Turns out Bratva men can cut a rug, if the occasion calls for it. Who knew?
I’m dancing with Vince’s driver, Vasily, who insisted on having a turn with the bride. His weathered face is split in a rare grin as he spins me carefully, almost like a father.
“You make beautiful Akopov bride,” he croaks. “Strong. Not afraid.”
I laugh. “Oh, I’m definitely afraid. I’m just good at hiding it.”
He winks. “Secret safe with me.”
As the song ends, I feel a twinge in my lower abdomen. Sharp enough to make me wince, but gone as quickly as it came.
I’m probably just tired from all the dancing and excitement. But not a bad idea to take a seat for a little bit, I think.
I make my way back to our table, where Vince is deep in conversation with one of his lieutenants. He looks up the moment I approach.
“You’re flushed,” he observes, standing to pull out my chair. “Do you need water?”
“I’m fine,” I assure him. “Just a little warm from dancing.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t press. That’s new. The old Vince would have insisted on examining me himself or calling in his personal physician.
Progress is progress, I suppose.
I sip my water and scan the room. Mom is chatting with Marta, the housekeeper, both of them laughing like old friends. The sight warms my heart. She looks so much better these days, stronger, more vibrant. Modern medicine is a miracle. It almost makes me believe in—
Another twinge hits, this one sharper than before. I inhale sharply as my hand flies to my stomach.
Vince notices immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just—” The pain intensifies suddenly, radiating across my lower back. “Actually, I’m not sure.”
His brow furrows. “Tell me.”
“Cramping. It’s probably nothing—”
Before I can finish, a warm trickle runs down my inner thigh. I look down to see a bright red stain spreading across the ivory silk of my wedding dress.
Oh, God.
“Vince,” I whisper, panic rising in my throat. “Vince, I’m bleeding.”
He moves with terrifying efficiency. One moment, he’s beside me; the next, he’s scooping me into his arms, barking orders in Russian that send his men scrambling in every direction.
“The baby,” I manage, my voice small and frightened. “Vince, the baby, the baby, the—”
“Don’t talk,” he murmurs against my hair. “Save your strength. I’ve got you.”
The world narrows to tiny sensations. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my ear. His palms lifting me up, holding me close.
There are gasps, concerned murmurs, but they fade into background noise. All I can focus on is the growing pain and the warm wetness between my legs and the absolute, blinding terror that I might be losing our child.
Vince’s car is already waiting outside, engine running. Arkady holds the door open as Vince slides into the back with me still cradled in his arms.
“Hospital,” he orders Vasily, who’s seated behind the wheel. “Now.”
I clutch the lapels of his suit jacket. It’s a summer evening, balmy and warm, but I’m freezing in a way I’ve never frozen before.
“It hurts,” I whimper. “Vince…”
“I know, my heart,” he says. “We’re almost there. Just hold on.”
His face is a stone mask of control, but his eyes—those ice-blue eyes that have haunted me for years—are wild with fear.
Real, raw, undisguised terror.
He’s not pretending.
He’s fucking afraid.
Another pang strikes like a thunderbolt. I want to bite it back because I want Vince’s face to ease once again into the smile that melted me just a few short hours ago, but I can’t.
“Faster,” Vince growls at Vasily, who somehow coaxes even more speed from the already racing vehicle.
“What if—?” I can’t bring myself to finish the thought.
“No,” he cuts in firmly. “Don’t think like that. You’re both going to be fine.”
He sounds so certain that for a moment, I believe him.
Then—another gush of blood, another spike of pain, and that fragile belief crumbles.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, tears streaming down my face. “Our wedding day— I ruined—”
“Stop.” His hand cradles my face, thumb brushing away tears. “Nothing is ruined. Nothing that matters.”
The car screeches to a halt outside the hospital’s emergency entrance. Vince doesn’t wait for help—he’s out the door with me in his arms before the orderlies can even reach us.
“My wife is pregnant,” he barks at the first medical professional he sees. “She’s bleeding.”
Everything blurs into watercolor smears after that.
A wheelchair. Green walls.
Questions I can barely focus enough to answer.
The bright fluorescent lights of an exam room. Beep, beep.
Vince’s hand in mine, steady and strong.
Then a doctor—middle-aged, with kind eyes and a no-nonsense manner—passes an ultrasound wand across my belly.
“The good news,” she reports after a moment that feels like eternity, “is that your baby has a strong heartbeat.”
The sound fills the room—quick, rhythmic, miraculous. I sob with relief and clutch Vince’s hand tighter to my chest.
“And the bad news?” Vince grits out.
“You’re experiencing what we call a placental abruption,” the doctor explains. “The placenta has partially separated from the uterine wall. That’s what’s causing the bleeding and pain.”
I swallow hard, my throat like sandpaper lined with razor blades. “Is my baby going to be okay?”
“With proper care and monitoring, yes. The separation is minor, relatively speaking, but it’s serious enough that you’ll need to be on strict bed rest for the remainder of your pregnancy.”
“Whatever she needs,” Vince says immediately. “The best care. Private room. Specialists.”
The doctor nods. It’s obviously not her first rodeo with wealthy patients making demands. “We’ll get her stabilized and admitted. I’d like to keep her here for at least a few days for observation. Let me go get the paperwork started.”
After she leaves, the room falls silent except for the steady whoosh-whoosh of our baby’s heartbeat. All I can do is blink up at the ceiling as I try to make room in my brain for the enormity of everything that just happened.
“I thought we were going to lose the baby,” I whisper finally.
Vince’s fingers tighten around mine. “I thought I was going to lose you both.”
Something in his tone makes me turn my head to look at him. No, not his tone—it’s that his fingers are quivering.
“Hey,” I say softly. “The doctor said we’re both going to be okay.”
He nods, but the fear doesn’t leave his eyes. “I know. I know that.”
But he doesn’t sound convinced.
A little while later, I’m settled in a private room that looks more like a luxury hotel suite than a hospital. Leave it to Vince to secure the best accommodations on Planet Earth in under an hour.
The bleeding has stopped, the edge of the pain dulled by medication. I’m exhausted but too wired to sleep. Vince slumps in a chair beside my bed, still wearing his wedding suit minus the tie. He hasn’t left my side once.
“You should go home,” I tell him. “Get some rest. I’m fine now.”
“Not a fucking chance, Rowan.”
I sigh, too tired to argue. “At least take the other bed. That chair looks like medieval torture.”
“I’m fine where I am.”
There’s a crackle in his voice that makes me frown. “Vince, what’s going on? The doctor said the baby and I are stable. We can breathe, you know.”
He buries his face in his hands, a gesture so uncharacteristically vulnerable that I sit upright. “I know that,” he mumbles into his palms.
“Then why do you look like you’re still expecting the worst?”
For a long moment, he says nothing. Then: “My mother died in childbirth.”
I freeze. Say nothing.
“I was thirteen,” he continues, his voice distant, his face still hidden. “She was pregnant with my sister. There were complications. Bleeding, like yours. By the time they got her to the hospital, it was too late. For both of them.”
My heart aches for him—for the teenage boy who lost his family in one fell swoop, for the man still carrying that wound. “Vince, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you? I never told you.” He lifts his head from his hands and his eyes meet mine. They’re boiling blue. “My father was different after she died. Harder. Colder. He transferred all his hopes onto me. The only thing that mattered was the Bratva, the business, the legacy.”
“That must have been incredibly difficult for you.”
He shrugs. “It made me who I am. Who I was. Who I— Ah, fucking hell.”
In the dim light of the hospital room, with monitors beeping softly in the background, Vincent Akopov does something I’ve never seen before.
He cries.
Not dramatic sobs or wailing. Just a lone, silent tear tracking down his face.
“I can’t lose you,” he whispers. “Neither of you. I won’t survive it.”
Without thinking, I reach for him, pulling him toward me until he climbs up into the bed at my side. He comes willingly, though even now, he’s careful not to entangle himself with the tubes of my IVs.
“You’re not going to lose us,” I promise, my fingers threading through his silver-streaked hair. “I’m too stubborn to die, remember?”
A broken laugh escapes him. “You are that.”
“And our baby is half you, half me. That’s some pretty stubborn DNA.”
His arms tighten around me. “When I saw the blood on your dress…” He shudders. “In that moment, nothing else mattered. Just you.”
“We’re going to be okay,” I say again, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “All three of us.”
He lifts his head to look at me. For a long time, he does just that.
Then he sighs, and with that whistling exhale go fragments of the grief that’s been studded into his heart like shards of broken glass.
Not all of it.
But some.
It’s a start.
“Rest,” he urges. “The doctor said you need it.”
“Only if you take the other bed. You look worse than I do, and I’m the one in the hospital gown.”
“Bossy little thing,” he scolds playfully, “even from a gurney.”
“You knew what you were getting into when you married me.”
“I did,” he agrees. “I still do.”
As he reluctantly moves to the other bed, I let loose a grief-tinged sigh of my own. What a fucking wedding day. I didn’t even know if I’d show up at all. Then I did, and I said vows that I truly meant. Then I almost lost our baby. Then my husband cried.
It’s not exactly a typical order of operations.
So it’s unclear what I’m supposed to do next. Some couples make love all night long on their wedding days. Some fall asleep with cake frosting still buzzing sweetly on their tongue.
My husband and I fall asleep in adjacent hospital beds, our hands interlaced to bridge the dark, endless space between us.
I’m not ready to forgive everything quite yet. There’s too much baggage to simply jettison it all at once.
But just like Vince’s grief, I find myself relinquishing my grip on pieces of it. It slips through my fingers like sand.
As sleep finally rises up to claim me, my free hand drifts to my stomach, where our child still grows, still fights, still lives. “We’re going to be okay,” I whisper again, though I’m not sure if I’m reassuring the baby, Vince, or myself.
Maybe all three of us need to hear it.
