Page 61 of Baby Surprise for my Brother's Best Friend

Her lips quirk, but her eyes are still serious. “Be careful.”

“I always am.”

“That’s what scares me.”

She doesn’t look up from her coffee.

I smirk. “You into anything with cream filling?”

She chokes mid-sip. “Seriously?”

“What?” I ask, all faux innocence. “You don’t like surprises?”

She shoots me a look over the rim of her mug, and I catch the quick tug at the corner of her mouth before she hides it behind another sip.

Her eyes linger for a beat too long, and something sparks in my chest. Warmth, maybe. Or hope, curling there before I can name it.

It’s different now. The teasing doesn’t feel like armor, it feels like an invitation.

She sets the mug down, eyeing me. “You know, most people would just say thank you for the help.”

I lean in slightly. “I’m not most people.”

“No shit,” she mutters under her breath, but she’s smiling.

And that smile?

That smile does something to me I can’t name. Something that settles low and hot in my chest.

I could get used to this.

After Sophie leaves, the apartment falls into a silence that’s almost too loud.

I pace a slow loop between the kitchen and the living room, staring at the couch where we kissed. Where we didn’t stop. Where we started something that ended with her coming apart beneath me and walking away after I fell asleep.

I can’t shake the feeling that last night changed things, and not just between us.

It’s in the way she avoided my eyes this morning, in the stretch of silence that wasn’t awkward but thick with somethingunspoken. Like we’re standing on the edge of something, hearts racing, waiting for someone to move first.

My phone buzzes with a text on the counter, and I don’t have to look to know who it is.

I don’t read it, I hit call instead.

Nikolai answers on the second ring. “You’re up early.”

“I haven’t really slept, especially after our conversation last night.” I drag a hand through my hair.

“Any word?”

“Nothing solid. But I talked to two of my guys. Bratva leadership denies involvement in that last note. They’re holding the line for now. The streets are quiet.”

I exhale through my nose. “Then who the hell sent it?”

A pause stretches.

“My gut says it’s someone personal. Not Bratva. Not some rando. This was close. Intimate.”

The word sits heavy in my gut. Intimate. Like whoever left it knows exactly how to twist the knife.

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