Page 112 of Bratva Baby

Sofiya groans. “Don’t make the face.”

“What face?”

“The face. The one where you look like you’re about to declare war on gravity for touching your daughter.”

I spread my hand carefully over the curve of her stomach. “Gravity has been disrespectful.”

“She’s not even born, and you’re already impossible.”

“She deserves standards.”

“She deserves a father who doesn’t threaten natural forces.”

“She can have both.”

Sofiya laughs, then winces and presses a hand against the underside of her belly. I straighten at once. “Pain?”

“No. Just pressure. She’s been sitting on my bladder for three weeks and has no manners, which I assume comes from your side.”

“Her strategy comes from yours.”

“Fair.”

The doctor says the baby could come any day, which turns my house into an armed maternity ward. Sofiya hates this, so naturally, she uses it.

She sends men for mangoes and cherries at midnight. She demands fresh bread from a specific bakery because Zhenya mentioned it once. She makes Kolya reorganize files while she sits in my office chair and tells him his tabs are ugly.

Kolya takes all of it with the grim dignity of a man who once survived a knife fight in Odessa and now fears a pregnant woman with a pencil.

One night, he sets a folder down and says, “I miss being shot at.”

Sofiya doesn’t look up. “Keep complaining and I’ll assign you color codes.”

He turns to me. “Control your wife.”

I smile. “No.”

Sofiya looks up then. “Smart man.”

By the time the first hard rain of the season hits Moscow, most of the dangerous loose ends are tied or bleeding somewhere private. Maks is still alive, though Grigor has him moved from the family residence to an old property east of the city, guarded by men who report to nobody but him. The official line says Maks is under medical supervision after exhaustion and family strain.

Sofiya reads that notice and laughs so hard she has to sit down.

“Medical supervision,” she says. “That’s generous.”

“His hand is broken, his routes are gone, and his men sold him out by the dozen. Maybe he does feel tired.”

She presses a napkin to her mouth, still smiling. “You’re awful.”

“You love me.”

“That remains inconvenient.”

I sit beside her on the sofa and lift her feet into my lap. She lets me, which means she’s either exhausted or getting better at accepting care without treating it as a hostile takeover. I rub the arch of one foot while she leans back and closes her eyes.

“Don’t get smug,” she murmurs.

“I haven’t said anything.”