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One of them wants to know about our security, Yuri tells me that evening, phone still in his hand. He’s fishing to see if we’re weakened.

“Tell him what happened to Viktor when he decided we were weak enough to test.”

Yuri delivers the message himself the next day, and when he comes back he gives me a single line. “They won’t be testing anything soon.”

That’s the outcome I wanted. Viktor’s operation is gone, and every pakhan who watched it go understands that my patience was a choice. For years I let them believe I preferred talking, and they won’t make that mistake again.

The last month has rebuilt it into something harder, something that leaves no ambiguity about what happens to anyone who threatens what’s mine. I don’t take pride in that shift exactly. Still, I don’t regret it either, not when the alternative would have meant leaving Harper and the child she’s carrying exposed to exactly the kind of calculation Viktor made about me, a mistake I don’t intend to let anyone else make in the future.

Every evening, regardless of how the day’s work has gone, I come home to Harper.

She’s healing slower than either of us would like; the doctor’s estimate of a week is stretching into something closer to a month before she starts feeling like herself again, but the progress is real even when it’s incremental.

She sleeps through most nights now instead of waking in a cold sweat every few hours. The bruising along her wrists has faded to something barely visible. Her appetite’s returned enough that she finishes full meals without me having to gently push her toward eating more.

Some days are harder than others. I’ve learned to read the shift in her mood before she says anything about it, a quietness that settles over her some afternoons, memories surfacing without warning even months removed from that warehouse.

I don’t push on those days. I stay close, let her set the pace of whatever she needs from me, and trust that the harder days are growing further apart than they were even two weeks ago, a slow but genuine improvement I try to notice and name out loud whenever I can.

Tonight, I find her in the nursery we’ve started setting up, sitting in the rocking chair we picked out together, one hand resting against her stomach the way it always does now, an unconscious habit that’s become as familiar to me as her voice. The room around her is still half finished, paint samples taped to one wall, a crib assembled but not yet made up, small pieces of a life we’re both still learning how to build.

“How was today?” she asks, not looking up from whatever she’s reading.

“Productive.” I don’t elaborate further, and she doesn’t ask me to. We’ve settled into an understanding about which parts of my work she wants full detail on and which parts she trusts me to handle without narrating every piece of it back to her.

“Good.” She holds a handout, and I cross the room to take it, settling onto the arm of the chair beside her. “The baby’s been active tonight. Kicking every time I try to sit still.”

I rest my free hand against her stomach, and within a few seconds I feel it too, a small, insistent pressure against my palm, more solid now than it was even a few weeks ago. Something in my chest loosens every single time this happens, a reminder that underneath everything else this month has demanded of me, this is what all of it has actually been for.

“Someone’s got your temperament already,” Harper says, a tired smile pulling at her mouth. “Stubborn. Doesn’t like sitting still.”

“Could be worse traits to inherit.”

“Could be.” She leans her head against my shoulder, and we sit there together in the quiet nursery, her hand and mine both resting against the same small, insistent proof that whatever this month cost either of us, we’re still here, still moving forward together, one evening at a time.

We stay like that together for a long while, neither of us in any hurry to move, the half-painted walls and unfinished crib somehow more comforting than they should be, proof of a future we’re actively building rather than just hoping for.

Outside this room, the world still holds threats I’ll spend the rest of my life standing guard against. In here, for right now, there’s only this. Her weight against my shoulder. The small, stubborn kicks against my palm. A quiet I fought hard enough to earn that I don’t intend to take a single evening of it for granted.

“We should think about names soon,” she says eventually, voice soft with the very beginning of sleep. “Not tonight. But soon.”

“Soon,” I agree, and mean it fully, already turning the thought over in my head even as her breathing starts to even out beside me, the whole house settling into the kind of peace it hasn’t held in longer than either of us would like to admit.

41

HARPER

Three weeks into recovery, and Artem’s evening visits have become the one part of the day I actually look forward to without reservation. The rest of my days follow a rhythm now: physical therapy in the mornings, rest in the afternoons, small, measured walks whenever my body can manage them, but the evenings belong to him in a way nothing else in this recovery does.

He comes in after dinner most nights, sometimes with paperwork he pretends he needs to finish in my room instead of his study, sometimes with nothing at all beyond the simple fact of wanting to sit with me while the house settles into quiet around us. Tonight, he’s brought neither excuse, just himself, dropping into the chair beside my bed like he’s done every night this week, his tie already loosened, jacket left somewhere else in the house.

“You look tired,” he says, studying my face the way he always does now, cataloging small changes the same close way I used to catalog exits in this house.

“Good tired, for once.” I shift against the pillows, testing the ache in my ribs that’s finally starting to fade into something more manageable. “I walked the length of the hallway twice today without needing to stop and catch my breath.”

“That’s real progress.”

“It felt like it.” I hold his gaze, something warm settling in my chest at the quiet pride in his voice, more meaningful somehow than any grand gesture could be right now. “The doctor says another week, maybe two, before I’m cleared for anything more than short walks.”