Vitali
I have never feared anything. Not blood, betrayal or bullets.
But this…this neat stack of legal bullshit staring back at me from the middle of my desk?
This terrifies me.
I drop into my chair and drag both hands through my hair, staring at the page where her signature curves, elegant and hopeful, like she didn’t know she’d be signing her way into my heart.
Like I didn’t know I’d be signing away mine.
All she wanted was a chance at studying. A life with possibilities. Purpose outside survival. She never asked for obsession or devotion or possession.
The door clicks open and Yury walks in. My uncle. My Pakhan. The man who forced me to breed an heir because he got itchy about lineage.
“Congratulations,” he says, slapping a hand onto my shoulder. “She’s perfect. And Charlotte, she is strong. You chose well.”
I nod once. My throat is too full to speak.
Yury notices the contract. Frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“This isn’t right,” I mutter.
He leans a hip on the edge of my desk, picking up the papers and flipping through them like he’s reading a grocery list.
“You know,” he says casually, “you could always renegotiate. Extend the contract. Make it two children. A boy and a girl. Daughters are good, but sons—” He shrugs. “You could say it’s tradition to keep going until you get a boy. Win-win”
I stare at him.
No. Not win-win. Not for her.
Yury sees the look in my eyes and sighs. “I’m just saying, if you want her to stay longer, this is the cleanest way, contractually.”
Stay longer.
As though there will ever be a version of my life where she is not in it.
“No,” I say.
Yury blinks. “No?”
“The contract was wrong,” I continue, each word sharpening. “From the very beginning.”
“You don’t make mistakes with this stuff, Vitali. You’re my most solid man. You’re just rattled. Watching a birth can be terrifying. It’s normal to feel a little disjointed,” he says gently. “It’s the adrenaline. It will settle—”
“It won’t,” I snap.
He studies me then. He lowers himself into the chair opposite mine and steeples his fingers thoughtfully.
“You want her,” he says finally. “Not as a surrogate. Not as a placeholder. As your wife. As your family.”
I don’t respond. I don’t need to. It wasn’t that long ago he was bringing Sophia back to his mountain fortress…
He nods slowly. “Then destroy it.”
My pulse slams into overdrive. “It’s not that simple. She agreed to this because she had nothing. I can’t take away her future because I’m selfish enough to want her in mine.”
Yury tilts his head. “You love her.”
I exhale. Slow. Shaking. “Yes.”
He smiles and it surprises me to see it’s warm. Proud even.
“When are you going to tell her?”
“That’s the problem,” I admit, sinking back into my chair. “She talks about studying. Traveling. Becoming something. I won’t trap her here.”
“And if she doesn’t want to leave? What if she became something today when she held her baby for the first time?” Yury asks.
I look down at the signature on the contract. The signature of the woman who changed everything I believed about control and emotion and the future.
“I don’t know what she wants,” I breathe. “Not anymore.”
“Then ask her,” he says simply.
He stands and pats my shoulder. “She loves you, son. That woman would go toe to toe with a bear if it meant you and the baby were safe.”
I close my eyes and breathe through the tightness in my chest. I want to believe him. But wanting isn’t knowing.
When I open them again, I’m alone. The contract sits between my hands, powerful and wrong.
The only honest future is the one she chooses.
I tear my gaze from the paper and force myself to stand. Because every second I’m here, in this office, is a second I’m not beside the two people who actually make me human.
When I reach the bedroom doorway, she’s awake, baby curled against her chest, her fingers stroking her tiny back. She looks up at me with a sleepy smile that hits like an arrow straight to the heart. She has been crying.
And right then, everything in me breaks.
The fear. The hesitation. The idea that she could ever be temporary.
I cross the room and drop to my knees beside the bed because there is only one place I belong now.
“I can’t do it,” I say, voice raw. “I can’t bear the thought of you leaving.
Of raising our baby without you. Of waking up and not seeing you every day.
Of not practicing Russian with you every lunch time.
Of not being inside you ever again.” The last one comes out on a whisper because I feel it in my bones even though I know it’s inappropriate to voice out loud at such a time.
Her breath freezes.
“I thought I could control this,” I admit. “Thought I could box up emotion and pretend this was a transaction. But the last nine months… you were the only reason I kept breathing. And now that she’s here—”
I reach out, my hand trembling as I touch my daughter’s tiny fist and watch her curl her fingers around mine.
“Now that she’s here, I know I’ll never survive losing either of you.”
Her eyes fill. A tear slides down her cheek.
I brush it away with my thumb, gentle and reverent.
“I want you,” I whisper. “Not because of an heir. Not because of duty. Because you are the life I want. The family I want. Forever.”
She exhales a sob that sounds like a release of months of fear.
Then she shifts, moving our baby between us so that she rests against my chest, her warmth sinking into my skin, her heartbeat syncing with mine.
Charlotte curls into my side, her hand on my heart.
“I don’t want to leave,” she says. “I don’t ever want this to be over.”
Relief punches through me so hard I close my eyes.
“What about your studies?” I ask.
She glances down at our baby, then back at me.
“This is my future. Right here. I’ve never felt more sure of anything in my life.”
I kiss her gently, slowly, taking my time to press everything I feel into the place where our lips meet.
“She needs a name,” Charlotte says when the kiss breaks and our foreheads touch.
“She already has one. She is strong and beautiful, just like her mom. Her name is Charlotte too, but we can call her Lottie for short, if that’s okay with you?”
She looks surprised, then taken aback, before she looks down at our snuggled baby and smiles. “Lottie,” she says, testing how the name feels. “It feels like it fits her.”