Anastasia is in the kitchen when I stumble out. I wanted to snuggle Sofi for a while, but she was sleeping soundly, so I thought it was best to leave her alone.
When I step through the door, Anastasia takes one look at my face and knows.
“It was negative,” she says. Not a question.
“False alarm.” I push past her and drop into a seat at the counter, unable to meet her eyes. “Guess I’m not pregnant after all.”
She follows me, her silence more damning than any words could be. “Are you relieved?” Anastasia finally asks.
Am I relieved? Shouldn’t I be?
“I don’t know what I am.” I sound weak and miserable even to my own ears. “Yesterday, I was terrified. Today, I’m…” I trail off, unable to name the emptiness gnawing at my insides.
“Disappointed,” she supplies gently.
“Isn’t that messed up?” I turn to face her, anger suddenly surging through me. “I should be grateful. One less complication in our catastrophe of a life. One less reason for Vince to murder half of New York in the name of protection.”
Anastasia leans against the edge of the counter. “It’s not messed up. It’s human.”
“Nothing about my life is human anymore.”
“You wanted this baby,” she says simply. “Despite everything, you wanted it.”
She’s not wrong. I did want it. Part of me had already begun imagining a future with two children instead of one. Had already fallen in love with a possibility.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, forcing certainty I don’t feel into my voice. “It was never real.”
“The pregnancy wasn’t. The desire was.” Anastasia stands, crosses to me. “And you should still tell Vincent.”
I jerk away from her. “Tell him what?”
“All of it. The fear, the hope, the disappointment. He deserves to know.”
“He’d think I’ve lost my mind.”
“He’d understand better than you think.” She moves toward the door, then pauses. “We’re more than the circumstances we’re trapped in, Rowan. More than the violence that surrounds us. Remember that.”
After she leaves, I sit at the counter, staring at nothing. One of the failed pregnancy tests is still clutched in my hand, the single line mocking me.
It would be for the best if I throw it away.
But throwing it away feels like throwing away the child that never was.
So instead, I creep back to my bed and place it carefully in my nightstand drawer.
I’ve spent the three days since Vince left staring at that fucking drawer. It’s become a black hole in our bedroom, warping time and space around it. The negative test sits inside like a dead star, radiating its own peculiar gravity.
I’ve opened it seventeen times. Yes, I counted. Each time, I expected the result to magically change, like if I wish hard enough, want desperately enough, that second pink line will materialize out of thin air.
It doesn’t.
Whatever small, fragile thing might have started growing inside me wasn’t meant to be. Or never existed at all.
A phantom pregnancy. A phantom grief.
Sofiya has started to notice something’s wrong. This morning, her pudgy hands patted my wet cheeks while I changed her diaper, her blue eyes studying me with unsettling clarity for someone who still shits herself daily.
She babbled something, just nonsense, but I could almost swear that what she said was “Mama sad.” I know she didn’t—she’s not old enough to form syllables, much less grasp any of the involved concepts—but that didn’t stop something in me from shattering all over again.
Even my infant daughter can tell I’m falling apart over the loss of something that never was.
The compound feels like it’s shrinking around me. The walls closing in, the air thinning. Anastasia’s advice haunts me: Tell him. All of it. He deserves to know.
But how do I explain this? I’m mourning a baby that never existed. It’s silly that I found myself desperately, pathetically wanting to be pregnant again in the middle of this fucking bloodbath we call a life. It’s selfish. It’s wrong.
But just when I’ve decided to bury this episode in my heart forever, I hear the security system disarm downstairs.
Then footsteps. The heavy tread of footsteps I would recognize even if I were blindfolded, gagged, half-dead.
My body responds before my mind catches up—pulse quickening, skin warming, that Pavlovian response to Vince’s proximity that never quite faded, not even after all this time.
I wipe my eyes and try to pull myself together.
I fail spectacularly.
And so he finds me sitting on the edge of our bed, staring at that damn drawer. I don’t need to look up to know he’s filling the doorway, cataloging every detail of my posture, my unwashed hair, my red-rimmed eyes.
“Rowan.” He exhales. “What’s wrong?”
I’ve rehearsed this conversation in my head a thousand times since that second test. All of that practice evaporates like morning dew in August.
“Nothing,” I lie, wiping furiously at fresh tears. “Just tired. Sofiya’s been—”
“Don’t.” He cuts through my bullshit that easily. “Not with me.”
He crosses the room in long strides and kneels before me. His hands cup my face, forcing me to meet his gaze.
“Tell me.”
And just like that, the dam breaks.
“I thought I was pregnant. I took a test while you were gone. It was positive.”
His entire body goes still. His eyes—those fucking gorgeous blue eyes—dilate until only a thin ring of color remains. “You’re pregnant?”
“No. That’s the fucked-up part. I took another test yesterday. Negative. The first one was just a false positive, I guess.”
“I see.” His face is unreadable. “And you’re upset about this.”
“I don’t know what I am.” I swallow and knuckle at my eyes again. “When I thought I was pregnant, I was terrified. Another child? Now? With Solovyov’s men attacking our shipments and your father still under house arrest and who knows what else still out there?” I shake my head, fresh tears spilling over. “It seemed like the cruelest joke.”
“But…?”
“But then when the second test was negative, I was…” I struggle for the word, but it won’t come.
“Devastated.”
“Yes. And then I felt like the most selfish asshole who’s ever lived. What does that make me?”
“Human,” Vince says at once. “It makes you human.”
I pull away from him, anger suddenly rising like bile in my throat. “Don’t fucking pacify me, Vince. We both know our lives are anything but human. We live behind walls guarded by killers. Our daughter has never been to a public park. The last time we left this compound together was for Sofiya’s christening, and someone tried to fucking kill us.”
“And you still want another child.”
“Yes!” I shout, surprising myself with the ferocity of it. “I do. What does that say about me? And don’t say human. Because we both know that’s utter bullshit. We haven’t been ‘human’ for a long time.”
Vince rises, paces the length of our bedroom. His shoulders are rigid beneath his dress shirt, the line of his jaw sharp enough to slice me wide open.
“When you thought you were pregnant,” he says carefully, “why didn’t you call me?”
I don’t have to think hard to answer that. “Because I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of what you’d do.” I meet his gaze steadily. “Of how far you’d go to protect us.”
He flinches as if I’ve physically struck him. “Is that what you think?” he asks. “That I’m looking for excuses to be a monster?”
“No.” I stand, close the distance between us. “I think you’re trying so fucking hard not to be one that sometimes you overcompensate in ways that terrify me.”
“Like at the hospital.”
“Like at the hospital,” I confirm. “Vince, you were ready to execute the doctors because Sofiya had a fever.”
He doesn’t deny it. His hand comes up, traces the curve of my cheek with tenderness.
He is quiet for a long moment, his eyes searching mine. Then something changes in his face—a decision made, a path chosen.
“I’ve been thinking about Costa Rica,” he says finally. “The development there is nearly complete. Legitimate business, away from New York. Away from my father, from the Solovyovs, from Grigor.”
My breath catches. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying there are alternatives to this life. Ways to protect our family that don’t involve armed guards and panic rooms.” His fingers slide into my hair, cradling my skull. “If you want another child, Rowan, we’ll have another child. And we’ll find a way to keep them safe that doesn’t turn me into someone you fear.”
Hope unfurls in my chest—fragile, tender, but undeniably there.
“Do you mean that?” I whisper.
“I mean it.” His forehead presses against mine. “I’ve made promises to you before that I’ve broken. I’ve lied to protect you, controlled you to keep you safe. But this—” His hand drops to my still-flat stomach, rests there with reverent gentleness. “This promise I’ll keep.”
Something in his certainty makes me ache with both longing and fear. We’ve been here before—grand declarations, solemn vows. But the world keeps dragging us back into darkness despite our best efforts to honor what we say.
“You can’t know that,” I murmur against his lips. “You can’t promise we’ll be safe, that our children will be safe. Not in this life.”
“Then we build a different one.” His kiss tastes like desperation and determination in equal measure. “Whatever it takes.”
I want to believe him. God, I want it so badly I can taste it—sharp and sweet on my tongue like blood and honey.
But experience has taught me the price of hope.
“Show me,” I challenge, fingers digging into his shoulders. “Not words, Vince. Show me this different life is possible before we bring another child into this one.”
His eyes darken to midnight, something dangerous and thrilling burning hot behind them.
“Watch me.”
