Maybe our child would have her sweet eyes and little button nose, the pouty lips and soft-spoken voice. Maybe she’d be a bookworm like her mama, or… or maybe she will be a he.
I stand up straighter.
A son.
A lump rises in my throat at the thought of a precious child, dependent on me… a child who’d call me papa.
A daughter like my beautiful wife, or a son…
I pace the room and wrangle the thoughts from my mind that assault me. Where would we live? I wouldn’t raise a family here, not in this building. We’d have to find a home. A home in the country. I could drive here to take care of business, and at the end of the day…
I shake my head. No. A baby is an impossibility. This can’t be happening.
Maybe she’ll miscarry?
The second the thought comes to me, I want to smack myself for wishing such a thing on her. Don’t I wish what’s best for her?
I halt in my tracks.
Do I? What am I doing here? I brought her here so that I could fulfill a simple request from Dimitri, no more or less.
I never suspected she’d come to actually mean something to me.
I pace the room until I hear Sadie moaning in the other room.
“Kazimir?” I run to her so quickly I almost trip. She’s carrying my baby, and she needs to speak to me. My chest swells with an urgency I can’t contain.
“Yes?” I ask her, taking her hand. And when she looks up at me with those wide brown eyes, stray hair falling across her forehead, my chest swells with emotion I can’t contain. I drop to one knee beside the bed and sweep her hair off her forehead. “What is it, krasotka? Tell me.”
When she blinks, her eyes are filled with tears. “Where will we go?” she whispers. “I don’t want a baby around those men. I don’t want their vicious hands anywhere near my baby. I don’t want—”
“Hush,” I tell her, putting my finger to her lips. “We don’t need to worry about that right now. Right now, we need to make a plan. Keep this hidden. I don’t want any of them to find out.” My mind reels with possibilities, but I shake my head. “First, we take care of you. I have Nikita making sure you do what you need to. You’ll need your vitamins and proper care and nutrition. Exercise when appropriate, and comfortable clothes. Plenty of rest, and I want to be sure you’re monitored regularly so that—”
“Kazimir,” she interrupts softly, resting her hand on mine, and it’s then that I realize she looks a little green around the ears. “I just want some crackers right now. In America, we have plain ones with salt on top that some ladies say help nausea. I don’t know what you have here but I need something. My stomach hurts, and I just want to ease the nausea.”
I stand. “Yes, of course,” I tell her, but she won’t let my hand go.
“Do you have to go?” she asks, her eyes as wide as a little puppy’s. My heart twists in my chest with the knowledge that things have changed between us. I’ve lied to myself. She isn’t my prisoner. She isn’t the woman I’ve been training to obey me, with the intent of cultivating fear and mindless subservience.
She’s my victory prize for battle. The spoils of war. My most precious possession, and I’ll guard and protect her with my very life.
“Anything,” I say to her, my voice choked with emotion. This is the woman I’ve married, and she bears my child. “Anything, Sadie.”Chapter TwentySadieAs the days pass into weeks, my body undergoes a transformation. My breasts are tender, my abdomen slowly, gently rounded already. But I’m not the only one who’s changing. I watch as Kazimir does, too.
I’m ordered to bed, made to rest, and he’s so smothering he treats me as if I’m a delicate, fragile creature. He’s different, though. I can see it in his eyes, and the way he talks to his men when he meets with them. Though he’s still their leader, there’s a detachment about him that wasn’t there before. And when he speaks with Dimitri, there’s a distance in his eyes I wonder if only I can see. I don’t ask him about what we’ll do. I know without him telling me that it’s the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up and the last thing he thinks about before he goes to bed. And even though our relationship began in a wildly unorthodox way, I have to admit I trust him. Plus the reality is, I’m so sick that I can’t think much beyond keeping down my breakfast.
Nikita dotes on me, bringing me strong tea and candied ginger, but I’m so sick I can hold almost nothing down until the doctor gives me medication to take. I resist at first, but Kazimir doubles down and makes me. I have to reluctantly admit he’s right, though. The round white pill the doctor gives me eases my nausea, and after three weeks of being nearly bedridden, I finally sit up in bed. Kazimir is in the bathroom. I hear the shower turn off, and realize he hasn’t made love to me in three weeks. The awareness makes me sad.