36. Yaromir
YAROMIR
I take Anya back to the hospital myself.
She’s pale by the time we reach the emergency entrance, though she tries to hide it. Her head rests against my shoulder, one hand curled weakly into my shirt. The hospital staff sees the blood on both of us and moves fast. Too fast. Hands reach for her, voices overlap, a stretcher appears.
I don’t want to let her go. For one irrational second, my arms tighten around her.
Anya notices. Her eyes lift to mine. “Yaromir.”
“I’m here.”
“I know.”
The words settle me enough to place her carefully on the stretcher.
The second she’s out of my arms, the cold comes back. A doctor starts asking questions. A nurse checks her bandage. Someone tries to look at the wound in my side, and I push his hand away.
“Her first,” I say.
The doctor opens his mouth, sees my face, and chooses wisely.
They wheel her into a treatment room. I follow until a nurse blocks me. “Sir, you need to wait outside.”
“No.”
She looks terrified, but she still stands there. Brave woman.
Anya turns her head on the stretcher. “Let them check me.”
I look at her. Her face is too pale. Her lips are dry. There are shadows under her eyes. She dragged herself out of a hospital bed with a bullet wound in her side because she thought I was about to become something I couldn’t come back from.
She came to save me.
Not from a gun. From myself.
That thought is worse than any wound Dmitri gave me.
“Please,” she says.
So I stop. Barely.
The door closes between us, and for a few seconds I stand there staring at the wood like I can force it to open by will alone.
Viktor stands beside me. He looks almost as bad as I feel. His coat is torn. There’s dried blood near his collar, though I don’t know if it’s his. His face is drawn with exhaustion, and for once, he doesn’t bother pretending he’s fine.
“You found her,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “You can punish me as you see fit.”
I look at him then. He doesn’t flinch, but something in his face shifts. He expects anger. Maybe he deserves some. Maybe I do too. There’s enough blame tonight to feed the whole city.
Instead, I say, “Thank you.”
Viktor goes still.
I don’t think I’ve ever said those words to him.
He looks away first. “I did what needed to be done.”
“You brought her to me.”
“She brought herself. I only pushed the chair.”
Despite everything, a rough breath leaves me. Almost a laugh. Almost pain.
Viktor’s mouth moves faintly, then settles again. “She knew you wouldn’t stop,” he says.
“I know.”
“She was afraid for you.”
I look at the closed door. My wife is inside that room because she refused to let me drown in grief. She had every reason to stay in that hospital bed, every right to let me burn my way through the Volkov house and call it justice.
Instead, she came.
She called my name. And I stopped.
The realization sits heavily in my chest.
A doctor comes out twenty minutes later. He’s older, serious, and smart enough to address me plainly. “She’s stable,” he says.
My lungs work again.
“The wound reopened slightly from movement, but not badly. We’ve cleaned and dressed it again. She needs rest. Actual rest. No more leaving the hospital.” His tone grows stricter at the last sentence.
Viktor looks at the floor.
I ignore him.
“She will recover?” I ask.
“Yes. She was extremely lucky. The bullet passed through soft tissue. No major organ damage. We’ll monitor for infection and complications from the water exposure, but at the moment, her condition is stable. The baby is fine too.”
My voice comes slowly. “What baby?”
His eyes flick toward the treatment room. “Your wife is pregnant.”
The hall disappears.
Not completely. I still hear footsteps. A monitor beeping somewhere. A nurse speaking quietly behind a curtain. But all of it moves far away.
Pregnant.
Anya is pregnant.
My child.
My hand closes around the edge of the nearest chair, hard enough that the metal bends slightly under my fingers.
“How far?” I ask.
“Very early. She told us she had just found out.”
A cold, violent fear moves through me so quickly I almost stagger.
“Are you sure the baby is okay
The doctor nods. “For now, yes. There are always risks this early, especially after trauma, but the initial checks are reassuring. She needs rest, hydration, monitoring, and no stress.”
I almost laugh. The sound would be ugly, so I don’t.
“Can I see her?”
“Yes. But keep it brief.”
I step past him before he finishes.
Anya is lying in bed, propped slightly against pillows. Her hair is loose around her face. The hospital gown makes her look smaller than she is, and I hate it. I hate the white sheets, the IV, the bandage hidden beneath the blanket, the fact that this room smells like antiseptic instead of her.
She looks at me the moment I enter. She knows.
“He told you,” she says.
I close the door behind me.
For a few seconds, I can’t speak. I walk to the bed and sit carefully on the edge, afraid of jostling her. Afraid of touching her wrong. Afraid of my own hands, which have killed men tonight and now don’t know how to rest on something so fragile.
Her eyes follow mine as they drop to her stomach.
There’s nothing to see.
Nothing has changed.
Everything has changed.
“You’re pregnant,” I say.
“I was going to tell you when you came home.”
I nod once because I believe her.
That’s the terrible thing. I believe her completely, and it makes the fear worse. This woman holds every piece of my heart.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
I look at her. “No.”
Her eyes fill. “I left the house. I should have told you. I should have trusted you.”
“Yes,” I say.
She flinches.
I hate that too, but I will not lie to her.
“You should have trusted me,” I continue. “And I should have made my house feel less like a prison.”
Her tears spill then. Quietly.
She looks away, but I catch her face gently and turn it back to me.
“Don’t hide from me, baby.”
“I was scared,” she says. “Of Dmitri. Of my father dying. Of telling you about the baby. Of what you would do.”
“I know.”
“And then I heard you were going to the Volkov house, and I thought…” Her voice breaks. “I thought if I didn’t come, you would disappear into it. Not die, maybe. Something worse.”
My thumb moves over her cheek.
She knows me too well.
“You stopped me.”
Her hand tightens over mine. “Good.”
A sound leaves me, low and uneven.
Then her eyes search mine. “Are you angry?”
“Yes.”
She closes her eyes.
I lean closer. “I’m angry that you were hurt. I’m angry that you went alone. I’m angry that for several hours I thought the only part of you left to me was a ring in my pocket.”
Her eyes open again.
I take her hand and bring it to my chest, over the pocket where I still carry the ring.
“But I’m not angry that you are alive,” I say. “I’m not angry that you came back to me.”
Her lips part.
“I love you,” I say.
The words come out rough. Unpolished. Almost unwilling.
But true.
Anya goes completely still.
I have said many things in my life that changed rooms. Orders. Threats. Verdicts. This is different. This changes me.
Her tears fall faster. “You do?”
I almost frown. “Yes.”
She laughs through the tears, a small broken sound. “You sound offended.”
“I am. You seem surprised.”
“I thought…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what I thought.”
“I know what I thought.”
“What?”
“That I would rather tear down a city than live in one without you.”
Her face crumples.
I kiss her before she can apologize again. Not hard. Not desperate. Just my mouth on hers, careful because she is hurt, and because for once I don’t want to take anything. I want to give her something solid enough to hold.
When I pull back, she touches my scar. “I love you too,” she whispers.
Everything in me goes quiet.
I press my forehead to hers, and for a moment, neither of us speaks.
I let myself have it.
One minute. Only one.
Her breathing. Her hand over mine. The knowledge that she’s alive, that the baby is alive, that love has come into my life in the least gentle way possible and still, somehow, arrived.
Then the minute ends.
Because there’s still one thing left.
I stand.
Anya grips my hand immediately. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll leave men at the door. No one enters unless you approve it. Not doctors without identification. Not police. Not family.”
“Yaromir.”
I bend and kiss her hand. “Viktor stays here too.”
“No. Where are you going?”
I look at her.
She sees enough in my face to go pale.
“There’s one last thing I have to do.”
“What?”
I don’t answer.
Her fingers tighten around mine. “Don’t do that.”
“I will come back.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I can give you right now.”
“Yaromir.”
“I love you,” I say.
It’s unfair. I know it is. The words stop her long enough for me to leave.
Outside the room, Viktor is waiting.
I point to the door. “No one gets past you.”
His eyes narrow. “Where are you going?”
“You know.”
His face hardens. “I should come.”
“No. You brought her to me. Now keep her safe.”
He studies me for a moment. Then he nods once.
I leave six men in the corridor. Two at the elevator. Two near the stairwell. Two outside her door with Viktor. The hospital will complain. Let it. The city can complain after it survives the night.
I go home. The estate is dark when I enter. The staff has vanished, either sleeping or pretending to. My men remain outside, but I send them away from the east wing.
I go to the study.
The fire is unlit. I don’t turn on the lamps. I sit behind the desk in the dark and wait.
I don’t wait long.
Larisa enters without knocking.
As always.
She pauses just inside the doorway, her cane in one hand, her face half-hidden by shadow. “You’re alive,” she says.
“So is Anya.”
The silence after that is small but telling.
Too small for anyone else to notice. Enough for me.
Larisa comes farther inside. “That is fortunate.”
“No,” I say. “It’s inconvenient for you.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “You are tired. Grief made you vicious. Relief has made you foolish.”
“She was shot.”
“I heard.”
“Did you?”