Page 90 of Forced By an Obsessive Bratva Stalker

She grabbed it immediately.

He went completely still.

“Didn’t I tell you it was gonna be a girl?” My voice was weak and faint.

“I never doubted you,” he replied, kissing my forehead. “She’s so beautiful. Just like her mother.”

My heart was warmer than it had ever been.

I watched something cross his face—not a smile, exactly, but close. The closest I’d ever seen him come to being unguarded.

“I’m sure she’ll be just as strong too,” he added.

“Of course she will be.” My voice came out rough. “She’s your daughter. She’s a Tarasov.”

He looked at me, his lips curling into a charming smile.

“Elena,” I said. “I want to call her Elena.” A pause. “If that’s all right with you.”

He looked down at her, then back at me. “Elena Tarasova.”

“Yes.” I smiled, my cheeks still aching from all those hours of groaning and pushing.

A beat of silence.

“It suits her,” he said.

The room quieted. The medical team filtered out. The estate settled back into its particular hush.

Rodion placed Elena carefully in the bassinet beside the bed. He stood over her for a moment, watching her sleep, his expression making my chest ache in a way I hadn’t expected.

Then he turned to me.

“Thank you,” he said.

Just that. Two words. Quiet and direct.

No performance. No calculation behind it. Just a man saying the only true thing he had left to say at that moment.

My throat tightened. “Don’t make it weird, Tarasov.”

The corner of his mouth moved. “Too late.”

I lay there after he stepped out, Elena sleeping beside me, and let myself feel the full weight of everything at once.

Meridian Solutions. The surveillance. The café. The fake name. The office. The estate. The countdown. The wedding. The months in between.

All of it.

It all came down to this particular moment when my bundle of joy arrived.

Sitting in that quiet room with my daughter sleeping three feet away, I understood something I’d been resisting for a long time.

I found love, peace, safety, and happiness in the same man I once hated for ruining my life.

He came back an hour later with tea I hadn’t asked for and set it on the table beside me without comment.

I watched him settle into the chair beside the bassinet. His jacket was gone, sleeves rolled to the elbows, hair slightly out of place for the first time in recent memory. He looked, for once, like a man who had simply lived through something rather than managed it.