I’d always been a temporary solution. A convenient lie in a green velvet romper. A way to get the council off his back without having to change his life.
“And you were never supposed to feel anything,” I said back, voice softer but no less sharp.
We hung there for a moment, caught in a web neither of us had meant to spin.
He wasn’t looking at me like a hostage now. Or a shield. Or even just a lover.
He was looking at me like I’d just handed him a weapon and a weakness wrapped in the same skin.
The mother of his heir.
I wasn’t just another problem he’d dragged in from the snow.
I was his future, whether he’d wanted one or not.
“Dani—” he started.
The universe did not care about our timing.
The first bullet came through the window before he could finish my name