Page 30 of Bratva Baby

9

SOFIYA

That night, sleep never really comes. I drift for a few minutes at a time, then wake with my mind already running. By morning, I call in sick. It’s too loud by noon, and my hands need something useful to do, so I decide to cook for myself for the first time in a while.

The grocery is five minutes from my place. On the first pass, I fill my basket with bread, ham, cheese, cola, and a cranberry pie. Then I stop, stare at it, and walk every aisle again to put it all back. The second time through, I choose fresh vegetables, fruit, eggs, and milk.

I read every label before I set anything down in the basket. At the register, I add a kunafa date chocolate from the display as a treat.

Nausea hits the second I step outside.

I drop the bag and turn hard toward the curb, my body folding in on itself as one wave after another tears through me. Then I feel a hand on my back, small and caring enough to make my throat tighten. I want it gone. It stays. When I can breathe again, the woman beside me offers a tissue.

She bends before I can stop her and starts gathering what spilled from the bag onto the pavement. Apples. Eggs that somehow didn’t crack. The milk carton. The stupid chocolate. She brushes dirt off the fruit with the edge of her scarf and sets everything back inside.

“You shouldn’t walk alone if you feel like this,” she says.

“I’m fine now.”

“I have a car,” she says quietly. “I can take you.”

She sees a sick woman with groceries. I see risk. A stranger learning my face, my building, maybe my name if I’m careless. I nod once.

“Thank you.”

She leads me to a little hatchback parked half a block down. I sit stiffly in the passenger seat, tissue still in my hand, and when she asks where I live, I give her an address one block past my building. Such is my life now. I can’t even trust a kind woman without editing the truth first.

She drops me where I tell her. I thank her again. She pats my arm and drives away without even asking my name. I stand there for a second with the grocery bag, then walk the extra block home.

I lock the door once I get inside, set the groceries on the kitchen counter by the sink, and leave them there. Walking straight to the writing desk by the window, I pull the chair out, sit down, and fold over onto the wood. That’s where I break.

I cry hard and loud, face pressed against the cold surface, shoulders shaking with every breath I can’t get under control. The sound tears out of me, ugly and unguarded. I don’t even try to stop it. The desk stays cold, silent, and solid under my arms, and that feels oddly soothing.

I splash water on my face, then more, until my skin feels cooler. The mirror gives me back a drawn face, red eyes, swollen lids, and I whisper to myself that it will be all right, again and again, until the sobbing eases.

Then I change into a thin cotton house dress, pale blue with a faded print at the hem and loose sleeves on my arms. I trade my shoes for soft slippers and pad to the kitchen.

I pour milk into a small saucepan, add sugar, and watch the cream gather as it heats. Then I pour it into a mug and leave it on the counter to cool. After that, I pull paper and a pen from the drawer and sit at the table.

For a while, I just stare at the page and let the facts line up in my head. I can’t go home. I can’t keep reaching for old people every time panic rises, either. Every call carries risk. Every favor builds a chain someone can tug later. My father taught me better than that.

At some point, you stop asking who’ll save you and start asking what’s still in your hands.

Then the thought hits hard enough to stop me. My baby.

My hand goes to my stomach, and I stand so fast, the chair scrapes the floor. In the bathroom mirror, I pull the dress over my head and let it drop to my ankles.

I stand there in my underwear and stare.

My breasts are heavier and feel fuller. My stomach is still flat, still easy enough to hide under the right clothes, but it doesn’t feel the same. There’s a softness there that wasn’t there before, like my body has shifted its center without asking me.

My skin looks different, brighter, even after days of bad sleep and crying. I touch the underside of one breast, then my stomach again, and the feeling that moves through me is worse than fear because some part of it is curiosity.

What’re you doing to your mother, little one? I think and then go completely still because I’ve already started speaking to the child in my head.

I pull the dress back on and go to the chair. Sitting here talking silently to a life I haven’t even figured out how to protect will send me into circles I can’t afford. I need action, lists, and movement. When panic rises, Dochka, my father used to say, put it to work.

I sit back down, smooth the paper flat with my palm, and start writing out exactly what I have. The drive holds copied files from the Leonidov system, and those files show that Maks has been using family freight routes through the Baltic and Finnish lines to move shipments outside the official books.