Chapter 32
LYRA
“Sit down.”
“Stop telling me to sit down, Julian. I’m not a dog or one of your soldiers or whatever the hell it is you call them. And I’m not going to—”
He raises a brow. I hate how he can so easily silence me with just a single expression.
“You were barefoot in a ball gown, trying to sneak out of the hospital. And do what? Run off into the night? Take a Greyhound to Louisiana? I doubt you’d even thought that far. You don’t get to lecture me on what’s reasonable right now.”
I’m standing in the middle of his living room, my midnight-blue dress now rumpled, shoes still in hand and a secret in my belly—a secret that’s about to change everything. A secret that I can’t keep for much longer, even though I only just learned about it myself.
I place my hand on my belly again, watching Julian pace. I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s always so together, so calm. He moves with deliberate purpose.
But right now, he’s walking the length of the room, like a caged animal, past the floor-to-ceiling windows, the fury coming off of him so intense that I can practically feel it, as if I were standing next to a heat lamp.
“You said you needed to talk. So talk.”
“Can you stop moving first?”
He stops and faces me. His hands are at his sides, fingers flexing. The vein at his temple is pulsing.
“I’m listening,” he says.
“You’re not listening. You’re standing there waiting to react. There’s a difference.”
My words hit the mark, and I can see him relax a bit. He takes a slow, deep breath—controlled and steady. It’s the kind of breath a man takes when he was two seconds away from putting his fist through a wall but thought better of it.
He goes over to the couch and sits on the armrest. Then he folds his hands and waits.
I look at him. This impossible, terrifying, beautiful man.
I could lie. I could go to bed, then try to leave when he’s sleeping.
Because I know when I tell him the truth, it’ll put a process into motion that I won’t be able to stop. The protectiveness he feels towards me would be a speck compared to what he would feel for a child—his child.
But as I look into those gunmetal-gray eyes, I know that there’s no keeping it from him. I can’t hide it for another second.
“I’m pregnant.”
Silence.
Julian doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. Shock appears on his face for just an instant before the stoicism returns. Calculations flash behind his eyes, the same sort of strategizing I’ve seen him do dozens of times.
“How long.” His voice is quiet, stripped of emotion. He’s in fact-finding mode.
“Six weeks.”
He glances away, doing the math. I watch him arrive at the same night I did, with the fairy lights in the apartment in Astoria, his body on mine. He closes his eyes for a long moment. When he opens them again, his gaze travels to where my hand rests on my stomach, the intensity nearly scaring me.
“That’s why you were running.”
“I wasn’t running.”
“You were barefoot in a ball gown, rushing into an elevator without telling me where you were going. That’s running, Lyra.”
Part of me wants to keep arguing, but I don’t.
“Fine. I was running.” My voice cracks as I speak, and I hate it. I need to be strong for this conversation, but I already feel weak and scared.
“Why.”
“Are you kidding? I was running because someone tried to kill us tonight. Again. I learned I was pregnant during the exam. I needed some time to think it over, to process and figure things out…” My voice trails off.
“To figure out whether or not you wanted to tell me.”
“No,” I say too quickly. “Not that.”
“Then what.”
The tears come. Goddammit.
“Because… because I don’t want to raise my child in a war zone, Julian. I won’t do it. I won’t bring a baby into a world where drive-by shootings happen at charity events, and I have to worry about someone running me off the road.”
He stands and starts toward me. I put my hand up to stop him.
“Please. Don’t. I need to finish.”
He halts.
“I’m scared as hell of carrying your baby, but goddammit, I care for you. I have no idea what to do. And yeah, part of me considered getting on a bus or a plane and leaving.”
“I would find you.”
“I know.”
His words make me feel comforted and trapped all at once.
“But I’m scared. Don’t you get that? Can you get that? Living in this world means I have to worry not only about my life, but your life, and now an innocent child’s life. Do you think I want that?”
He stands very still, his expression calm and even. I get the sense it’s taking all of the restraint he has not to let whatever it is he’s feeling come out in a wild rush.
“You won’t raise my child alone,” he says. “That is not an option, Lyra. That will never be an option.”
“Julian—”
“If you think I’ll let you disappear with my heir—” His voice hardens. The criminal boss, the man who breaks bones and leads empires, the one who has never been told no by anyone who didn’t regret it, resurfaces. “You don’t know me at all.”
The words land like a slap. I flinch and he sees it. He instantly softens.
It’s as if he’s so used to putting force behind his words—commanding and demanding—to get what he wants, that he didn’t consider how it would affect someone like me, someone who’s not an underling nor a rival, not an executive sweating in his office.
I’m different. I’m the woman he cares for deeply and the mother of his child.
There’s a small flicker in his eyes that makes it clear he just realized that, perhaps for the first time in his life, he’s out of his element and has no idea what to do.
He slowly steps closer. I stand firm and raise my chin, filled with a confidence I didn’t expect.
And then something shocking happens, something that I will remember for the rest of my life.
Julian Volkov sinks to his knees.
It’s as if something bigger than his pride, power or need for control has taken hold of him as he’s on his knees on the hardwood floor of his penthouse. His hands find my hips, and he presses his forehead against my stomach, breathing slowly.
He slides his arms around my lower back, pulling me closer. I can feel the warmth of his breath through the silk dress. He’s trembling a little, like the news that I’ve just given him is almost too much to take.
“Julian.” I run my hands through his soft salt-and-pepper hair.
“I don’t—” His voice cracks and he stops. The sound of Julian Volkov’s voice breaking is shocking. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be this. I know how to run an empire. I know how to fight a war. But this…”
He pulls back and looks at me. His eyes are damp.
This man on his knees isn’t the CEO or the Bratva leader who commands rooms with a single word. It’s the boy who lost his mother at ten and never learned how to love without expecting it to be taken away.
He blinks, and the wetness in his eyes vanishes, the fierce protector returning.
“I will protect you,” he says. “Both of you. With everything I have and with everything I am. But I need you to stay, Lyra. I need you to give me time. I’m this close—” He holds up his hand, thumb and forefinger nearly touching.
“This close to ending the war. The council is days away. If I can secure Yang’s support, Dobrov loses his leverage and Alexander loses his platform.
It will be over, and I can build a world that’s safe enough to bring a child into. ”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then I’ll burn it all down and start over. But I need time. Days. Not weeks, not months. Days.”
I look down at this man on his knees, asking me for something he’s never asked of anyone.
Patience.
“Ethan stays with me,” I tell him. “At all times.”
“Absolutely.”
“And I keep working. The foundation, the events, all of it. I’m not going to stay in this penthouse like a prisoner.”
“You’re not a prisoner. You’re the mother of my child, and if you want to work, you’ll work. But Ethan will be at your side at all times.”
“And I want to be kept in the loop. No secrets. No plotting behind my back. If something’s going on and it involves me, involves our child, I want to know about it.”
"Agreed."
"Okay, then I'll stay."
He exhales sharply. I hold him there with my fingers in his hair and the city glittering behind us.
I’m doubtful yet hopeful, terrified yet excited. All emotions at once, occupying the same space.
But I’m staying.
And for now, that's enough.