Page 75 of The Bratva's Secret Baby
“And the weather is?”
“Changing,” he says. The line clicks dead.
The ledger. I’d hoped it died with Markov. It’s been sitting there all this time, heavy and patient, waiting for the right moment to matter again. And now it does.
My phone lights up. One message. I open it.
Hello, this is the clinic following up on recent lab work for Mila. The doctor would like to schedule an additional confirmatory test. Please call us at your earliest convenience.
I read it twice. Then I glance up. Ana’s on the other side of the glass door, still as stone.
21
ANA
He knows. I see it in the way he straightens, his hand lowering the phone slowly. His eyes find mine and hold. What gets me is how fast it happens. His eyes change for a second, caught off guard, and then his face settles. Whatever the message says, he’s ready to move.
Mila sits on the floor with her crayons spread around her. She draws a wide blue sea, a yellow sun with lines shooting out, and a sword with a crooked handle. She talks to herself, a sound she makes when she’s trying to think about where she is. I keep my hand moving, spoon after spoon, cereal and milk, the rhythm enough to keep my hands busy.
Dominik is still outside. I don’t go to him. I don’t ask what the message says. I already know what it could be. He opens the door and comes back inside. The glass slides shut behind him, and the house feels tighter. He doesn’t look at Mila right away. He looks at me.
I stand and carry the empty bowl to the sink. He comes in and stops beside me. I set the bowl down and turn on the tap. Waterfills the basin. He watches me for a moment, his arms folded, waiting.
“They want us back,” he says when I don’t give him anything. His voice is even. That scares me more than if he’d raised it. “They flagged something in her panel,” he says. “It’s not urgent, but it’s not clean either. Enough to call us back to take another sample.”
I nod once and keep washing the bowl. My hand stays steady. Dominik reaches over and turns off the tap, then takes the bowl from me and sets it on the drying rack.
I reach for the cloth because my hands need something to do, but he stops me. His hands come to my shoulders, holding me there without pressure.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s just a test.”
“To you, it is,” I say, shrugging his hands off and picking the bowl back up. Another blood draw means more forms, more names written down, and another stretch of time where someone sits across a desk and looks too closely.
“I know you don’t like it,” he says. “I don’t either.”
“Do you?” I ask, and this time, I look at him properly, searching his face for something that might make this easier.
“Do we really have to go today?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says without hesitation.
A small sound comes from the doorway before either of us moves. Mila is standing there in her pajamas, one hand on the doorframe, the other clutching the sword.
“Mommy?” she says, unsure.
“It’s nothing, baby,” I say. “We just need to go to the hospital one more time.”
“No. Not there, Mommy,” she says, dropping the sword and running into me.
I bend and wrap my arms around her, holding her close enough that she can feel my breath against her hair. She presses her face into my shoulder, her small hands gripping my shirt, and I stay like that until her body stops shaking.
“It’s just another check,” I say, keeping my voice light because that’s what she needs from me right now. “Then we’ll come back home, make hot cookies, and watch a cartoon together. You can pick which one.”
She pulls back just enough to look at my face, studying it the way she does when she’s deciding whether to believe me. After a moment, she nods and wipes her nose on her sleeve without apology.
“Mila’s going to tell the nurse to go home,” she says, serious now.
“Right, Mommy?”
