Page 55 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
Then nothing.
Chapter 18 – Anya
The sound hit me first—beeping monitors cutting through my consciousness like a metronome marking time I’d rather forget. Then the antiseptic smell, sharp and clinical, the kind that clings to your clothes and follows you home. The faint hum of machines keeping people alive filled the spaces between heartbeats.
Lev had fallen into a coma from shock shortly after arriving at the hospital, and I’d been sitting beside his hospital bed for so long that the plastic chair had molded itself to my body, every ache and protest from my spine a reminder that I refused to leave. My hand gripped his bare fingers—when had someone removed his gloves?—like they were the only thing anchoring me to sanity.
His hands. God, his hands. Without the black leather that had been his armor since childhood, they looked smaller somehow. More human. The scars from that long-ago fire were raised and angry, telling stories he’d never shared with anyone. Not even me.
My head was bowed, long waves falling forward to brush against the crisp white sheets. I’d been staring at those scars, memorizing every ridge and hollow, when I felt it—the subtle shift in his breathing, the flutter of his eyelashes against his cheeks.
Lev stirred. His eyes flickered open, unfocused at first, then sharpened as they found mine.
“How long?” His voice was barely a rasp, throat raw from the breathing tube they’d removed yesterday.
I whispered his name like a prayer answered, exhaling hard before I could manage the words. “A week.”
A week of hell. A week of wondering if he’d wake up at all. A week of Trev hovering like a guardian angel, Drewcoordinating with doctors, Maxim pacing the hallways like a caged predator.
A week of me falling apart in slow motion.
***
It happened during the creative team’s weekly brief. Third week of Lev being in this sterile prison, third week of me pretending I could function while half my soul was trapped in a hospital bed.
I’d been standing at the head of our conference table, pointing at fabric swatches and talking about color palettes for the spring line, when the world tilted sideways. The room fell into silence as my face went pale—I could feel the blood draining from my cheeks like someone had opened a valve.
My stomach lurched, a wave of nausea so sudden and violent that I had to grip the edge of the table to stay upright. The sketches in front of me blurred, the voices of my team fading to white noise as everything inside me rebelled.
I abruptly stood, clutching my stomach as another wave hit. This one brought me to my knees.
“Ms. Antonov!” One of the junior designers half-rose from her chair, but it was Erin who moved first.
Erin, who’d been sitting quietly in the corner, taking notes with that eerie efficiency that should have comforted me but only made my skin crawl. She rushed forward, her pale eyes sharp with something that might have been concern but felt too calculated.
“That’s enough,” she announced to the room, her voice carrying more authority than a nineteen-year-old assistant should possess. “We’re leaving. Now.”
I wanted to protest, wanted to tell her I was fine, but another wave of dizziness hit, and I found myself leaning against her surprisingly strong frame.
“Call Eleanor,” I managed to whisper. “Or Irene. Someone—”
“I’ll handle everything,” Erin cut me off smoothly. “You just need to rest.”
***
I woke up to bright light overhead and a soft blanket tucked around me with hospital precision. The smell was different here—not the sharp antiseptic of Lev’s room, but something softer, more clinical but somehow warmer.
A nurse appeared in my line of vision, her smile kind but professional. Middle-aged, with laugh lines around her eyes and the sort of bedside manner that came from years of delivering both good news and bad.
“Congratulations,” she said, and my heart stopped. “You’re about six weeks along.”
I blinked. The words hit me like physical blows, each one landing somewhere vital.
A baby? Now?
My hand moved instinctively to my stomach, as if I could somehow feel the truth of what she was telling me. Six weeks. That would make it…God, that would make it from our first night together. The night Lev’s father died, when grief and desire had collided into something neither of us could control.
I reached for my phone automatically, needing to call someone, needing to share this impossible news, but my hand found only empty sheets.
