Page 78 of Scarlet Chains
“Yes.” The word comes out fierce, protective. “Yes, I’m keeping our baby.”
Our baby.
The phrase carries weight, loaded with implications I’m not ready to examine. This child will tie me to him forever, bind me to a man whose past is written in secrets I can only begin to imagine. A man I’m afraid to understand.
But it’s also a child who chose to fight when the odds were against them. A tiny life that survived when they shouldn’t have, that clings to existence with the same stubborn determination I recognize in myself.
Osip sinks back into the chair like his legs can no longer support him, his head falling into his hands. The black silk robe falls open across his chest, revealing the faint lines of old scars, the evidence of a life lived on the knife’s edge.
“I can’t…” His voice is muffled against his palms. “I can’t lose another child, Ilona. I can’t go through that again.”
The pain in his voice cracks something open inside my chest. For all his sins, for all the darkness he carries, the fear of losing this baby is achingly real. Human. It reminds me that before he was a killer, before he was the man who destroyed my world, he was someone who loved deeply enough to be destroyed by loss.
I think of Galina’s photograph in his Budapest home— the radiant woman with her hand resting on her pregnant belly. The child who became Slava, who survived when his mother didn’t. The family that Stanley Morrison tore apart for money and cruelty.
Stanley, who revealed my father’s crimes with such casual malice. Who showed me that Igor Shiradze— the man I’d worshipped, the healer I’d built my identity around— wasactually a criminal who exploited vulnerable women and sold their children to the highest bidder.
The baby trafficking operation. Millions of dollars stolen. Vulnerable mothers exploited. Everything I thought I knew about my father was a lie, and the man kneeling beside me had killed him in self-defense when Dad pulled a knife rather than face the consequences of his betrayal.
“I believe you,” I say quietly, and Osip’s head snaps up, his eyes searching my face for deception. “About my father. About what really happened.”
The relief that flickers across his features is so profound it’s almost painful to witness. “Ilona—”
“What Stanley said…” The words taste bitter, poisoned by the knowledge they carry. “About the operation. About what my father really was. About how he threatened you and Galina. It’s all true, isn’t it?”
“I never wanted you to know.” His voice breaks on the confession. “I never wanted you to carry that burden. Your father… despite everything he did, there was good in him. He loved you. That was real. That was always real.”
Tears sting my eyes, hot and unexpected. The father I knew— that kind, gentle man— existed alongside the criminal who sold babies like commodities. Both versions were real, and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to reconcile them.
“I loved him,” I whisper. “Even knowing what he did, I still love him. Does that make me a terrible person?”
“No.” Osip’s response is immediate, fierce. “It makes you human. Love doesn’t disappear just because someone disappoints us. If it did, no one would ever be loved at all.”
The warmth in my chest— the feeling I’ve been fighting for weeks, the emotion I’ve been too afraid to name— spreads through my veins like honey and sunlight. Something that feelslike healing, like the possibility that two broken people might be able to build something beautiful from the wreckage.
“I want this baby,” I say, my voice steady despite the tears threatening to spill over. “I want our child to have a chance at the family you and Galina never got to have.”
I want Mom to have a chance to be a grandmother,the thought whispers through my mind, urgent and aching.Whatever time she has left.
Osip’s breath catches, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “Are you saying…?”
Before I can lose my nerve, before the practical concerns and logical fears can overwhelm the fragile hope building in my chest, I reach out and take his hand. His fingers are warm, familiar from nights in this room when touch was the only language we needed.
“I’m saying I want to try,” I whisper. “I want us to try to build something real together. For our baby. For Slava. For… for both of us, too.”
Osip stares at our joined hands for a long moment, his thumb tracing gentle circles across my knuckles. When he looks up, his face is transformed— not the dangerous man or the grieving widower, but someone almost young and hopeful and terrified of wanting too much.
“Ilona,” he says, and my name sounds like a caress. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the first night you walked into this room and trusted me with your pain. I should have told you sooner. I should have found the courage to say it before everything fell apart.”
The confession hits me like warm rain after a drought, unexpected and necessary and healing in ways I didn’t know I needed. He loves me. This complicated, dangerous, wounded man loves me, and the terrible truth is that I think I love him too.
“I’m not ready to say it back,” I admit softly. “Not yet. But I want to be. I want to learn how to love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
He nods, understanding flickering in those intense eyes. “We have all the time in the world.”
Then, with movements so careful they might be choreographed, he slides from the chair to kneel beside the chaise. His free hand disappears into the pocket of his robe, emerging with something small that catches the lamplight and throws it back in brilliant fragments.
A ring. An engagement ring that takes my breath away.
