12. Anton
ANTON
She wobbles on her feet, caught between running from me, hitting me, or folding onto the floor. I move fast and catch her before she can drop. One second, she’s all nerves and fight. The next, her weight gives way into me.
I take the gun and set it aside, get a hand around her arms before she hits the floor, and lower her into the chair by the table. Her head falls against my chest for half a second before she jerks it back up. She’s shaking. Her hands are cold enough to push my temper another notch higher.
I cross to the sink, fill a cup with warm tap water, and bring it back. I touch the rim to her mouth first. “Drink.”
She takes a little, then turns her face away when I splash some over her throat and the side of her neck.
A few drops darken her coat. I pull the curtain back just enough to let light into the room while keeping the apartment covered from the street.
When I turn back, she’s staring at me, vexed and proud, like she hates that I’ve seen her off balance at all.
“Why are you here?” she asks, her voice rough.
I brace one hand on the table and lean down into her space. “You can start with why you ran from Prague.” She turns her face away.
I catch her jaw between my fingers and turn her back to me. “Answer me,” I say. My voice stays low.
Her grey-blue eyes flash up at me, cold now, hard. “You broke into my apartment to ask questions?”
“I had my reasons.” I let her go, then watch the faint marks my fingers leave on her naturally pale skin. I drag my gaze from her face to her coat, to the bag still hanging from one shoulder. “What did you take from your family?”
“Nothing that belongs to you.”
“Wrong answer.” I plant a foot beside her chair and bend, bringing my face close to her, holding her eyes on mine.
“I could kill you,” she snaps, eyes bright and furious.
“With that?” I snort. “Yeah, you looked like a real assassin there.”
She tries to push up fast and slip past me. I catch her wrist and shove her back down. Anger hits her face at once.
“Let go.” Her beautiful mouth pulls tight, and that only makes it worse.
“Who’s hunting you?” I ask.
“You tell me. You seem to enjoy following,” she spits.
A humorless smile pulls at my mouth. “That’s rich coming from a woman who’s made running her specialty and acts offended when she’s found.”
Her free hand snatches the nearest stack of papers from the table and throws them at my chest. Pages slap my shirt, burst across my arms, and spin onto the floor between us.
She goes for the gap she created. I catch her again, one arm locking around her waist this time, and drag her back against me while the last sheets settle.
It knocks the breath out of both of us for a second.
She jerks against my grip, furious, breaths coming fast, hair half fallen loose around her face. My body answers before my head does. Anger. Heat. The sharp, filthy urge to turn her toward me and kiss her until she stops fighting long enough to remember exactly whose hands she’s in.
I almost do it. Then my eyes catch on the papers scattered across the floor between us, white sheets, bent corners, her handwriting, freight notes, and one page near the center that pulls me up short. A clinic prescription, her name on it.
I bend to pick it up, but she follows my gaze and drops fast, shoving into me as she tries to grab the paper off the floor.
But I’m bigger, faster, and already there.
My hand lands on the top page before hers does.
She makes a raw, furious sound and grabs for it.
I hold her back with one forearm and look down.
It’s an ultrasound report with dating notation, a single, viable fetus. My eyes skim the rest of the page. Bloodwork, vitamins, iron, folate, and instructions for rest. My head comes up slowly, and I look back at Sofiya.
“What’s this?” I ask, and my voice is so soft it’s almost a whisper.
She’s three feet away now, chest rising hard, face drained white, eyes lit with the kind of fear and anger I’ve seen in people right before they either lie better or break clean in half.
“It’s mine.” She lunges for it.
I shove her back and keep the paper in my hand. “How far along?” I ask it quietly.
Her mouth parts, but nothing comes out.
I take a step toward her. “How far?”
She shakes her head once, furious. “Give that back.”
I don’t look at the paper again. I’m looking at her. “Answer me.”
“This is none of your business.”
I close the distance. She backs up and hits the edge of the table with the backs of her thighs. That stops her. Now she has nowhere to go unless she plans to come through me.
“None of my business,” I repeat, my tone rough and wild. “A pregnancy report falls into my hand, the dates line up with Prague, and you think you still get to say that to me?”
Her chin comes up, brave and shaking at once. “You don’t get to storm in here and decide what belongs to you.”
I look at her for a long second. “You’re standing there white as a sheet with your cousin hunting you down, hiding clinic papers behind your back, and that’s the line you want to use?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she says, though her voice shakes and her lower lip trembles. I could kiss her or shake her, but I hold off.
“Then why are you running?” I take a step toward her. “Why are you hiding that paper?”
“Because you’ll claim me and my baby.” The words jump out of her.
Hearing her say it out loud makes something settle in me. I close my eyes, breathe in for three, out for two. Then, I open them and fix them on her.
I look formidable enough that her throat wobbles visibly. “That’s exactly what I get to do when blood may be involved.” I fold the paper once and slide it into my coat pocket.
Her eyes flash immediately. “Don’t talk about me like I’m territory you control.”
I bend until we’re at eye level and cup her chin in the palm of my hand. “You’re carrying a child that may be mine, and you’re running across Europe with Leonidov men on your back.” I pause to let that sink in. Then I add, “That makes you my concern, whether you like the phrasing or not.”
Her hand flies up, but I catch her wrist and pin it flat to the table. Tears spring into her eyes at once, and I hate that she looks so sweet and vulnerable and stupid at the same time. She’s driving me insane.
“Let me go, you bastard.”
I shake her slightly. “Answer me first.”
She pulls against my grip. I tighten it until she stops fighting the hold and starts glaring instead.
“How far along?”
Her eyes shine. “I hate you.”
I lean closer. “That’s not a number.”
“Go to hell.”
I lift the ultrasound sheet between us. “You can tell me now, or you can wait until your family pulls it out of you and kills the child growing there. Pick which version you prefer.”
Her whole face shifts. Fury hits first. Then hurt, open enough to cut. Then the truth settles in behind it. She knows I’m right. She hates that I’m the one saying it.
Her voice comes out torn. “How dare you.”
“Sofiya,” I say, breath tight, “you can keep fighting the words. It doesn’t change what this is.”
“You think I don’t know what they’d do?” she shouts. “You think I haven’t thought about that every second since the doctor said it out loud?”
I let go of her wrist. She stands there rubbing the skin I caught, tears slipping free now, and she doesn’t try to hide them. She turns her face away and wipes at it once, angry at herself for letting me see. All at once, she looks younger and worn down, and something in me shifts with it.
“How far?” I ask again, quieter this time.
Her shoulders shake once. “Seven weeks,” she says.
“Is it mine?” My voice comes out flat and deadly serious.
She laughs, broken and harsh. “Who else do you think there’s been?”
“Say it.” I press her back against the wall, my face inches from hers.
Her eyes cut up to mine. Grey-blue, wet, furious, humiliated, and still sharp enough to cut. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, it’s yours.”
Everything inside me shifts at once. Claim.
Protection. Blood. Threat. Future. Every dark instinct I have reaches for the same answer.
Mine. I drag a hand over my face and turn away for a second because if I keep looking at her right then, I’ll either put my fist through the wall or pull her against my chest and never let her go again.
When I turn back, she’s still watching me. My eyes drop to her mouth, then lower to the line of her throat and the soft rise of her breasts under the shirt. She is maddeningly beautiful.
“Who else knows?” I ask, getting hold of myself again.
She shakes her head. “No one.”
“The doctor?”
“She knows I’m pregnant, not who I am.”
I nod, stack the papers neatly, and slide them into the folder to buy myself three seconds of control. When I look up again, she’s still standing by the table with both hands braced on the edge, tears dried, a lock of hair stuck to her forehead.
Something in my chest pulls hard. “You should’ve told me,” I say quietly.
She lets out a rough sound that lands between a laugh and a sob. “When? By post?”
I step in close enough that she has to tip her head back to keep looking at me. “The second you knew.”
“The second I knew, I was alone.”
Then I plant both hands on the table, boxing her in without touching her. If I touch her now, I won’t keep hold of myself.
“You listen to me now,” I say with no humor in my voice.
“Leonidov men are hunting you. Maks wants whatever you took, and if he gets his hands on you before I do, he’ll pull the truth out one way or another.
That child becomes leverage the second they confirm it.
You know that. I know it. So this part is over. ”
Her eyes shine with fresh tears she hates me for seeing. “I’m not your puppet.”
I hold her gaze and say it cleanly. “You’re coming with me, Sofiya, whether you agree or not.”