Page 51 of Pregnant with Bratva Twins
I grit my teeth. “I’m not scaring them,” I snap, too loud, too harsh.
Lui just shakes his head, bouncing the girls gently on his knees. “They’re kids, Markian. They want to feel safe. You stand there like a general at inspection. Try smiling. Or”—he drops his voice—“just sit. Let them bring you something. A toy, a question. That’s how you win them.”
I stalk into the hallway, leaving the nursery behind. My footsteps echo in the marble corridor, my heart pounding with something wild and wounded. I pace back and forth, replaying every decision that led me here. I wanted them back. Demanded it. Fought for it. But I never expected it to feel like this.
All the years I spent searching, I pictured a reunion with tears and relief, some kind of forgiveness. Instead, the girls search the halls for familiarity, their voices always asking for “mama,” never “papa.” I am a stranger to them. Worse, I am the man who took them from everything they knew.
I lean against the wall, pinching the bridge of my nose, trying to steady my breathing. I hear laughter from the nursery—Sofia squealing, Liana’s voice following, Lui answering with ajoke. The ache in my chest sharpens. I have no idea how to reach them. I know how to protect, to threaten, to win.
I don’t know how to love gently, to win trust, to make small girls want to run into my arms.
Lui joins me a moment later, closing the nursery door gently behind him. He watches me in silence, arms folded, not smirking now.
“You don’t have to be their enemy, you know,” he says quietly. “They’ll come around. Kids are like that, but you can’t force them.”
I stare at the wall, jaw clenched. “How do I fix it?”
Lui’s expression softens further. “Be present. Sit with them. Let them talk. Let them see you’re not just the man who took them from their mother.”
I close my eyes. “She hates me.”
He shakes his head. “She’s scared. She’s hurt. You’re both angry, but it’s not about you two now. It’s about the girls. Don’t let them pay for your mistakes.”
I nod, the words hitting harder than any bullet ever has.
When Lui goes back into the nursery, I stay in the hallway, staring at the portraits on the walls: men with hard faces and cold eyes, my ancestors, every one of them a stranger to their own children.
Not this time, I promise myself. Not with Liana. Not with Sofia.
***
Later, I’m halfway down the hall, lost in the ache of what I don’t know how to fix, when I see her. Through the wide archthat opens onto the garden, the sunlight catches in her hair, turning it the color of honey. She’s crouched in the grass, her back to the window, one arm around Sofia as she tries to wrestle the little girl’s zipper closed. Liana stands beside them, bunny in hand, head tipped as she watches her mother’s careful hands.
Jessa laughs softly, just a wisp of sound, but it slides through the glass and down the corridors of this house like it belongs here. That familiar floral scent is in the air again, clinging to the curtains and the carpet, settling on my skin the way it always did. She’s wearing old jeans and a sweater, hair piled up in a messy knot, but she looks as she always has: out of place and impossibly right, beautiful and sharp, a wildflower pushing up through stone.
For a moment, I forget to breathe. My hands curl into fists at my sides. She’s here—she had to be. The girls are too small to be left alone, too frightened, too uncertain in this place full of strangers and cold marble. It was never a question. If I brought them here, she’d come too.
I hadn’t let myself imagine the reality of her in my house again, her presence so fierce it makes everything else look faded and wrong.
I watch as she leans forward, her voice low, murmuring something that makes Sofia smile. Liana tugs at her sleeve, impatient, and Jessa looks up.
For a split second, our eyes lock across the garden and the long reach of the entry hall. Everything slows. The world shrinks to that thread between us: memory, regret, want, and the white-hot fury that always sits just under my skin when it comes to her.
She breaks the gaze first. Of course she does. Looks back at the child, smoothing Sofia’s hair, steadying Liana’s hand on her bunny. That small act—the turning away—lands like a slap.
I can feel my jaw clench, muscles straining as I force myself to stay still. I want to go to her. I want to drag her inside, demand she look at me, demand she explain how she managed to slip so far beyond my reach for so long. I want to shake her for stealing my daughters, for living a life without me, for making me a stranger to my own blood.
I don’t move. I watch her, every nerve alive with the memory of her body under my hands, the way she used to stare at me in bed—afraid, and wanting, and refusing to let go. I remember her defiance, the way her voice would rise when she thought I was being unreasonable. She always pushed back, always questioned, always burned with something I could never quite extinguish.
That defiance is still there. Even now, with the weight of this place pressing down on her, she doesn’t bow. She won’t, not for me, not for anyone.
Jessa in my house is a disruption. She’s a crack in the order, a reminder of everything I tried to control and everything I lost. She is danger. Every part of her—her stubbornness, her fire, her love for the girls—pulls at the threads I’ve tried to weave back together since the moment I forced her into that car. She unsettles me, shakes the foundations of this empire I rebuilt brick by bloody brick.
Yet, I can’t look away. I stand in the shadow of the arch, heart pounding, unable to step forward and unable to retreat. She glances up again, just for a second, eyes wide and wary. The bruise of our history sits between us. I want to demand forgiveness. I want to make her admit she was wrong to run. Iwant to ask her if she ever thought about coming back, if she ever missed the parts of me that weren’t all violence and cold orders.
I watch her lips move. She says something gentle, something soothing as she helps Liana zip her coat. The little girl leans in, pressing her face to Jessa’s shoulder, and for an instant, Jessa closes her eyes.
She’s tired. I see it in the line of her jaw, the set of her mouth. Tired, but here. Because she has to be. Because she loves them. Because, despite everything, I brought her back to the one place she never wanted to return.
