Chapter 12

“Sir? Sir! You can’t just go back there!”

“Room Five, right?” At the nurse’s widened eyes, I know I’ve guessed the right one. “Thanks.”

Not my fault they left the computer unattended.

I’m even less impressed with the condition of the hallway as I charge towards the examination room. This place hasn’t been updated in, what, thirty years? That, paired with the shit security and how fucking easy it was to read Daphne’s medical records just sprawled across the desk…

Well, I’m in no mood to negotiate.

“What the hell?!”

I shut the door behind me just as quickly as I opened it, fully prepared to duck any flying specimen cups or whatever Daphne launches at me. “You⁠—”

“What the actual fuck?!” She scrambles to tug the threadbare blanket over her body with one arm while she waves me off with the other. “Get out!”

She glances over at the perplexed nurse, her features shifting from shock to rage to embarrassment. “I am so sorry–I didn’t think he’d just barge in like this.”

Again, she whips on me. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?!”

For a brief moment, I’m a little distracted. The sight of Daphne reclining on the medical table, her blouse undone and the blanket draped over her curves, manages to reroute some blood flow from my head to my… other head.

As does the sight of her bare stomach, swollen slightly in a way I hadn’t noticed before.

I swallow back my baser emotions and remind myself that I’m pakhan and I’m here to lay down a few ground rules. Rule Number One: no one excludes me from my own family.

“This is my baby, too,” I growl to the nurse as much as to Daphne. “You promised you’d let me know when your next appointment would be, and I promised to be by your side through every second of it. Guess which one of us lied?”

Daphne looks away, a blush spreading across her cheeks. She has the decency to look sheepish, if nothing else.

The pakhan in me is determined to teach this woman a thing or two about loyalty.

The man in me is determined to show her what it means to be protected.

“I’m late to this one,” I acknowledge as I stride over to her, “but I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Whatever anger Daphne may have felt at my intrusion vanishes. In its place is disbelief.

Who are you? I wonder. What’s been done to you?

The nurse checks her clipboard for the eightieth time and shrugs. “Sounds good to me. Shall we take a look?”

I step aside enough to give her plenty of room to squirt the jelly on Daphne’s stomach, but I plant a hand on Daphne’s shoulders so she knows I mean what I say. She stiffens but says nothing, though she steals a few uncertain glances up at me whenever she thinks I might not be looking at her.

How could I not look at her? She’s beautiful. And she’s carrying my child.

“There we go.”

A sound fills the room. Low at first, then louder and louder as the nurse moves a paddle over Daphne’s jelly-covered stomach. A screen in front of us glows with a bluish-green hue as pixels struggle to fit together.

Until they do.

And then shapes form. A head. A face. Fingers.

“Is that…?” I can’t form any more words. My mouth is too dry. My lungs have stopped working altogether.

“What you’re hearing is your baby’s heartbeat,” the nurse explains. “And this, on the screen? This is your baby.”

My baby.

Our baby.

I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime. I’ve experienced far more than most do by the time they’re thirty. I’ve lost family and friends, seen good men die and worse men laugh over their corpses.

But nothing has ever brought me to my knees.

Nothing like this.

My baby.

“Are you… gonna… say something?”

Daphne’s muttered voice pulls me back and reminds me that I’m supposed to be a man with his shit together. I nod. “Looks good,” I croak.

Daphne smiles tightly at the nurse. “Can we get a color printout?”

The nurse forms a tight smile and shakes her head. “Sorry. That tech isn’t in our budget yet. I can grab you black and white, of course.”

“We’ll take it,” Daphne says. She shoots me a warning glance as if I was about to say something to embarrass her.

Which I was. This place is deplorable. It’s the twenty-first century and they can’t afford a color printer? Or a decent paint job? The wall is chipping in one corner and I’m pretty sure that’s black mold in the ceiling tiles.

Daphne deserves a better doctor.

She needs a better doctor.

“Next time,” I growl in her ear when the nurse moves into the adjoining room, “we’re going to my doctor.”

“It’s cute you think there’s going to be a ‘next time,’” Daphne hisses back.

I look at her. My blood runs cold. “Explain yourself.”

“You got lucky figuring out where I was.” She adjusts herself on the table and nudges away from my touch. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you here.”

I stand tall and glower down at her. “You act as if I’m not allowed to be in my child’s life. Our child’s life.”

“And you’re acting as if it’s totally fine to just raise my baby in your fucked-up world of Anything You Say Goes.” She tucks the blanket around her more. “Which it’s not.”

Ah. So that’s what this is about.

I lean down so my face fills her vision. “If you think for one second that you will get to do anything concerning this child without my explicit permission, I suggest you think again, moya plamya. That’s a piece of me inside of you. I will decide its fate.”

Daphne opens her mouth to say something else, but the nurse comes back in with a broad smile and a copy of the ultrasound for each of us. “So,” she chirps, “would you like to know what you’re having?”

Both of us still.

To my surprise, Daphne looks up at me. “What do you think? Should we?”

The nurse waits for our unified nod before she smiles. “From everything we can see, she’s a healthy baby girl.”

A girl.

We’re having a girl.

I’m going to have a daughter.

A daughter who looks just like her mother. Or just like Mama, or Sofiya. Maybe a little mix of both. Whatever she looks like, I know she will be beautiful.

Without thinking, I press my hand to Daphne’s swollen womb. It’s not so big—just enough to see and feel the fullness of life growing there. Our daughter. My daughter.

Something flutters beneath my palm.

“Did you feel that?” Daphne asks me. She sucks in a sharp breath and sits up a bit more, rubbing her hand next to mine.

Again, another flutter.

“Is that…?”

Daphne’s eyes well up with happy tears. “This is the first time I’ve been able to feel her.”

I don’t know what washes over me. All I know is that it’s intoxicating, and debilitating, and only my hand on her stomach and my arm around her keep me from falling to my knees in the most literal sense.

At some point, our fingers intertwine. We still wait for the flutters and kicks, but with joined hands that seem to somehow calm our baby girl. Soon, she’s still, which the nurse informs us can happen when she feels safe and falls asleep.

I let my hand linger there for a moment longer than I should. I don’t know this woman as well as I need to, or as well as I should.

But I know that I will move Heaven and Earth for her.

And for our daughter.