38. Wren
WREN
With all that happened the day before, I wasn’t surprised that Viktor and I stayed in bed for as long as we could. Honestly, with all that happened in the last two days, between that press conference and Smithson showing up, we could’ve taken a whole week to stay in bed and decompress.
But this wasn’t a normal, typical job I’d entered. This wasn’t some ordinary family I was joining.
This was the Volkov Bratva that I was siding with and committing to, and right now, with everything that was either falling apart or escalating, I didn’t have time to linger in bed.
Viktor’s phone had started going off early, and we both groaned to have to get up.
We showered together and got breakfast, but it wasn’t the same without Paul being around.
“We’ll go visit him first,” he decided after we had coffee and a quick breakfast.
Correction—he had coffee. I still couldn’t manage it. Since I’d been cutting back on it so much, I was getting withdrawal headaches. I guessed that the morning sickness and changes in my appetite meant that I would be going cold turkey on caffeine.
I’d adjust. Just like I’d adjust to Paul needing a while to recover before coming back to the house.
We went to the hospital to visit him, and I was very pleased that he was awake and looking not worse for wear.
He greeted us with a slight smile. “You killed him?” he asked as a hello.
I nodded. I wasn’t ready to talk about it at length, but I was sure that he’d been anxious to hear it from me. “I did.”
Mindful of the hospital setting, I glanced over my shoulder in case anyone could hear. Even though Smithson had blasted my name on the news and called me a liar, I wasn’t made. No one was looking for me. Not yet.
“He showed up so suddenly and I didn’t have a chance to protect you,” he admitted.
“No one could have. He came in like a madman, armed and ready to kill,” I said. “Besides, if you’re going to be more on light duty now with these injuries…” I sighed dramatically. “Well, there’s only one job I can think of that would suit you.”
Viktor nodded, standing behind me as I perched on the edge of Paul’s bed. “Babysitter?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Paul frowned, furrowing his brow, then his pulse kicked up on his vitals monitor. “A baby? You’ll have a baby in the house?”
We confirmed it, and he was excited to congratulate us both.
“It’ll be different when you come home,” Viktor told him. “I’m going to start renovations now.”
I peered at him. “Renovations?”
“For you,” he confirmed.
“Me? That’s nonsense. Your house is huge. There’s plenty of space for a nursery already.”
“For you,” he repeated. “I don’t want you to ever look at that spot where you were almost killed and remember it. I’m knocking out those stairs, adding on. Changing things up.”
I gawked at him, wondering if he was being sarcastic again. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I am.” He crossed his arms.
“I’ll get over the memories.”
He shook his head. “I won’t. And I want our home to only have the best memories to keep.”
I saw that I wasn’t going to get far arguing with him on that point, but it did excite me to hear him making grand plans for me to stay there permanently.
Of course, he’ll accommodate you.
You’re going to have a baby together.
We’ll live together.
I walked with him toward the maternity ward after we visited Paul.
We’ll live together even if he’s not ready to marry.
In the maternity ward, we met with a doctor who had cleared her morning to fit me into her schedule. The wait to get into a little room wasn’t that bad. But once we were in the small examination room, I struggled to get over the surreal feeling.
This was my life now.
I was going to be a mother.
I had transformed from being an investigative agent for the government to being an insider for the not-so-bad guys who wanted to also make the world better.
While I looked at the drawings and photos that made up the artwork in the room, all of them depicting expecting mothers, I accepted the complexity of my new identity.
This was who I was.
Viktor’s, however he was ready to label me.
The doctor was taking a while to come in, but I wasn’t nervous or anxious.
Viktor sat and wheeled closer to me so he could hold my hand.
“Three babies now,” he murmured before lifting my hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it.
“Triplets?” I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
He chuckled lightly, that sexy, raspy sound that was just so masculine. “No. I meant three as in Luka, Isabel, and our son or daughter.”
And Mila and Lev’s…
I wouldn’t betray her secret yet. She could tell the family when she wanted to.
“Does anyone else know yet?” I asked him.
He kissed the back of my hand again, like he’d never get enough of his lips on me. “Not yet. I wanted to share the news in person.”
I nodded. “That would be better.” I realized that I hadn’t even updated Elena or Carina. They’d both be happy for another baby in the family, but I wondered if this news could help distract Elena from the shock of finding Paul shot up and bleeding out in the foyer.
“We’ll head to the mansion after this appointment. Adrik will have crews handling this incident, and I’m sure he’ll have more updates for us.”
I hoped so. Even though I could rest easier with Smithson dead and no longer trying to kill me, I couldn’t shrug off this feeling that it was only one part of what I’d want closure on.
We still didn’t know who had placed the hit on him, and presumably on Adrik.
We had yet to find out who the intermediary was between Smithson and Gregori.
And it would’ve been nice to have gotten his testimony somehow to know all that he’d done for the sake of an easy paycheck from the wrong family.
When the doctor and technician came into the room, they were polite and efficient. She was also Carina’s and Elena’s doctor, and I bet that Mila would join as another client shortly too.
I had a due date and an ultrasound strip of what looked like a tiny bean.
But it was the date that almost had me tearing up.
“What’s wrong?” Viktor asked as he walked me to the car waiting outside, guards following us as the expected security detail.
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that this is my mom’s birthday, too.”
He kissed the top of my head, not getting sarcastic about how sentimental I was. “I’m glad you will all have each other. You, Elena, Carina. Even Mila, too. You all support each other so naturally already.”
I sighed happily. “We do.”
“Perhaps because none of you have your mothers or families anymore.”
That was a sadder outlook on it, but I saw how he’d come to that conclusion.
Elena didn’t have her mother, and her father had given her to Adrik to avoid paying for his mistakes.
Carina’s parents had been killed near the border so when her brother had arranged for her to marry Maksim, she had no one there at the wedding.
Lev bought Mila as a slave, and she had lost ties with her parents when they sold her to the Cartel for the money they wanted for a quick hit.
And then there’s me.
I never met my father, who was a detective, and my mother, a cop, had been killed in the line of duty.
In the backseat with Viktor as we were driven to the mansion, I frowned at him and considered how they all could afford to be so optimistic about a new generation to usher in.
“Hopefully, all of our children will never have to suffer from not having a solid family and home,” I said.
“All of our children?” he teased lightly. “Are you saying you do have more than one in there?” He put his hand on my belly as he used his other arm to drape it over my shoulders and urge me to lean on him.
“Funny,” I quipped wryly.
He sighed. “It was worth a try,” he said sadly. He kissed the top of my head, keeping his hand over my stomach as he stroked his fingertips back and forth lightly. “And I don’t need to hope that all the children that we’re welcoming into the family will suffer from losses like all you women have.”
I frowned, realizing how one-sided that sounded. “Like all you men have, too. Your grandparents, your mother and aunt, your father soon.”
“Too bad my uncle couldn’t have stayed lost too,” he groused. “But I know they won’t suffer that same fate of having no one. Like you did after your mother died.”
I frowned, praying that my child would never be homeless with no parents or adults in the world.
“We will always be there for them. All of us. No one—not even Gregori—will break our family apart.”
He tipped my chin up so he could plant a kiss on my lips.
Sealing the promise with love.
But as he sat back and watched me with all that love shining in his warm, brown eyes, I wondered what was holding him back from extending that deep bond to me.
I wasn’t going to be family by blood…
Will he ever choose to make me family any other way?
I turned, watching him as he stared at the scenery blurring by on the ride from the hospital to the mansion out in the desert.
Will you ever want to take it further with me?
And see me as your wife?
Because as I studied his lean profile, his long hair down and loose over his shoulders, I knew that I would be completely content to be able to call him my husband. My man.
Once my kidnapper but now the one I couldn’t imagine living without.
He had kidnapped my heart, too, and I wanted to believe that I’d captured his in some sense of the word as well.
Glancing down at me, he smiled and rubbed his hand over my stomach.
“You okay?” he asked, always concerned about me.
I nodded. “Yes, I am.”
It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t a whole truth.
I would be more than okay if I could know without a doubt that he’d choose me to be his family, a family of just the two of us until our baby was born.