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Lev calmly files my checkup report into a drawer, as though he expected this exact scene. “Give it up, Maksim,” he says.

“I will not,” Maksim says, the veins standing out along his neck.

“She doesn’t even have time to answer your messages,” Lev says.

“You have crammed every hour of her days,” Maksim accuses, jabbing a finger toward the drawer with my report in it. “And you are using Milo to do it. You know she cannot say no to anything that puts a smile on that kid.”

Lev’s gaze goes cold as a warning. The rage in him is not fire; it is ice.

“Family of three,” Maksim mocks. He has the nerve to say it with a straight face. “Did you tell her about Yelena while you were playing house, all loved up?”

The temperature in the room drops several degrees.

“At least I never touched another woman while I was with her,” Lev says. “Unlike you and Vanessa. That was your mistake, brother, not mine.”

Maksim’s face freezes over, almost catatonic.

“I never once cheated on her,” Lev goes on. “Not while she wore my shirt to sleep. You did, in her own bed, with her closest friend.”

“Enough, both of you,” I say. “That is fucking enough.”

“She forgave me for that,” Maksim says, lying through his teeth.

“I didn’t forgive you,” I correct him.

“For a chance, then,” Maksim backpedals, guilt making him answer quickly. “She gave me a chance.”

I can see the two of them clearly for what they are. Lev is a weathered stone wall, though even fortresses fall, and Maksim is a blade that swings before it thinks.

“There is no such thing as absolute fairness here,” Lev says. “She is carrying my child.”

The room goes silent.

“Blood is not everything,” Maksim says. “I can be the father that child needs.”

Lev’s eyes turn flat and dangerous, the eyes of a man who would put his own dogs down. “Say that again,” he says, his voice measured, cold.

Maksim doesn’t back down, his wiry frame rigid.

They step toward each other until barely a fist’s distance separates them, and I raise my hand between them.

“My child, the first of my bloodline, will know exactly who the father is,” Lev says. “And you, brother, are going to learn where your boundaries are before you say another word about raising my child.”

“You have no right to lecture anyone about boundaries,” Maksim throws back. “After you locked her away and decided her whole life for her?”

“After you tripped her in front of an entire room and laughed while she bled?” Lev fires back.

“Both of you, shut up,” I scream, loud enough that both their heads snap toward me, and I grab the throw pillow off the couch and hurl it as hard as I can. It catches Maksim square in the chest and drops at Lev’s feet, and rage burns straight through me, hot and clean and long overdue. I’m done being the quiet martyr in the corner of every room these two share.

“I’m not a territory the two of you are fighting over,” I say, and I stalk toward them. “I’m not a prize you win with bigger flowers or more money or a fuller calendar.”

I round on Maksim first. “You don’t get to say a word.” Then I turn to Lev. “And you don’t get to use this baby to score points against your brother.”

“This child is a child first,” I say. “Not a weapon you point at Maksim.”

The coldness recedes out of Lev’s eyes, slow, as if I reached in and turned it off by hand. He looks, for a second, almost ashamed, which is not a thing I ever thought I would see on his face.

“And you,” I say to Maksim, “cannot erase everything you did by suddenly declaring yourself a father. I never agreed to be with you. I never agreed to let you replace anyone.”