Chapter 28 #3
Anya looks for another moment then breathes an audible sigh of relief. “Four strong heartbeats. Quadruplets.” She gives Margot a reassuring look. “Not quints.”
Margot squeezes my hand harder and stares at the screen where four separate pulses flash in grainy rhythm. Those four lives have been growing inside her while she was running, fighting, hiding, and surviving.
I press my forehead against hers. “Four.”
“Not five.” She closes her eyes but is smiling. “Mara would have laughed.”
Anya removes the wand and wipes the gel from Margot’s stomach.
“I can’t determine sex on ultrasound at this gestational age.
I’m drawing blood today for noninvasive prenatal screening.
The lab I’m using is private, and the results come back in five to seven business days.
The test can screen for a limited set of chromosomal conditions, although high-order multiples make interpretation less precise.
We’ll confirm each baby’s sex at a later ultrasound. ”
She draws the blood, two small vials labeled with a patient number instead of a name.
After Anya leaves, the bedroom becomes too quiet. The clean medical efficiency leaves with her, and what remains is Margot on the bed with her shirt still pushed above her stomach and one hand spread protectively over skin that doesn’t yet show the scale of what’s happening inside her.
Four.
The number keeps rearranging the room around me.
One child would’ve changed my life. Two would’ve remade it. Four turns every plan I’ve ever made into something too small to hold what comes next.
Margot laughs once, but the sound breaks before it becomes anything real. “We’re going to need a bigger everything.”
I sit on the edge of the bed beside her. “House, car, security plan, medical team, nursery, freezer, and staff.”
She turns her head to look at me, and the expression on her face is almost amused beneath the terror. “That wasn’t supposed to be a strategy prompt.”
“I know.” I take her hand because I need to touch her, and because I need her to feel that I’m here before I start thinking like a man who solves problems by building walls around them. “I’m trying not to panic.”
Her mouth curves faintly. “You’re very bad at pretending.”
“I’m excellent at pretending.” I look at her stomach, then back at her face. “I’m bad at this.”
The faint smile disappears, and the fear underneath it shows clearly.
That’s the part I hate. Not the fear itself.
Fear makes sense. Four babies make fear rational.
What I hate is that some part of her is still waiting to see what I’ll do with the information.
Whether I’ll turn it into orders, confinement, doctors she didn’t choose, guards outside every door, and a life wrapped so tightly in protection that she can’t breathe inside it.
I know because I want to do all of that. I want to buy every specialist in the city, move her into a hospital wing I can control, lock every route between this house and the outside world, and put armed men between her and every threat that’s ever existed.
I want to make safety absolute.
I also know absolute safety from the inside would look like a cage with better furniture.
Margot watches my face for too long. “You’re thinking too loudly.”
“I’m thinking about everything I want to do and everything I shouldn’t do without asking you first.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “That’s a better answer than I expected.”
I lift a shoulder. “Low bar. It should’ve been the answer from the beginning.”
She looks back at the place where the ultrasound screen had been. She speaks softly. “Four heartbeats. I was afraid of one. I was afraid to tell you about one baby because I didn’t know whether you’d see a child or leverage.”
The words land where they should. Deep, painful, and accurate.
“I gave you reasons to wonder.”
“You did.” She doesn’t soften the answer, and I’m grateful for that too. Kind lies would be worse than honest wounds now.
I nod once because arguing would insult both of us. “I see four lives I already want more than I know how to want anything. That doesn’t give me the right to make your body a battleground again.”
Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t cry. “I don’t know how to be pregnant with quadruplets.”
“I don’t know how to be the father of quadruplets.” I lift her hand and press my mouth to her knuckles. “I’m not going to pretend I know what I’m doing when I don’t. Anya will tell us what’s medically necessary. You’ll tell me what you need. I’ll listen to both of you.”
She studies me like she’s looking for the hidden clause.
I deserve that too.
“What if what I need scares you?” she asks.
“Then I’ll be scared.”
She moves her thumb over the back of my hand. “What if I need space?”
“Then I’ll give you space.”
“What if I need you close?”
“Then I’ll be close.” I keep my voice even because every answer matters now. Every answer is either proof or another reason for her to doubt me. I’ll give her whatever she needs no matter what it costs me.
She swallows, and the shine in her eyes gets worse. “What if I change my mind every ten minutes because there are four babies inside me, and I’m one bad thought away from screaming?”
I almost smile. “Then I’ll adapt every ten minutes.”
Her laugh is shaky but real. She covers her mouth with her free hand, and the sound turns into something dangerously close to a sob.
I move slowly enough that she can stop me.
When she doesn’t, I shift closer and wrap my arm around her shoulders.
She leans into me, careful at first, then all at once.
I hold her while she presses her face against my chest and breathes through the first wave of what we’ve just learned.
“I wanted a family,” she whispers against my shirt. “I never said it out loud because wanting things makes them easier to lose.”
I close my eyes. “I wanted one too.”
She tips her face up. “You?”
“Yes.” The word feels too small for the confession, but it’s all I have at first. I brush my thumb under her eye before the tear there can fall. “I imagined them too much. That was the problem.”
Her expression softens in a way that almost hurts to look at. “Valentin.”
“I thought wanting a family meant creating targets. I thought the only responsible thing was to want nothing I couldn’t defend.” I rest my hand lightly over hers on her stomach. “Then you came into my life and proved I’d been lying to myself for years.”
She looks down at our joined hands. “Four targets.”
“Four children,” I say at once. “Not targets.”
She gasps softly.
I say it again because she needs to hear it, and so do I. “Children. Not leverage. Not assets. Not proof of anything except that we have to build a life they can survive.”
She nods slowly, and some of the terror in her face shifts into something less sharp. It doesn’t vanish. Nothing that large vanishes in one conversation, but it gives way enough for her to breathe.
Margot wipes under one eye with the heel of her hand. “Kimberly is going to lose her mind.”
“So will Nathan.”
That earns me another small laugh. She shakes her head against the pillow. “Nathan doesn’t even know yet.”
“He’ll know the second he sees my face.”
“Because you look terrified?”
“Because I look like I’m calculating how many car seats fit in an armored SUV.”
She groans and lets her head fall back against the pillow. “Oh, god.”
“We’ll need two vehicles.”
“Stop helping.”
“I’m trying.” I am not trying hard enough, and she clearly knows it.
“You’re not.”
“No,” I admit, “I’m not.”
She smiles at the ceiling, and for one quiet second, fear doesn’t own the room. It’s still there. It’ll be there for months, probably years, but it’s not the only thing between us.
I lower myself beside her and keep my hand over hers, thinking of four reasons to become a better man faster than I believed possible.
Margot turns into me, careful of her stomach even though there’s no need yet, and closes her eyes. “Six days for the blood results?”
“Five to seven.”
“I hate waiting.”
“So do I.” I look at the door, already thinking about labs, couriers, guards, backup plans, and everything else I’ll need to force myself not to arrange without asking.
Her eyes open to narrow slits. “You’re going to be impossible.”
“Yes.”
“At least you admit it.”
“I’ll try to be impossible in useful ways.”
She points one finger at my chest. “Ask before you buy anything with wheels, walls, guards, medical equipment, or a security code.”
I pause.
Her eyes narrow further.
“I was making the list in my head.”
“I know.”
“I’ll ask.”
She closes her eyes again and relaxes her hand under mine. “Good.”
I stay beside her until her breathing evens out. I don’t sleep. I count the seconds between each breath, listen to the house, and let the future terrify me without trying to control it or manage it into something smaller.
The screening results arrive six days later by encrypted courier.
Anya reviews them at the kitchen table and explains that none of the conditions the test can assess shows an elevated risk, while reminding us that screening is not a diagnosis.
Four weeks later, at the sixteen-week ultrasound, she studies the images until she can identify each baby clearly.
Margot grips my hand as Anya looks up at both of us.
“All four are measuring on track.” Anya sets the ultrasound printout face-down on the table. “Do you want the sexes written down or spoken aloud?”
Margot looks at me. I nod.
“Spoken.”
“Two boys and two girls.”
Margot looks at me, and the expression on her face is the same expression she wore in the interrogation room months ago, except the fear has been replaced by enormous certainty. She’s decided to stop running.
“Two boys and two girls,” she repeats. She presses her hand against her stomach. “I think Mara would have wanted to hold them all at once.”
I don’t say anything. I hold her hand and think about my future looking entirely different from how I imagined it. There’s a little fear, but I’m more excited than anything.
I can work with four.