Chapter 32
Anya
“If you push that food around your plate one more time, I’m taking it away and making soup. And you will eat the soup.”
Olga stands on the other side of the kitchen counter, her bandaged left arm crossed over her right, wearing a terrifying expression.
She went back to work the day after the attack on the property, defying every doctor’s order to rest. Maksim and Igor grumble every time they see the bandage peeking out from under her sleeve. She just ignores them both.
“Are you going to stand there, planted in the doorway like a prison guard?” I snap.
“If I have to, yes.”
“You don’t have to. You can go.”
“It’s been three days since you’ve eaten properly. You slept until noon yesterday, and you’ve had that green, about-to-puke look on your face since nine.”
“I slept late because I was tired of fighting with Maksim to let me go back to work, and I’m not… Have you been spying on me?”
“What nonsense,” she huffs, rolling her eyes. “I’m taking care of you, girl.”
I sigh and push the plate away—the smell of the eggs is making my stomach turn. I rest my forehead in my hand and breathe deeply through my mouth, fighting back the nausea.
“It’s stress. It started after that night.” A shiver runs through me just remembering the gunshots echoing through the house. “Besides, some of my students were sick last week. I must have caught something from them.”
Olga doesn’t respond. She just takes my plate, dumps the contents without ceremony, and sets a cup of tea in front of me. It’s sweet and hot, and the mint aroma calms my stomach before I even take a sip.
“Now the bread.”
A small, fluffy roll appears in front of me. Plain, with nothing on it.
“Olga, you’re being—”
“The bread, Svetlana.” My eyes go wide. She never calls me by my name, especially not in that severe tone.
Slowly, I tear off a piece and bring it to my mouth. It’s good. After the tea, it feels like the most delicious meal in the world. I finish it in an instant and reach for another from the basket.
“Stress, sure,” she grumbles, turning her back and heading to the sink.
I roll my eyes and stand up, taking the cup and two rolls with me. In the reading room, I set the tea on the coffee table next to the chessboard—no game in progress—and lie down on the sofa. I take a few bites of bread and stare at the ceiling, irritated at having nothing to do once again.
It’s been days since I went to the project—three, to be exact. Since the attack on the property.
Maksim has been paranoid about my safety since that night.
“When Demidov is dead, you can go back to the project,” he stated firmly, ending the discussion. “Not before.”
“The girls have an audition in three months, Maksim.”
“And your father blabbed to everyone that you’re married to me. You have a target on your back, Anya. And if you think I’m going to let you wander around out there without a care, you’re dead wrong.”
I open my mouth, then close it again, with nothing to say.
When he came home the next day, hair still wet from a shower, Maksim took me by the hand and told me everything.
I don’t want to hurt you, but I said I’d tell you.
And then he started talking about my father and how he’s been racking up more and more debt, using Maksim’s name to try to weasel out of it. That’s what brought those men here—Demidov’s men. I listened in silence, ashamed, angry that I finally understood what all those endless calls had meant.
I didn’t want to tell Maksim right then.
He was already so angry that if I mentioned Aleksei had been trying to reach me, or that Galina had sent me messages cursing me out, he’d have gone and killed them on the spot.
I don’t care about them—my parents can go to hell.
I just didn’t want to pile more stress onto Maksim’s shoulders.
“Grisha goes with me, like always,” I pressed, returning to the subject. “I need to be there with the girls!”
“No, Svetlana,” he retorted. “What those girls need is a teacher who’s alive.
” His voice echoed through the room, and then he stopped, took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling.
After a moment, he leaned in to kiss my forehead and said more quietly, “Vladimir agrees too. It’s better this way, Solnyshko. ”
Even though I was upset, I gave in. I grabbed my phone and sent Vanya a message saying I’d be staying home for a week because I was sick. It was partly true—this queasy stomach and general malaise were killing me—but I knew I could teach if Maksim were a little more flexible.
“What the hell is this, Maksim?” I shout into the phone the moment I open the front door and see two cars waiting for me.
Two.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Solnyshko.”
“Why are there two armored cars to take me to a doctor’s appointment?”
“Escort.”
His voice is so flat it makes me want to punch him in the face.
“ESCORT? I'm not a damn armored truck, Maksim!”
I shout at him, pacing across the empty entrance hall. I slammed the door in the guards' faces the moment I saw Grisha and a team of three other men waiting for me at the entrance.
“You're very valuable cargo, Anya.” His voice sounds playful.
“Don't joke around, Maksim Nikiforov. I'm furious with you.”
I hear a sigh through the line, the sound of something shifting, and then he speaks again. Lower, closer, deep and serious.
“I couldn't be there to accompany you. I had a meeting I couldn't reschedule.”
“I can go with just Grisha. I always go with just him.”
“Solnyshko, we're on high alert.”
“Maksim, this is overkill,” I try to argue.
“Your safety is never overkill, Svetlana.”
His voice sounds so worried, so defeated that I give in. Once again.
That's why I'm in the back seat while Grisha drives in silence, as always, and a new guard sits in the passenger seat.
I didn't ask his name—I'm claiming the right to be rude today.
The second car follows close behind, with two more men up front.
Once we pass through the gate, they drop back to follow at a safe distance.
A presidential convoy is absurd just because the Pakhan's wife has a stomach bug.
“Grisha.”
“Ma'am?”
“Is this normal?”
He glances in the rearview mirror for a moment, then decides to answer honestly.
“No, ma'am.” A pause. “This is the Pakhan being… cautious.”
He doesn't want to say that Maksim is afraid. I understand. The Pakhan is the most feared and respected man, the highest authority in the Bratva—he wouldn't want his men thinking his fear is a weakness.
I gaze out the window, watching the scenery pass in silence until the subtle vibration of my phone catches my attention.
I don't need to look to know who it is. The pattern is always the same: every two or three days he calls me, always in the middle of the afternoon, at least seven times until he gives up, and then she sends me some aggressive message.
Aleksei.
The screen confirms my guess, so I let it ring.
I watch the screen, curious about how I'll feel.
Whether any trace of guilt or pity will surface.
Nothing. No guilt, no anger, not even that pity that used to wash over me whenever I thought about them.
Just a dull weariness, like they're an annoying fly that won't leave me alone.
I'm sure Aleksei wants money, as always. I bet the voicemail he's leaving has more compliments than I've heard in my entire life.
I roll my eyes and put my phone away.
I don't want to deal with this—not now, not ever again.
The swaying of the car and the trees rushing past the window make me nauseous again. I take a deep breath, rest my head against the cold glass, and close my eyes, praying I won't throw up again.
When Grisha parks and tells me we've arrived, I step out expecting a large, white, generic building, but find the opposite. It's a low building clad in dark brick on a quiet street in Petrogradsky[28].
I should have known Maksim would send me somewhere like this. Inside, it looks like a boutique hotel: light wood, real plants, and a receptionist who smiles and tells us I'll be seen right away. She didn't even need to ask my name. There's no waiting room, no other patients waiting.
Grisha's new partner stayed in the car while he accompanied me down the hallway and planted himself outside the door like some intimidating, lethal statue.
“Grisha, it's just a doctor's appointment.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
He nods briefly but doesn't budge. I roll my eyes, brush past him into the room, and close the door behind me.
Dr. Lidiya Sokolova is about fifty, with short gray hair and a calm demeanor. After greeting me politely, she asks what brought me in, and I begin.
The nausea started about four days ago and nothing makes it go away. Crushing exhaustion, with drowsiness that knocks me out in the middle of the afternoon like I'm some lazy teenager. Smells that bother me, headaches, and that damn feeling of having the flu without so much as a stuffy nose.
“And there was a…” I consider how to explain an armed invasion of my home to this doctor. “…stressful event recently,” I decide, taking the safer route. “I was really scared and anxious. I thought it might be that.”
“It could be. Acute stress does terrible things to the body,” she responds, her voice serene. “Last menstrual period?”
My body freezes.
I don't know the answer—I never have. My cycle is the most unpredictable thing in my life.
Having a young woman's body with a child's weight and the workload of an elite athlete isn't exactly great for your hormones.
After the accident, when I cut back on rehearsals and put on a little weight, it improved, but not enough to become regular.
“I don’t know,” I answer quietly. “My cycle has been irregular since adolescence. I’m… I was a ballerina.” I shrug, not wanting to make a big deal of it.
Dr. Sokolova looks up. The smile she offers is brief but sympathetic, and it sends a chill through me.
“All right.” She opens a drawer, takes out a small box, and hands it to me. “Let’s start with the basics. You can use that bathroom.” She gestures toward a closed door inside the office.
I look at the box in my hands: a pregnancy test. One of those cheap plastic ones from the pharmacy, where you pee on a stick and it screams the truth in your face.
“Oh,” I say, because I don’t have much else to say. It wasn’t a possibility I’d considered.
“It’s just protocol for women who come in with your symptoms and can’t track their cycle. Don’t worry, we’re just doing this to rule it out, okay?”
I appreciate how calmly she speaks to me, but I wish I could feel that same calm. My legs feel like jelly with each step toward the bathroom. Once inside, I open the box with trembling hands and take the test on autopilot.
I pee in the cup, open the plastic cap, dip the test in, and watch as two lines appear in less than three minutes.
It can’t be.
Actually, it can. I haven’t used any birth control since I’ve been with Maksim. No condoms or pills for me.
We’re married, Anya.
My head repeats his words in a mocking voice, falsely deep, taunting me. At the time, his desire to have me with nothing between us seemed so romantic. Now it just seems like stupidity. Irresponsibility.
We talked about scheduling an appointment, but it kept getting pushed aside as the days went by. Everything was more urgent than this doctor’s visit: the selection of girls, the project classes, meetings with the mothers… everything took priority over this.
This.
I look at the test one more time.
Fuck, I’m pregnant.
“Eight weeks, give or take.”
Dr. Sokolova is looking at the ultrasound screen, the wand moving inside me as she examines the images of my uterus.
“Since you don’t track your cycle, we can’t date it by your last period,” she says calmly. “So I’m going to measure.”
I look at the screen she’s staring at so intently and see nothing. Just a big blob. A gray smudge inside a black and dark gray space. I can’t make out anything.
“Seven weeks and five days, to be exact.” She turns the screen a bit more toward me. “And this here…” She points to a tremor, a rapid, tiny pulsation in the middle of the blur. “…is the heart.”
The sound fills the room. Loud, fast, strong—like a strange pulse inside a bathtub full of water. It’s nothing like an adult heartbeat. It’s nothing like anything I’ve ever experienced.
For a second, everything goes silent. In the room, in my mind, in my life.
How is there another heart beating inside me? Is there really something alive in here?
I take a deep breath. Once, twice. Before I realize it’s coming, a single tear rolls down my cheek, and then a warm wave hits my chest. I wasn’t expecting this.
I don’t know how to deal with surprises, and Maksim already said he didn’t want children.
And the world we live in isn’t safe—much less for such a small, defenseless baby.
Suddenly, I feel what I least expected: worry.
It’s not fear, and it’s not rejection.
It’s the urge to protect it from all harm.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, my voice choked with emotion.
“Everything is fine,” Dr. Sokolova confirms, and for the first time, she smiles a little.
“Excellent heartbeat, good size, good implantation. You’re anemic and dehydrated, which explains some of the fatigue, and we’re going to correct that today.
The nausea is normal at this stage and tends to improve after the twelfth week. ”
“Week?”
“You’ll get used to counting in weeks.” She gives a little laugh, removing the wand and standing up to give me privacy. “Other than that, a normal pregnancy. Everything is fine with both of you.”
Normal.
There’s nothing normal about my life, much less this.
After that, we return to the office, where she prescribes a mountain of vitamins, new dietary guidelines, and gives me lab orders to complete before my next appointment in four weeks. In my hands, still a bit cold and trembling, I hold a photo of the small gray blur with a strong heart.
A baby.
I get in the car in a daze, and once again I’m grateful for Grisha’s discretion—he simply opened the door for me and asked if everything was okay. I nodded slowly and settled into the seat, feeling a strange urge to run my hand over my flat belly.
As the gray city passes by the window, nausea still churns in my stomach, but I choose to ignore it. There’s something much more important on my mind right now.
This world is no place for a child, Svetlana.
That’s what Maksim told me the only time we talked about children. I knew he was speaking from his own experience—raised by a sadistic father who only wanted an heir for the Bratva. I’d never imagine Maksim repeating his father’s horrors, but he seemed so certain…
My head spins, the anxiety of breaking this news to him weighing on me. This world may not be a place for children, but there’s already one on the way—nothing can change that now.
Wow, we’re going to be parents.
Maksim and I. Neither of us with any idea how to do this right.
I look out the window at the cluster of buildings passing by and pray we arrive soon. I hope Maksim will already be back when I get there.