Chapter 24 #2
The blunt reminder of our wedding night steals my next joke. I step close, smoothing a nonexistent crease from his lapel while the image rests over his heart. Beneath the fine wool, his chest rises against my knuckles.
I want to tell him.
The words gather behind my teeth, warm and terrifying.
He looks down at me with the rawness from the dark examination room still visible around his eyes.
If I say them now, he may hear forever inside a moment already crowded with relief.
I need my love to belong to us, not to the result on a medical screen.
I cannot say I love him yet, so I rise onto my toes and kiss him with all the tenderness I can manage.
His hand closes around my waist. He keeps the pressure gentle, but the hunger in his mouth softens my knees. The hospital corridor beyond the door carries muted footsteps, rolling wheels, and one distant announcement. Inside the office, his thumb moves along the strip of skin above my waistband.
"Home," he says against my lips.
His low, intimate delivery makes the word sound like an invitation to bed.
We return to the residence shortly after noon.
Security has doubled at the underground entrance since the train, with two guards checking the vehicle before the inner garage door closes.
The house smells of cedar smoke and fresh bread.
Knowing our child may grow up here makes me look at every familiar room differently.
I can already see where a crib might stand.
Lunch waits in the small dining room beside the kitchen.
He arranged plain noodles, roasted chicken, sliced apples, and ginger tea after noticing what I could tolerate during the train recovery.
No decorations or hovering staff intrude.
The restraint feels more intimate than another room full of gifts.
Konstantin removes his jacket before sitting beside me rather than across the table.
His white shirt stretches across his shoulders, loosened at the throat where he abandoned his tie in the car.
When he reaches for the bread, the cuff draws back from his wrist, showing dark veins beneath the skin and the pale line left by his watch.
The sight carries me back to his hand over mine in the examination room.
"You haven't eaten," he says.
"I'm appreciating the service."
His gaze moves over my face, then lower to the blouse lying softly over breasts the pregnancy has made fuller and tender. Desire enters his expression without apology. He doesn't tell me I'm beautiful despite pregnancy or pretend my body hasn't changed. He looks because it has.
"Eat first," he says. "You can appreciate me afterward."
I manage half the chicken before his security chief appears at the dining-room door with a protected tablet.
Konstantin is on his feet before the man speaks.
"The dating-app monitor received a new image eleven minutes ago," the security chief says. "No location data survived transmission. You both need to see it."
My appetite disappears.
He places the tablet on the table, where the photograph fills the screen.
Black metal curves under hard white terminal light.
A coupling assembly occupies the center, clean of snow, with the rear carriage number stamped into a rectangular plate above it.
A narrow orange inspection strip crosses the command housing.
Mikhail's initials appear in black ink beside a handwritten departure time.
The stalker's message waits below the image.
He put you in the last car.
I knew before it moved.
The metallic taste from the train returns to my mouth.
Konstantin enlarges the photograph with two fingers. The frame includes part of the terminal floor, a yellow maintenance line, and the lower edge of a black service cart.
"When was this taken?" I ask.
"Between the final inspection and departure," the security chief says. "The strip was applied after the last sweep. The carriage number wasn't released outside the six-person route group or the terminal movement office."
The photographer stood beside the coupling and could read Mikhail's writing.
My husband goes still beside me without touching the tablet again. His attention fixes on the orange strip as the warmth leaves his face.
"Could the rail technician have taken it?" I ask.
"Possibly, if someone told him which carriage mattered and admitted him through the terminal perimeter. We haven't placed him inside this bay yet."
Konstantin lifts the tablet. "Find the service cart. Every person who touched it, moved it, or passed its camera view goes back through review."
The security chief takes the device, but I stop him before he can leave. "Send the image to my protected phone too. I don't want evidence about me disappearing into rooms I'm not allowed to enter."
He glances toward Konstantin.
"Send it," my husband says.
The photograph reaches my phone before the security chief steps into the hall.
Morning relief still lives inside me, stubborn and bright. Our baby is where the baby should be. Cardiac activity flickered on a screen while Konstantin's face showed me everything he usually hides. He doesn't know what I admitted to myself this morning.
Across the table, the numbered coupling proves somebody near his family helped a stalker reach the train before we ever left the terminal.