Page 33 of A Surprise Baby for the Russian

Simon’s jaw grinds, his eyes drilling into the sidewalk. He stays dead silent.

“So do not,” I growl, stepping closer to the headlights, “stand on my lawn with your toys out and tell me to get away from him like I’m some stupid, brainless captive who doesn’t understand her own life.”

Nobody breaths.

The silence is deafening. Slowly, the guns start to lower. Not fast, and certainly not gracefully, but the barrels dip toward the dirt.

Matvei finally looks past my shoulder, his icy gaze locking onto Yakov. The silence between them stretches.

Then Matvei speaks. “We need to talk to him. Alone.”

I turn around. Yakov is leaning against the doorframe, his uninjured arm loose at his side, watching the entire spectacle with those unreadable gray eyes. He looks down at me. I look up at him. I don’t even know what I’m trying to communicate with my eyes anymore—some desperate cocktail of I’m sorry they’re here, and please don’t kill my brothers.

He gives me a microscopic nod. He understands.

I look back at Matvei, my chin lifted high. “Fine,” I say. “But if a single one of you touches him—if you do anything at all to ruin what he’s building—I will never forgive you. Any of you. And that includes you,” I add, pointing a fierce finger at Simon, who actually has the decency to flinch.

I turn around, march past Yakov, and walk straight back into the house.

I don’t look back. I storm into the kitchen, grab the kettle, and slam it under the faucet to fill it. I set it on the stove, turn the burner to high, and plant both of my palms flat against the counter. My hands are trembling violently now, a physical tremor I observe with a weird sense of detachment. The adrenaline is finally dropping, leaving me cold and hollow. I know the feeling. I’ve had plenty of reasons in my life to know what an adrenaline crash feels like. It’ll pass.

I stood in front of the lot of them and defended him.

I brew a mug of tea I have zero intention of drinking and stand alone in the quiet kitchen, waiting for my brothers to finish their back-alley negotiation with my husband. A sudden, sickening wave hits my stomach at the mere thought of them hurting him. Is it strange that I don’t feel ready for this to end yet?

Chapter 17 - Yakov

She is pacing the kitchen when I walk back inside.

The full length of the tile and back, barefoot, wearing the same wrinkled leggings and sweatshirt she stood in out on the lawn. Her dark hair is still a wild halo from sleep, and she’s muttering a stream of curses under her breath that would make a seasoned Bratva soldier blanch. I halt in the doorway and watch her for a beat. I can’t help it. Raya Volkov marched out into the freezing dawn, completely unhinged and bare-soled, and utterly dismantled my father’s lethal smear campaign using nothing but the naked truth and sheer, righteous fury. She did it in front of her own firing squad of a family. And she did it for me.

I have spent my whole goddamn life being the person who stands alone in every single room, and I have zero clue what to do with the fact that she stepped into the light and took a bullet for me. Nobody has ever stood in front of a gun for me. Not once. Not in twenty-nine years. She has no earthly idea what that did to my chest, and I am emphatically not going to tell her. If I do, her stubborn waking mind will find a way to analyze it and argue her way out of it. Besides, what I am feeling right now is too massive, too violent and clear to trap inside words.

She suddenly spins around, her dark eyes flashing. “Well? What did they say?”

“Lunchtime tomorrow,” I tell her, my voice level. “You’re expected back at the Volkov estate by noon. If we don’t show up, they come back. And Matvei made it very clear that if his truck hits this driveway again, I personally receive a bullet through each kneecap before we even start negotiating.”

She stares at me, stunned, and then throws her hands up in the air. “You know they probably need a full-time babysitter more than I need an armed escort, right?”

A low, rough sound scratches at my throat. I almost laugh. The noise almost escapes before I forcefully clamp my jaw shut. She immediately snaps her glare back to me, pointing an accusing finger. “How can you find this funny right now? You were about to laugh.”

“I’m not finding it funny.”

“You were. I saw it. It almost happened.” She is still vibrating with leftover fury, but beneath the sparks, I can see the brutal adrenaline crash finally hitting her. Her chest is slowing down. Her shoulders are dropping by fractions of an inch.

She looks at the stove, watching the kettle she filled begin to whistle. Her hands are trembling against the counter. She needs a place to dump the rest of her nervous energy. I don’t say a word. I step into her space, gently guide her away from the stove, and take over brewing the coffee.

By the time I slide a heavy mug into her hands, the worst of the tremors have burned off. She sits at the kitchen table, lacing both of her hands around the ceramic warmth, tucking her bare feet up onto the chair. She looks exhausted, fierce, and utterly spectacular.

“What happens now, Yakov?” she asks quietly.

“Now we prepare,” I say, leaning against the counter. “Tomorrow, I will take you home. I walk into the lion’s den, stand in front of your brothers, and hand Matvei everything I’ve spent a decade building—the information and the weapons. Names, dates, financial trails enough to bury my father in his own paperwork or put him in the ground. My contacts. My suppliers. Every gun in my yard, and every route that gets more of them into this country.” I officially become a traitor to my own bloodline. Tomorrow, I trade the Mykros name for a Volkov alliance.”

She stays silent, staring deep into the black coffee. When she finally looks up at me, the defiant armor is gone, replaced by a reckless, heavy heat that makes my stomach tighten.

“Can we hide from tomorrow, for today?” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “We have until noon. I don’t want to talk about strategy, or asset sheets, or what my brothers are going to do to you. I want to lock the front door, crawl into that bed, and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist for the next twenty-four hours.”

I look at her—really look at her. I think about my father’s execution threats, and the half-finished data package waiting on my laptop. I think about the massive target that will be painted on my back the second I set foot on Volkov soil. And then I look at my wife, sitting at my table, demanding one final day inside our bubble. “Okay, malysh,” I mutter, the word thick and absolute. “Let’s hide.”