Chapter 18 - Vera
“Vera? My love?” Nico’s voice came from a distance somewhere in the dark, but I could hear him. He was there. Somewhere. Around me. I wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but it felt as if I had no control over my body.
“Vera?” he called out again, and I felt as if I was returning to consciousness.
I woke up slowly, but pain arrived first, before anything else.
It wasn’t sharp or overwhelming. Just present.
A dull ache settled in my arm, reminding me of the bullet that had pierced through my skin before my memory fully returned.
I remembered everything. The explosions. The attack. The safe room.
And most importantly, Nico. The last thing I had seen before darkness had overtaken me was him and his arms around me. My eyes opened, but for several seconds, everything remained blurry.
“Vera? Are you awake?” he called out again, concern etched in his voice. I wanted to open my mouth to say something. I wanted to tell him I was awake. I wanted to reassure him that I was okay, but it took a lot of effort just trying to get my lips to work. I felt weak.
The room gradually came into focus. I was inside Nico’s bedroom. Soft lighting illuminated the room, which was just enough to make things visible but not enough to hurt my eyes. Medical equipment hummed quietly somewhere nearby and Nico sat beside the bed.
He was motionless as he watched me, worry lines appearing on his forehead.
The sight should have comforted me, but instead, something immediately felt wrong.
His posture was too rigid and his expression too controlled.
He should have been happy and relieved that I was finally awake, but instead there was a tension in him that made my stomach tighten.
It felt as if something was deeply wrong.
“Vera?” he whispered again. “Are you feeling okay, my love?”
I opened my mouth to say something and finally forced my lips to work. It still took effort, but I continued trying. I needed to talk to him.
“Nico?” My voice came out rough, and his eyes widened instantly. The relief that crossed his face lasted less than a second before disappearing behind something unreadable.
“Hey.” The word sounded strange coming from him. It was very gentle and carefully uttered, as if I might break if he was any louder than that.
I frowned. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer, and silence stretched between us.
Whatever had happened after I passed out was bigger than the attack.
Much bigger. My mind raced with a thousand possibilities, all of which stopped on just one thing: my father.
I felt as if he had somehow managed to find out I was here.
Adrian must have told him. Was my father here to take me and was Nico planning to give me back?
My heartbeat accelerated, and the machines behind me began to beep louder.
“Nico.” My pulse began to climb.
“Why is your heartbeat rising? Are you okay?” he sounded panicked. “I’ll get the doctor.”
“No!” I whispered, not knowing how to speak any louder than that. “What is it? Why do you look that worried? Has my father come to get me back?”
“What? No.” He looked confused. “I am not letting you go anywhere, Vera.”
His jaw flexed, and it felt like I could breathe again. That was exactly what I had needed to hear from him. The fact that he did not want to let me go anywhere. I suddenly felt parched, my throat so dry that everything else became secondary.
“Water,” I managed to croak out.
Nico whipped out a glass from the bedside table and extended it towards me with a straw.
He helped me raise my head with one hand while I sipped the water from the glass in his other hand.
Swallowing felt hard, but I was beginning to feel better already.
I could sense I wasn’t hurt anywhere, but my arm and my body felt mostly alright.
“Better?” Nico asked, putting the glass away, and I nodded.
“Yes,” I nodded, trying to plop myself upright on the mountain of pillows behind me. “Now tell me what’s wrong?”
The room felt smaller, and tension seemed to grow sharper around us. Then he asked quietly,
“Did you know you were pregnant?”
Everything stopped for a second. For a moment I genuinely thought I had misheard him since the words made no sense.
They floated through my mind without attaching themselves to reality.
I was pregnant. I stared at him without blinking, the shock making it impossible for me to understand anything.
I waited for the sentence to rearrange itself into something reasonable, but it didn’t.
“What?”
His gaze never left mine. “The doctors ran some tests, and they found out you’re pregnant.”
My breath caught. “No.”
The response escaped before I could stop it. Not because I thought he was lying, but because I couldn’t process it. I pushed myself fully upright, ignoring the pain. Ignoring everything.
“Careful,” Nico shot out, helping me sit as comfortably as possible while keeping my arm stable.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
My heart was racing now as a thousand thoughts crashed together. None of them coherent.
Pregnant.
I stared down at myself as if somehow looking would make it real. Or make it impossible. I wasn’t sure which of the two I wanted it to be. I had always wanted children and a family, but I had not thought it would happen in this manner.
“I...” My voice cracked. “I didn’t know.”
Nico remained silent, and I looked back at him.
“I swear I didn’t know. I hope you believe me. If I had known, you would have been the first person I would have told about it.”
Shock surged through me so hard it almost made me nauseous. I thought back over the past weeks. I had been stressed and exhausted, with constant anxiety bugging me at all times. These preoccupations had been so extreme that I had missed all signs. If there had even been signs.
God.
I genuinely hadn’t known. A hand moved to my stomach without permission.
Without thought. Without conscious choice.
It was my baby. The realization hit me so hard my eyes immediately filled with tears.
It was not fear but something much bigger.
Something overwhelming. Something I couldn’t even begin to name.
A laugh escaped me, broken and shaky, which was immediately followed by a sob.
“Oh, my God.”
The tears came next, fast and uncontrollable. I pressed a hand against my mouth, trying to regain control but failing completely.
“Nico...”
His expression shifted, and something in his face softened just slightly.
He held me as I cried, not once asking me to stop as if he understood the need I felt to sob it all out.
Nico had always understood me. He remained quiet, watching and waiting.
Then he asked the question. The one I should have anticipated.
The one hanging between us from the second the doctor had spoken.
“Who does the baby belong to, Vera?”
The words were calm. Too calm. My head snapped up, and for the first time since waking, I truly looked at him.
There was fear in his eyes, but it wasn’t much.
Most people wouldn’t have seen it, but I did because I knew him.
I had always known him. And suddenly I understood that it wasn’t the pregnancy that had shaken him.
It was the uncertainty. My chest shattered.
“Nico.”
I said his name softly, the way I used to before. The way I hadn’t allowed myself to for months. His eyes closed briefly as if he was savoring the sound of it, and then opened again.
“It’s yours.”
There was no hesitation in my voice. No room for doubt.
“It has always been yours.”
Something happened to his face. Something painful. Raw. Almost impossible to witness.
“So you really never slept with him?”
I shook my head immediately. “No. I never slept with Adrian. Not even once.”
He nodded. “I know.”
His gaze dropped to my hand, and for the first time since I’d met him, Nico Romanov looked lost. Completely lost. And suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep protecting everyone. Couldn’t keep carrying everything alone. Couldn’t keep lying to him and, most importantly, to myself.
Not now. Not after all of this. Not after almost dying. Not after discovering there was a child involved.
So I told him everything. Every ugly piece of it.
“I know you asked me earlier if I have been hiding something from you and there has been something,” I replied with a deep sigh.
The words landed like a gunshot, and Nico froze. I continued before I could lose my nerve.
“On the day that I came to break up with you, my father had returned from a business trip. He had somehow found out that I was dating you, and he told me all about your involvement with the bratva and tried to convince me that you had been lying to me since day one. None of that mattered to me and I didn’t pay my father any heed.
However, he then asked me to spy on you for information, but I refused. ”
“And then?” Nico asked, fully invested.
“And then he threatened me that he would kill you if I didn’t end things with you and agree to marry Adrian. It broke me completely, but I had no choice. Truly. I came to you and lied to you so you would hate me, and I went and said yes to marrying Adrian.”
His expression darkened immediately. “I know he is your father, Vera, but I can’t wait to kill Manny Stavros.”
Nico’s entire body went still. Dangerously still. I knew that stillness. I’d seen it before. It was never a good sign.
“How could you have trusted him about something so absurd? Do you seriously think he could have hurt me? I am a Romanov, Vera, and he is an insignificantly small man who only ever cares about money.”
I wiped tears from my face. “He has connections, Nico. He knew people who hated you and would have taken their help in order to kill you. I didn’t want that to happen.”
The words tumbled out now. Months of secrets finally breaking apart.
“He told me I had two choices.”
Nico stared. Unblinking.