Chapter Twenty-Seven
Seven Months Later
The first contraction hit at three a.m.
I knew immediately what it was. There was no mistaking it—a deep, rolling pressure that began low and spread outward like a wave with nowhere to go. I lay still for a moment, breathing through it, counting the seconds until it passed.
Then I reached for Rodion.
He was already awake. I wasn’t sure he’d slept at all.
“Babe. I think it’s time,” I told him. “The baby’s coming.”
He was out of bed before I’d finished the sentence.
Within minutes, the estate transformed. Staff moved through the corridors with quiet urgency.
The medical team he’d had on standby for two weeks materialized from somewhere in the west wing, equipment already prepped, the private suite converted into something closer to a delivery room than a bedroom.
He stood by the door, barking orders while hiding his fear and anxiety. He crossed the room and took my hand, squeezing slightly against my fingers. “Don’t worry, you’re gonna be fine. And I’m not going anywhere.”
I nodded rapidly as my breathing came in labored gasps. The doctors and nurses took their positions, ready to help me come down safely.
My heart was racing in my chest as I fought against the negative thoughts forming in my mind.
Labor was long. Brutal. The kind of physical experience that strips everything else away and leaves only the most essential version of you—no strategy, no anger, no inherited conflict, no unanswered questions. Just the body doing what it was built to do, and the hours stretching out around it.
The pain was like nothing I’d ever felt, and so many times, I nearly passed out due to exhaustion. I could feel my vagina stretching out, and no matter how loudly I cried, nothing could soothe the pain.
Sweat dampened my skin, and the more I groaned, the more tightly I gripped Rodion’s fingers.
Rodion didn’t leave.
Not once.
He stood beside me the entire time, hand in mine, jaw tight. He didn’t say much. He never did. But every time I looked at him, he was looking back.
That was enough.
After hours of agonizing labor, the baby arrived at 11:47 in the morning.
The cry filled the room before I’d fully processed that it was over. Small and furious and absolutely certain of herself from the very first second.
I laughed. I don’t know why. Some collision of exhaustion and relief and something I didn’t have a name for yet.
The doctor placed the infant on my chest, and the whole world went quiet.
“It’s a girl,” he said, smiling.
She was warm. Impossibly small. Her eyes were tightly shut, her face scrunched in protest at the indignity of being born. A faint dark fuzz covered her head.
I pressed my lips to her forehead and couldn’t speak.
Rodion stood at the edge of the bed, looking at her the way I’d never seen him look at anything. The control was still there—it never fully left him—but beneath it, something had cracked open. Something he wasn’t trying to hide.
He reached out slowly, one finger grazing her tiny fist.
She grabbed it immediately.
He went completely still.
“Didn’t I tell you it was gonna be a girl?” My voice was weak and faint.
“I never doubted you,” he replied, kissing my forehead. “She’s so beautiful. Just like her mother.”
My heart was warmer than it had ever been.
I watched something cross his face—not a smile, exactly, but close. The closest I’d ever seen him come to being unguarded.
“I’m sure she’ll be just as strong too,” he added.
“Of course she will be.” My voice came out rough. “She’s your daughter. She’s a Tarasov.”
He looked at me, his lips curling into a charming smile.
“Elena,” I said. “I want to call her Elena.” A pause. “If that’s all right with you.”
He looked down at her, then back at me. “Elena Tarasova.”
“Yes.” I smiled, my cheeks still aching from all those hours of groaning and pushing.
A beat of silence.
“It suits her,” he said.
The room quieted. The medical team filtered out. The estate settled back into its particular hush.
Rodion placed Elena carefully in the bassinet beside the bed. He stood over her for a moment, watching her sleep, his expression making my chest ache in a way I hadn’t expected.
Then he turned to me.
“Thank you,” he said.
Just that. Two words. Quiet and direct.
No performance. No calculation behind it. Just a man saying the only true thing he had left to say at that moment.
My throat tightened. “Don’t make it weird, Tarasov.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “Too late.”
I lay there after he stepped out, Elena sleeping beside me, and let myself feel the full weight of everything at once.
Meridian Solutions. The surveillance. The café. The fake name. The office. The estate. The countdown. The wedding. The months in between.
All of it.
It all came down to this particular moment when my bundle of joy arrived.
Sitting in that quiet room with my daughter sleeping three feet away, I understood something I’d been resisting for a long time.
I found love, peace, safety, and happiness in the same man I once hated for ruining my life.
He came back an hour later with tea I hadn’t asked for and set it on the table beside me without comment.
I watched him settle into the chair beside the bassinet. His jacket was gone, sleeves rolled to the elbows, hair slightly out of place for the first time in recent memory. He looked, for once, like a man who had simply lived through something rather than managed it.
“Rodion.”
He looked up.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him.
He held my gaze for a long moment.
“I know,” he said, smiling.
Elena stirred softly in the bassinet. We both looked at her at the same time.
When I glanced back at him, he was already looking at me.
“I love you, Aria Tarasov,” he said, simply, as if it were the most natural thing he’d ever admitted.
I exhaled slowly, rising to my feet. “I love you too, Rodion Tarasov.” I pulled him to me. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“I’m afraid it already has.” He leaned, sealing my lips with a slow, passionate kiss.
“Careful now,” I whispered in his face. “You’re gonna make me wet.” I bit my lower lip. “And when I’m wet, we’ll end up making another baby.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what I want,” he teased, his nose brushing against mine.
“Well, I’m not spending another nine hours in a labor room any time soon,” I teased him, kissing his mouth and cheeks.
“It’s a good thing my pull-out game has improved.” His hands found the small of my back.
I laughed, throwing my head back. “I highly doubt that.”
“I can prove it to you,” he said, tucking my hair back behind my ear. “When you’re well rested and completely healed.”
“What a caring gentleman you are.”
I locked my arms around his neck and kissed his lips.