31. Sofia
SOFIA
Pregnant.
The word stays with me after the doctor leaves the room.
It doesn’t become less strange with repetition. It doesn’t become easier because Dr. Morozova says it calmly, because Mikhail stands outside the clinic door like a polite wall, because the house keeps moving above us as if my body has not just turned into the center of a disaster.
I sit on the edge of the examination bed with one hand on my abdomen.
There is nothing to feel. I don’t see any signs. There’s no change in me, no proof yet. Just skin, breath, fear, and a truth so new I don’t know where to put it.
Our baby.
I press my palm a little harder over my stomach, then stop because that feels ridiculous too. What am I trying to do? Hold it in place? Apologize to it? Promise it something when I have no idea what my own life looks like tomorrow?
The doctor says it’s early. Very early. She wants blood work. She wants to repeat tests. She wants me to eat better, sleep, avoid stress, and call her if I have pain or bleeding.
Avoid stress. I almost laugh when she says that.
Instead, I nod like a reasonable woman.
Mikhail comes in after she leaves and tells me Damir had to go because something urgent came up. He says it carefully, with that grave second-in-command face that makes every sentence sound like it has been approved for public release.
“He asked me to stay,” Mikhail says.
“That was kind of him.”
His eyes move over my face. He hears the bite in my voice. “He would not have left unless it mattered.”
I nod. I even believe him. That doesn’t make it feel better.
“Do you want anything?” he asks.
A different life almost comes out of my mouth.
“No,” I say instead. “I’m fine.”
Mikhail clearly doesn’t believe me, but he’s smart enough not to argue with a woman who has just been examined, lied to by her own body, and abandoned by the man who promised he was not abandoning her.
He gives me his phone when I ask to call Anya.
I don’t call. I stare at the screen until it goes dark, then give it back.
By the time I leave the clinic, my legs feel steady, which is unfair because the rest of me does not. Mikhail walks beside me without crowding me. He doesn’t ask what the doctor said. I don’t offer.
The whispers I heard before come back to haunt me.
She was gone for three days.
What was she doing there?
Damir is not thinking clearly.
Maybe he wants to save her because he could not save Elena.
I keep walking. My hand goes to my stomach before I can stop it.
If they knew, what would they say then? That I trapped him? That this is one more complication in a house already full of them?
The thought turns my stomach.
Mikhail notices the movement. “Are you dizzy?”
“No.”
“Sofia.”
“I said no.”
He stops pushing at once.
I don’t go back to my room. I go to the music room.
The piano is still there, clean and black and unreasonable.
Morning light has shifted across the floor, and the room is quiet except for the faint movement of guards somewhere down the hall.
I stand in the doorway for a moment, then walk to the bench and sit.
I press one key.
The sound is wrong only because I don’t know what I am doing.
I press another. Worse.
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It comes out too small and close to breaking, so I press more keys until the noise becomes enough to distract me from everything else.
“Okay,” I whisper, not sure whether I’m speaking to myself or the tiny impossible thing inside me. “Okay.”
The door opens behind me. I know it’s Damir before he speaks.
The room changes when he enters. It always does. Not because of magic. Because everyone in this house has learned to measure the air around him, and apparently I have too.
I keep my fingers on the keys. “Where were you?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer immediately.
I turn my head. Damir stands near the doorway in his black shirt and trousers, no coat, face unreadable. His knuckles are bruised again, though not badly. There is no blood on him that I can see. His hair is slightly disordered, like he has run a hand through it more than once.
That tells me more than his silence.
“You left the clinic,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Where did you go?”
His eyes hold mine. “I had to deal with something.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
My chest tightens. At least he admits it.
I look back at the piano. “You said we would talk.”
“We will.”
“When? Between disappearances?”
He comes farther into the room. “Sofia.”
I press three keys at once. The sound is ugly.
“Careful,” I say. “I’m armed with music now.”
He stops beside the piano. For a second, I think he might smile.
He doesn’t. He looks tired, but not weak. Never weak. Tired in a way I haven’t seen before, as if whatever happened after he left took something from him he hadn’t planned to spend.
“What did the doctor say?” he asks.
My fingers freeze on the keys.
There it is. The question I knew was coming.
The room feels too quiet.
“She said I’m fine,” I lie.
I look at him. The rest of the truth sits behind my teeth and refuses to become sound.
His expression changes. Not much. Enough. His attention sharpens, and I know he sees the fear because Damir sees everything when I least want him to.
“What happened?” he asks.
I turn back to the piano and press another key. “I don’t know how to play this thing.”
“I know.”
“You bought it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“I was joking when I said I knew piano.”
“I know.”
“That was a stupid thing to do.”
“Buying it?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
I glance up at him. “You are impossible.”
“You already told me.”
“I’ll keep telling you until it fixes something.”
He moves to the bench and sits beside me. The bench isn’t large enough for a man his size and my need to keep distance from him. But he sits carefully, leaving whatever space he can. His thigh still brushes mine. Heat moves through me immediately, annoying and familiar.
“Play,” he says.
“I just told you I can’t.”
“Then play awfully, I don’t care. I just want to hear you.”
I stare at him. “That is a terrible instruction.”
“It seems to be what you were doing before I came in.”
I hit his arm. He catches my hand before I can pull it back with enough pressure.
My breath catches anyway, because his thumb moves over the black thread around my finger. His father’s ring still hangs there, too big and too heavy for my hand, tied like a claim, like a question, like something neither of us knows how to remove.
He releases me and places his hand over mine on the keys. “Here,” he says.
“You know piano?”
“A little.”
“I should have known,” I mutter under my breath.
“What was that?”
I ignore him.
He presses my finger down on one key, then another. The sound is simple, not exactly music, but close enough that I can pretend. Then he guides another finger, and I follow because it’s easier than talking for three seconds.
I am pregnant.
The thought hits again, hitting somewhere deep this time because his hand is over mine. My throat tightens, and the note dies under my finger.
He looks at me. “Sofia.”
I pull my hand away. He lets me.
I stand because sitting next to him suddenly feels impossible. My body is too full of news. My chest is too tight. If I wait, I will lose my nerve.
“There’s something else,” I say.
He stands too, slowly. “Tell me.”
I look at his face. It’s controlled and unreadable. Beautiful in a way I still resent because no man this aggravating should also look like that.
“I’m pregnant.”
For a moment, nothing happens. Damir doesn’t speak. He doesn’t react either, just keeps looking at me. The silence stretches too long.
My hand goes to my stomach before I can stop it, and his gaze drops there. Something crosses his face. It isn’t anger, but not happiness either.
Shock, maybe. Fear. Something closed and hard that I don’t know how to read.
I wait. He says nothing.
“Damir?”
His eyes lift to mine. Whatever was there is gone now, locked behind that cold expression I hate.
He turns and walks out. Just like that. He leaves the music room, and the door stays open behind him. I stand beside the piano, one hand still on my stomach, and listen to his footsteps move down the hall.
Then farther.
Then gone.
I walk to the doorway. Damir is already at the end of the corridor.
He doesn’t look back.
For one second, I almost call his name. Then I remember Irina’s voice through the sitting room door.
You’ve known her what, a month?
What was she doing there?
Damir is not thinking clearly with her.
Maybe they’re right.
My vision blurs, and I blink hard until it clears because I refuse to cry or fall apart.
“It’s okay, baby,” I whisper.
The word baby breaks something in me, but I keep my hand steady over my abdomen.
“You and I are going to be okay.”