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His head lifted, and his anguish was a blazing-hot pain he couldn’t hide anymore. “The doctors said you were lucky that you didn’t break anything. Your injuries are mostly cuts andbruises, and once the pain medication wears off you will hurt all over your body.”
I wracked my brain, trying to catch a glimpse of last night in my memory vault. Then it hit me.
“Blood,” I whispered. “I remember laying in a puddle of blood. Why was there so much blood if it was only cuts and bruises?” It didn’t make sense.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, “but you’ve had a miscarriage.”
A sledgehammer would have hit me less hard. “No.” I was on the pill—what were the chances of it not working?
He hesitated for a second. “It was still very early stages.” He took a breath and gave me a strange look. “Did you know?”
That I’d been pregnant? My hand went to my stomach. I had been carrying a life inside of me? Then I noticed the stretched silence.
“Oh, God, you think I knew and didn’t tell you?”
He looked away. “I thought that maybe you didn’t want it. With my DNA, I wouldn’t blame you.”
The self-deprecation in his voice broke my heart. A muffled sob escaped me.
With a curse, Kristoff lowered the protective railing and eased his body into the bed next to me.
“I didn’t know.”
He kissed the top of my head. “It’s okay, I shouldn’t have asked. This is all too much already, without me piling my insecurity onto you.”
It was the first time he admitted he was insecure about anything. Any other time or day, I would have considered that a breakthrough moment in our relationship, but not today. I couldn’t believe I’d lost our baby. It felt as if something had been snatched out of my grasp, and I’d only known I’d wanted it after it was gone. I told myself that this hadn’t been a plannedpregnancy, that I shouldn’t mourn something I didn’t know I had in the first place.
Then why do you feel so gutted?
I burrowed into him. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
Another silence followed. He just took me in his arms and didn’t say a word as I cried into his shirt.
25.
KATYA
Today I was finally leaving the hospital. I stood beside my bed, and checked my hospital room for anything I might have forgotten.
I spent seven days in the hospital because Kristoff wouldn’t let me leave before I went through every possible medical test known to mankind. I didn’t protest. There was a determination in his stance, as if he needed to do this. My Bratva kingpin clearly carried a mantle of guilt on his shoulders.
I thought about Aslanov, as I put my pjs in my bag.
He had called every day, and we talked for hours, but he didn’t visit. He didn’t explain why, and I didn’t ask. We both pretended like he was a regular father instead of a hated figure whose life would be in danger the moment he left his fortress. He never talked about the future, or much about the present either. It was as if he was stuck in this melancholic version of the past, where he reminisced of his time with my mother, and the way things were before he was sent to a gulag. I realized that he lived in a prison of his own making. I refused to do the same.
So, I focused on beauty, on maintaining a cheerful disposition, even if it killed me. It helped that my hospital room had turned into a flower shop. It was filled with bouquets, from people like Yuri, Viking and Elena, Baran and Lily, and the twins.
The door opened, and Mia and Yuri came in the room. They had called every day too, but Kristoff hadn’t allowed any visitors. I suspected he had guessed I was too weepy to see anyone except for the medical staff. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that he was right.
Yuri gave me a careful hug, then looked around the room. “The boss man is making a call and sent me up to get your luggage. What do you want to do with all the flowers?”
I grabbed my handbag off the bed. “I already arranged for them to be donated to the cancer ward.”
“Good call,” he said, after which he carried my bags outside.
Mia was the next to hug me. “I’m so glad to see you again. Kristoff was being such a papa bear over you. Not that I blame him. I mean, the man was a mess when he saw you lying there.” She shivered. “It was absolute mayhem. He single-handedly closed down the club for the night.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, my strength already seeping away. My body was blue and purple all over, and I still needed recovery time.
