“Is it speaking yet?” he asked, voice low and hopeful, threaded with the faintest tease.
I laughed, the sound soft and unguarded, threading my fingers through his damp hair. “It’s four months, Dmitri. The baby is barely the size of an avocado. You won’t feel kicks for another month or two.”
He didn’t move. Just closed his eyes and stayed there anyway, breathing slowly, like the act of listening grounded him—like I was oxygen and this moment was the only place he could fully exhale.
Watching him like this still stole my breath.
Three weeks after we’d settled into the villa, I’d stood alone in the bathroom at dawn, sunlight barely creeping through the shutters, staring down at the pregnancy test with shaking hands. Two pink lines. Clear. Undeniable. My knees had nearly buckled.
Terror and hope had collided inside me so violently I’d had to grip the sink to stay upright.
I’d rehearsed the words a hundred times in my head—how I’d tell him, how I’d soften it, how I’d brace myself in case joy wasn’t his first reaction.
Dmitri wanted children, yes—but wanting and being ready weren’t always the same thing. Not after everything we’d survived.
But the man who’d woken beside me every morning since Greece had not been the same man who once ruled my life through fear and distance.
This Dmitri was quieter. Watchful. Almost... devotional.
Sacrificial in ways that still stunned me.
Once, barely a month after we arrived, he’d been deep into negotiations over an eight-figure arms deal—numbers scrolling across a screen, lawyers and brokers filling the room—when the buyer made an offhand remark about “keeping women in line.” The words were said casually, like a joke.
Dmitri hadn’t raised his voice. He hadn’t argued.
He’d simply stood, shut his laptop, and walked out.
By nightfall, the man was blacklisted across every Volkov channel worldwide. Contracts voided. Access erased.
Dmitri came home late, dropped to his knees in front of me without being asked, and pressed his forehead to my thighs.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said hoarsely. “I should never have done business with anyone who thinks like that. Ever.”
Another time, an old associate from his New York days—too drunk, too stupid—had laughed and asked if I was “still putting out after everything.”
Dmitri had broken his jaw with one clean punch.
No hesitation. No warning.
But when he came home that night, his hands had been shaking—not with rage, but with fear. Fear that I’d see him as the monster again.
I’d held him on the couch, his face buried in my neck, until the tremors faded and his breathing evened out.
And the jealousy... God.
The way his hand tightened around mine when other men looked too long.
The way his jaw locked, eyes darkening, until I leaned close and whispered, “I’m yours,” just to feel him relax. Or the night at the charity gala when a waiter smiled at me a second too long, and Dmitri pulled me into an empty hallway—pressed me against the wall, kissed me until my lipstick smeared and my knees went weak, murmuring “mine” over and over like a vow carved into stone.
Possessive. Yes.
But never cruel. Never controlling.
So when I finally showed him the test—heart in my throat, fingers trembling—he didn’t pause. Didn’t question. Didn’t hesitate for even a heartbeat.
He lifted me off the ground despite my startled protest about my weight, spun me once in a slow, dizzy circle, and buried his face in my neck like he needed to anchor himself to something real.
“Vanya’s going to have a sibling,” he’d rasped, voice thick and undone. “And we can have as many as you want after this one. As many as you’ll give me.”