Chapter 18 – Anya
The sound hit me first—beeping monitors cutting through my consciousness like a metronome marking time I’d rather forget.
Then the antiseptic smell, sharp and clinical, the kind that clings to your clothes and follows you home.
The faint hum of machines keeping people alive filled the spaces between heartbeats.
Lev had fallen into a coma from shock shortly after arriving at the hospital, and I’d been sitting beside his hospital bed for so long that the plastic chair had molded itself to my body, every ache and protest from my spine a reminder that I refused to leave.
My hand gripped his bare fingers—when had someone removed his gloves?
—like they were the only thing anchoring me to sanity.
His hands. God, his hands. Without the black leather that had been his armor since childhood, they looked smaller somehow. More human. The scars from that long-ago fire were raised and angry, telling stories he’d never shared with anyone. Not even me.
My head was bowed, long waves falling forward to brush against the crisp white sheets. I’d been staring at those scars, memorizing every ridge and hollow, when I felt it—the subtle shift in his breathing, the flutter of his eyelashes against his cheeks.
Lev stirred. His eyes flickered open, unfocused at first, then sharpened as they found mine.
“How long?” His voice was barely a rasp, throat raw from the breathing tube they’d removed yesterday.
I whispered his name like a prayer answered, exhaling hard before I could manage the words. “A week.”
A week of hell. A week of wondering if he’d wake up at all. A week of Trev hovering like a guardian angel, Drew coordinating with doctors, Maxim pacing the hallways like a caged predator.
A week of me falling apart in slow motion.
***
It happened during the creative team’s weekly brief. Third week of Lev being in this sterile prison, third week of me pretending I could function while half my soul was trapped in a hospital bed.
I’d been standing at the head of our conference table, pointing at fabric swatches and talking about color palettes for the spring line, when the world tilted sideways. The room fell into silence as my face went pale—I could feel the blood draining from my cheeks like someone had opened a valve.
My stomach lurched, a wave of nausea so sudden and violent that I had to grip the edge of the table to stay upright. The sketches in front of me blurred, the voices of my team fading to white noise as everything inside me rebelled.
I abruptly stood, clutching my stomach as another wave hit. This one brought me to my knees.
“Ms. Antonov!” One of the junior designers half-rose from her chair, but it was Erin who moved first.
Erin, who’d been sitting quietly in the corner, taking notes with that eerie efficiency that should have comforted me but only made my skin crawl. She rushed forward, her pale eyes sharp with something that might have been concern but felt too calculated.
“That’s enough,” she announced to the room, her voice carrying more authority than a nineteen-year-old assistant should possess. “We’re leaving. Now.”
I wanted to protest, wanted to tell her I was fine, but another wave of dizziness hit, and I found myself leaning against her surprisingly strong frame.
“Call Eleanor,” I managed to whisper. “Or Irene. Someone—”
“I’ll handle everything,” Erin cut me off smoothly. “You just need to rest.”
***
I woke up to bright light overhead and a soft blanket tucked around me with hospital precision. The smell was different here—not the sharp antiseptic of Lev’s room, but something softer, more clinical but somehow warmer.
A nurse appeared in my line of vision, her smile kind but professional. Middle-aged, with laugh lines around her eyes and the sort of bedside manner that came from years of delivering both good news and bad.
“Congratulations,” she said, and my heart stopped. “You’re about six weeks along.”
I blinked. The words hit me like physical blows, each one landing somewhere vital.
A baby? Now?
My hand moved instinctively to my stomach, as if I could somehow feel the truth of what she was telling me.
Six weeks. That would make it…God, that would make it from our first night together.
The night Lev’s father died, when grief and desire had collided into something neither of us could control.
I reached for my phone automatically, needing to call someone, needing to share this impossible news, but my hand found only empty sheets.
“My phone,” I said, looking around frantically.
“Right here.” Erin appeared beside the bed like she’d been waiting for me to wake up. How long had she been sitting there? “The doctor asked that you rest. No stress, no excitement. This is a delicate time.”
My heart skipped—not in joy, not in fear, but suspended somewhere in between. Pregnant. I was pregnant while my husband lay injured in a hospital bed forty miles away, while assassins stalked our family, while everything in our world balanced on a knife’s edge.
Erin smiled, and there was something in that expression that made my skin crawl. “You’re glowing already. This is the best news, don’t you think?”
“I need to see Eleanor,” I said, ignoring her comment. “Or Irene. I need—”
“They’ll join you at your penthouse,” Erin interrupted smoothly. “I’ve already called them. They’re so excited for you.”
Something cold settled in my stomach—something that had nothing to do with morning sickness. No one had come to see me? Not Eleanor, who’d been like a sister? Not Irene, who’d been my best friend since childhood? They’d gotten news this huge and decided to wait until I got home?
It didn’t make sense.
But I didn’t have the strength to argue, didn’t have the energy to celebrate what should have been one of the happiest moments of my life. My thoughts kept drifting back to Lev lying in that hospital bed—the bandages, the machines, the quiet pain in his eyes when he tried to smile.
I wanted to be happy. I really did. But how could I be, when the man I loved was still fighting to heal? When every heartbeat of this tiny new life reminded me how close I’d come to losing him?
Erin helped me walk slowly to her car, one hand supporting my elbow like I was made of glass. The world felt fragile, like someone had turned down the saturation and everything existed in watercolors instead of reality.
“You need rest,” she said as she guided me toward the penthouse elevator. “I’ll fix something to eat.”
My legs felt like they belonged to someone else, each step requiring conscious effort.
When we reached the bedroom, I sank onto the mattress gratefully, the familiar smell of home—Lev’s cologne, my vanilla perfume, the faint scent of the lavender sachets I kept in our dresser—wrapping around me like a security blanket.
But even here, surrounded by everything that should have felt safe, I couldn’t shake the wrongness of it all.
I looked at my empty hands, at the space where my phone should have been. “Can I have my phone now?”
Erin nodded, already moving toward the kitchen. “It’s in my purse. Let me put something in the oven first, then I’ll grab it for you.”
The logical part of my brain accepted this. I was weak, probably dehydrated, definitely in shock. Food first, then communication. It made perfect sense.
But the part of my brain that had kept me alive through years in the Bratva’s shadow—the part that had learned to read danger in the tilt of a head or the pause before an answer—that part was screaming warnings I was too exhausted to heed.
I leaned back against the pillows, and my body finally gave up the fight it had been waging for weeks. Exhaustion hit like a physical weight, dragging my eyelids down despite my mind’s protests.
“Okay,” I murmured, and let my eyes drift closed.
Just for a moment. Just until she brought my phone.
Just until I could call Lev’s room and make sure he was still breathing.
But sleep, when it came, brought no peace.
My dreams were fragmented, filled with hospital corridors that stretched into infinity and the sound of Lev’s voice calling my name from somewhere I couldn’t reach.
I dreamed of babies with steel-gray eyes and tiny hands that gripped my fingers like anchors.
I dreamed of Sasha’s face, pale and frightened, her mouth moving in words I couldn’t hear.
I dreamed of white lilies and the smell of something medicinal, something wrong.
***
When I stirred again, the room was darker. Shadows stretched across the walls, and I could hear movement in the kitchen—the soft clink of dishes, the whisper of footsteps on tile.
My hand moved to my stomach again, still trying to process the reality growing there. Six weeks. A life created in grief and desperation, now existing in a world of violence and uncertainty.
What kind of mother brought a child into this? What kind of future was I offering someone so innocent, so unaware of the blood that stained their family name?
But then I thought of Lev’s hands—scarred but gentle when they touched me. I thought of his voice in the dark, promising me things neither of us believed but both of us needed to hear.
Maybe love was enough. Maybe love could build walls strong enough to keep the darkness out.
Or maybe I was just another woman in love with a dangerous man, making the same mistakes that had cost so many others everything.
The smell of cooking food drifted in from the kitchen, and my stomach responded with a hunger that surprised me. When was the last time I’d eaten? Really eaten, not just picked at meals, while worry gnawed at my insides?
“Erin?” I called out, my voice still rough from sleep.
“Almost ready,” came the reply. Sweet, helpful, efficient.
Too efficient.
I tried to shake off the feeling, tried to focus on the positive. I was pregnant. Against all odds, in the middle of all this chaos, life had found a way. And Lev was still breathing, still healing.
We were going to be a family.
If we survived long enough to see it happen.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it filled me with something I hadn’t felt in weeks—determination. This baby, this impossible gift, wasn’t going to grow up in a world where its parents lived in fear.
Whatever it took, whoever stood in our way, I was going to make sure my child inherited more than just the Antonov name.
They were going to inherit peace.
Even if I had to burn the whole world down to give it to them.