Page 39 of The Bratva's Secret Baby
The woman smiles again, sympathy softening her eyes.
“Doctor M is down the street,” she says. “Women go there.”
“Women?” I echo, my voice barely there.
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “Wives and mistresses both.” She takes a slow drag from her cigarette, like it’s something that happens every day.
I count backward, fast and silent, standing there in the stairwell. The missed cycle I hadn’t noticed. I tell myself it’s stress, travel, even fear settling late. My body has always slipped under pressure, and pressure has followed me for years.
I watch the symptoms for days, waiting for them to fade. When a second week passes and nothing changes, no bleeding, no relief, I decide to take her advice. Angela, the cleaning woman.
I don’t tell Dominik. Not because I doubt him. I’ve had too many decisions made for me already. I want this one in my hands first.
Doctor M’s clinic doesn’t advertise. The women who go there know where to find it. Wives, mistresses, women whose names appear beside powerful men’s on paper but never in conversation.
I book under my borrowed identity and pay in cash. When I ask for discretion, the receptionist only nods and slides a clipboard across the counter without looking up.
I sit in the waiting room with other women. Some don’t talk, eyes fixed on the floor. A young girl sits in the corner. She scrolls her phone over and over and chews gum nonstop. I stare at her long artificial nails, painted the color of blood.
After a while, a nurse opens the door a crack and says, “The doctor will see you now.”
Doctor M is behind a small desk, papers everywhere, a laptop pushed to one side, a few pill bottles near her elbow. She doesn’t soften her voice. She checks me, then gives me the facts and tells me to come back in two weeks. She reaches for a form and writes out several prescriptions.
“Considering you’re keeping the baby,” she says, dry and direct.
I walk home with my thoughts pulling in too many directions to follow. When I come in, Dominik is already there, standing at the stove.
“I waved at you,” he says without turning, hearing me before he looks.
“When?”
“You were walking down the street. You didn’t see me. You were staring straight ahead like you were somewhere else.” He pauses. “Where did you go?”
“I didn’t notice,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
I move to one of the rooms and lock the door behind me. I need time to put this together. For now, I don’t tell him.
Pregnant.
The word won’t settle. It collides with everything else and leaves nothing where it was. I press my palm to my stomach, then pull it away, like I’ve done something I’m not allowed to touch yet.
My breathing keeps changing on me. Too fast. Too shallow. Then suddenly slow, like my body forgets what it’s meant to do. I picture something small where there was nothing before, and the pressure in my chest forces me to sit down on the bed.
I try to think ahead and can’t get past tomorrow. A baby doesn’t fit into borrowed names, packed bags, exits mapped in advance. My parents are gone to me. I vanished after my husband’s funeral and crossed the council when I should have bowed. There’s no help waiting if I reach for it.
A laugh slips out before I can stop it. It sounds wrong in the still room. A moment later, my eyes burn, and I press my knuckles against them until it passes.
Boy or girl?The question arrives without asking. If it’s a boy, I flinch before I know why. Markov’s face rises in my mind, his temper, his voice, the way he filled a room with hate.
No.
It can’t be his.
The timing doesn’t lie. Weeks, not months. Days, not years. Markov barely touched me toward the end. Dominik did. The memory warms my skin and knots my stomach at the same time.
The council can never know.
If they think I’m carrying Markov’s child, the baby becomes an inheritance. A handle. Something to bargain with when it suits them. If they realize the child isn’t his, then I become a problem and Dominik becomes a threat who stepped out of line.
