Page 200 of Filthy Promises

“You’re experiencing what we call a placental abruption,” the doctor explains. “The placenta has partially separated from the uterine wall. That’s what’s causing the bleeding and pain.”

I swallow hard, my throat like sandpaper lined with razor blades. “Is my baby going to be okay?”

“With proper care and monitoring, yes. The separation is minor, relatively speaking, but it’s serious enough that you’ll need to be on strict bed rest for the remainder of your pregnancy.”

“Whatever she needs,” Vince says immediately. “The best care. Private room. Specialists.”

The doctor nods. It’s obviously not her first rodeo with wealthy patients making demands. “We’ll get her stabilized and admitted. I’d like to keep her here for at least a few days for observation. Let me go get the paperwork started.”

After she leaves, the room falls silent except for the steadywhoosh-whooshof our baby’s heartbeat. All I can do is blink up at the ceiling as I try to make room in my brain for the enormity of everything that just happened.

“I thought we were going to lose the baby,” I whisper finally.

Vince’s fingers tighten around mine. “I thought I was going to lose you both.”

Something in his tone makes me turn my head to look at him. No, not his tone—it’s that his fingers are quivering.

“Hey,” I say softly. “The doctor said we’re both going to be okay.”

He nods, but the fear doesn’t leave his eyes. “I know. I know that.”

But he doesn’t sound convinced.

A little while later, I’m settled in a private room that looks more like a luxury hotel suite than a hospital. Leave it to Vince to secure the best accommodations on Planet Earth in under an hour.

The bleeding has stopped, the edge of the pain dulled by medication. I’m exhausted but too wired to sleep. Vince slumps in a chair beside my bed, still wearing his wedding suit minus the tie. He hasn’t left my side once.

“You should go home,” I tell him. “Get some rest. I’m fine now.”

“Not a fucking chance, Rowan.”

I sigh, too tired to argue. “At least take the other bed. That chair looks like medieval torture.”

“I’m fine where I am.”

There’s a crackle in his voice that makes me frown. “Vince, what’s going on? The doctor said the baby and I are stable. We can breathe, you know.”

He buries his face in his hands, a gesture so uncharacteristically vulnerable that I sit upright. “I know that,” he mumbles into his palms.

“Then why do you look like you’re still expecting the worst?”

For a long moment, he says nothing. Then: “My mother died in childbirth.”

I freeze. Say nothing.

“I was thirteen,” he continues, his voice distant, his face still hidden. “She was pregnant with my sister. There were complications. Bleeding, like yours. By the time they got her to the hospital, it was too late. For both of them.”

My heart aches for him—for the teenage boy who lost his family in one fell swoop, for the man still carrying that wound. “Vince, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“How could you? I never told you.” He lifts his head from his hands and his eyes meet mine. They’re boiling blue. “My father was different after she died. Harder. Colder. He transferred all his hopes onto me. The only thing that mattered was the Bratva, the business, the legacy.”

“That must have been incredibly difficult for you.”

He shrugs. “It made me who I am. Who I was. Who I— Ah,fucking hell.”

In the dim light of the hospital room, with monitors beeping softly in the background, Vincent Akopov does something I’ve never seen before.

He cries.

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