Chapter 16 Nikolai
NIKOLAI
The silence in my private office at The Golden Lion is so complete, I can hear my own heartbeat, a steady rhythm that feels too loud in the soundproofed space.
I've always appreciated this room's ability to swallow noise, to create a bubble where secrets can be discussed without fear of surveillance or eavesdropping.
Tonight, though, the quiet feels oppressive, like the walls are closing in with each breath I take.
Yaroslav Karenina sits across from me, his fingers trembling slightly as he connects my watch to his laptop.
He's the best tech specialist money can buy, a man who can extract data from devices most people don't even know are capable of storing information.
His reputation for discretion is the only reason he's still breathing after some of the things he's seen while working for me.
"The saltwater damage was minimal," Yaroslav says, his accent thicker than mine, each word carefully pronounced. "The casing held. All the data survived intact."
I lean back in my chair, forcing my body into a relaxed posture that contradicts the tension coiling through my muscles.
Three weeks of data. Three weeks of my life reduced to numbers and graphs, GPS coordinates and biometric readings.
The watch tracked everything while Aria and I survived on that island, while I made the choice to keep us stranded, and while I fell for a woman I had no business touching.
The laptop screen fills with information, columns of data that Yaroslav navigates with practiced efficiency. I watch the GPS coordinates plot our location, a single point in the vast ocean that became our entire world. Heart rate data shows spikes during the storm, during our arguments, during sex.
"Your vital signs remained stable throughout," Yaroslav reports, his eyes scanning the readouts. "No signs of infection or serious injury beyond the head trauma from the initial impact. Your recovery was remarkably fast."
I nod, barely listening. My attention has caught on a different file, one labeled Biometric Analysis—Secondary Subject.
The watch didn't just track me. It tracked her, too.
Every moment she was close enough, every time we touched, the sensors collected data about Aria's body with the same medical-grade precision they used on mine.
Yaroslav's finger hovers over the file, and I watch his face go carefully blank. It's an expression I recognize, the one people wear when they've discovered something they wish they hadn't. Something that could get them killed if they're not careful about how they present it.
"Open it," I command, my voice dropping to the tone that makes grown men flinch.
He clicks, and the screen fills with graphs and numbers that mean nothing to me at first. Hormone levels. Resting heart rate. Body temperature fluctuations. I lean forward, trying to make sense of the medical jargon, and that's when I see it.
Elevated HCG levels detected. Consistent with early pregnancy.
The words blur as I read them again. And again. My hands grip the edge of my desk, knuckles going white against the dark wood, and I feel the room tilt sideways like the deck of the Tsaritsa during the storm.
Pregnant.
Aria is pregnant.
The data doesn't lie. The watch tracked her body for three weeks with sensors designed to detect the subtlest changes in human physiology.
From the moment of conception! Changes too small for her to notice yet, too early for a standard pregnancy test to confirm.
But the technology doesn't care about timing or convenience. It simply reports what is.
Twenty years of certainty crumble like sand through my fingers.
I was nineteen when a rival Pakhan’s men cornered me in that Moscow alley, when they put three bullets in my chest and one lower, in my abdomen.
The doctors saved my life, but they were absolute about the damage.
The internal injuries, the scar tissue, the complications that would prevent me from ever fathering children.
I built my life around that truth, never allowing myself to want what I couldn't have, never letting myself imagine a future that included a family.
Except the data on this screen says otherwise.
"This is accurate?" My voice comes out rougher than intended, the Russian accent thickening until the English words feel foreign on my tongue.
Yaroslav nods, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows. "The sensors are medical-grade, Pakhan. Used in fertility clinics and hospitals. The margin of error is less than one percent."
One percent. Not enough to hope for a mistake, not enough to dismiss this as a glitch in the system. Aria is carrying a child. My child. The miracle I never thought possible, the future I'd convinced myself I didn't want because wanting it would mean acknowledging the loss.
My hand moves to my phone before conscious thought catches up, Aria's number already pulled up on the screen. I need to tell her. Need to hear her voice, need to know if she's experiencing symptoms yet, need to… what? Claim her? Demand she acknowledge what's growing inside her?
Logic reasserts itself with brutal efficiency, and I set the phone down with more force than necessary.
She doesn't know. The watch detected changes too subtle for her to notice yet, hormonal shifts that won't manifest as obvious symptoms for days, maybe weeks. I could tell her, should tell her, except doubt creeps in like poison through my veins.
What if the child isn't mine?
The thought makes my stomach turn, but I can't dismiss it.
I don't know Aria's history. I don't know if she was seeing someone before the yacht party, nor do I know if she could have been pregnant before arriving on the island.
The timing works, barely, if she conceived just before we met.
And if that's true, if fate played the cruelest joke imaginable by making me believe I'd finally achieved the impossible, then claiming this child would make me look like a fool.
Worse, it would make me look weak.
My men will ask these questions. Cyril already watches me with suspicion, measuring how much the island changed me, calculating whether his Pakhan has gone soft.
If I claim this child without proof, if I show weakness by trusting blindly, my enemies will use it to destroy me.
Matvey Ignatyev would have a field day with it, spreading rumors that the great Nikolai Alekseev was cuckolded by a caterer, that he's so desperate for an heir, he'll claim another man's bastard.
The rage that thought ignites surprises me with its intensity.
The idea of Aria with another man, of her body responding to someone else's touch the way it responded to mine, makes violence surge through my veins hot enough to burn.
But beneath the rage lives something more dangerous.
Fear. Fear that I'm not the father. Fear that this miracle isn't mine to claim.
Fear that I've already lost something I didn't know I wanted until this moment.
"The conception date," I say, forcing my voice into something resembling calm. "Can you narrow it down further?"
Yaroslav's fingers fly across the keyboard, pulling up more detailed analysis. "Based on the hormone progression and the sensitivity of the sensors, it can't be that detailed. Just that conception occurred within the last three or so weeks."
The certainty settles in my bones with a weight that feels both terrifying and exhilarating. I'm going to be a father.
My phone feels heavy in my hand as I stare at Aria's number.
I should call her right now, should tell her what the data revealed, should hear her reaction to news that will change both our lives irrevocably.
But something stops me. Maybe it's the memory of how she looked when I put her in that car, the barely concealed hurt in her dark eyes when I treated her like a stranger.
Maybe it's the knowledge that this conversation can't happen over the phone, that news this significant deserves to be delivered face to face.
Or maybe it's the coward in me, the part that's terrified of her reaction. Will she be happy? Horrified? Will she see this child as a blessing or a curse, a miracle or a trap that binds her to a man whose world is built on darkness?
"Pakhan?" Yaroslav's voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. "Would you like me to delete this file?"