Page 34 of Pregnant with Bratva Twins
The rain outside is relentless, beating against the windows like a warning. I pour one last drink, feeling it settle into my bones. My thoughts circle, relentless: Chris, the Bratva, the girl upstairs. The world keeps turning, blood keeps being spilled, and I have to keep moving, no matter how much it costs.
As the vodka burns its way down, I know I’m already lost. Jessa’s in my blood. In my bed. In my world.
If she ever acts up again—if she ever crosses me—I’ll kill her myself. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. Because the truth is, I’m not sure I ever could.
Chapter Seventeen - Jessa
Night comes slowly to the manor, bleeding into every room like spilled ink. The rain has stopped, but the world beyond my window is nothing but glass and shadow: lights from the city blurred by distance, silent, indifferent. I’m curled on the very edge of the bed, knees pulled to my chest, Markian’s blanket wrapped tight around my shoulders.
Every so often, I glance at the door, waiting for footsteps that never come.
It’s almost worse this way, waiting, but not knowing. I don’t know if I want him to walk through that door or if I’d rather he stayed away forever. My body aches with uncertainty, every muscle tense, my mind wound tighter with every hour that passes.
The room is a gilded cage tonight. Warm gold lamplight glows against velvet and silk, the bed too big, the sheets still smelling faintly of him: his cologne, clean and sharp, the ghost of his skin on the pillow where he held me. It should be comforting, but it’s not. The scent twists in my chest, a reminder of everything I can’t have and everything I can’t escape.
Shadows gather in the corners, pressing closer as darkness deepens. I imagine the whole house breathing around me, holding its secrets.
My hands stray again and again to the dresser drawer where I hid the test. It’s silly, I know, but I need to see it, to feel the reality of it. I pull it out, turning the slim plastic over and over in my fingers, heart squeezing at the memory of those two pink lines. Unmistakable, irrevocable. A single breath, a singlemoment, and everything I thought I knew about my life was gone.
The weight of it presses down on me. I try to imagine saying the words aloud, try to picture myself standing in front of Markian, meeting those cold eyes with something like courage. “I’m pregnant.” The syllables taste foreign, sticky and strange on my tongue. Would he be angry? Would he even believe me? Would he call it a weakness, another complication he never asked for?
Or would he see it as leverage? Something he could use, another way to keep me here, trapped and dependent? Would he see the child as a threat, as a mistake? The thought is a knife, twisting, because the fear isn’t just for myself anymore. It’s for the small, silent life growing inside me, not yet visible but already impossibly real.
I run trembling fingers across my belly, not yet rounded, just a little softer than before. I imagine a heartbeat, a promise of something new. Something I want to protect. I close my eyes, pressing my palm over the spot, whispering a wordless prayer.
Markian’s face comes to me again: softer moments, rare and flickering, the way his hands gentled when he thought I wasn’t looking. The night he stroked my hair while I cried, the times he let the mask slip and I saw the ghost of the man he might have been.
Those moments are drowned by violence—by the rage in his eyes during the ambush, by the way he pulled away in the aftermath, colder, more distant, a wall rebuilt stone by stone. The way he barely looked at me when he returned. The way everyone looked at me with suspicion, as if they could sense the truth, the guilt I carry.
I replay it all, every detail. The blood on his shirt when he came home, the stiffness in his voice, the tremor in his hands when he thought I wasn’t watching. Since the night everything went wrong, since Lui’s warning… the words still echo, sharp and hard—“If Markian dies tonight, it’s on you.”—I haven’t dared to approach him. I can barely stand to look at myself in the mirror. How do you tell a man you may have nearly gotten him killed?
The fear sits heavy in my chest. I can’t trust anyone here, not really. Lui sees me as a threat, a complication. The rest of the household pretends I don’t exist. Even Markian—especially Markian—has kept his distance. I hear him sometimes in the halls, the low rumble of his voice in the study, but he never seeks me out. I wonder how long that will last.
I brush a tear from my cheek, anger and shame tangling in my chest. I want to run, to disappear, to erase every trace of myself from this place.
I can’t. I’m trapped by the walls, by the men who guard them, by the life I never chose and the child I never meant to have.
Still, some part of me clings to hope. I want to believe he could care. I want to believe, just for a moment, that if I told him, if I let him see me as I am—terrified, desperate, changed—he might understand. That maybe the man beneath the mask could love the child, or at least let it live. I want to believe in forgiveness. I want to believe in second chances.
The minutes crawl by, each one heavier than the last, and I stay silent. My heart beats in my throat, hope and dread balancing on a knife edge. I stare at the test until the numbers on the clock blur, until the city outside is just another dark, distantworld. I am alone, folded into myself, waiting for something to break. Waiting for him.
When the footsteps finally come, heavy and certain, pausing outside my door, I don’t know whether to pray for rescue… or to fear the end.
I wrap the blanket tighter around myself and stand, crossing to the door on bare feet. My hand hesitates on the handle, nerves crackling, then I twist it open. The hallway is awash in shadows, the golden sconces throwing long lines along the walls. The young maid stands just beyond the threshold
Alina, the girl who risked so much to bring me the test. She slips inside quickly, her eyes darting down the corridor as if afraid to be seen. She’s pale, lips pressed tight, her hands worrying the edge of her apron.
She closes the door with trembling fingers, then turns to face me, voice pitched to the barest whisper. “I overheard something,” she says, almost afraid to speak the words. “After the meeting, when the men were drinking… Markian was with them. They were laughing. He—” She stops, swallows, gathers herself. “He said—he said if you ever betray him, or if he gets bored of you, he wouldn’t hesitate. He said he’d kill you.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. For a second, I can’t breathe. My chest goes tight, vision blurring at the edges, the floor seeming to shift beneath my feet. It’s as if the world has suddenly gone out of focus, every line wavering.
I manage to choke out a quiet, broken, “Thank you.” I don’t know what else to say. What comfort is left, when the worst is spoken aloud?
The maid’s eyes shine with worry. She hesitates, then squeezes my hand, gentle but fierce, desperate. “I’m so sorry,”she whispers, voice thick with fear. “I thought you should know. I… I hope you find a way out.”
With one last nervous glance down the hall, she slips through the door and is gone, leaving me adrift in a sea of darkness and cold.
I sit on the edge of the bed, numb. I replay her words, over and over, as if there’s a way to soften their edges with repetition.“He’d kill you. If you get boring. If you know too much.”Each syllable lands with a dull thud, panic squeezing tighter and tighter around my throat. I can hardly remember to breathe.
