Page 107 of Obsessed Bratva Daddy
I rinsed my mouth. I held the edge of the sink. I tried to come up with a sentence.
Lily was at my elbow before I got there. She had a clean towel in one hand and a glass of water in the other, and she'd moved without making a sound. She pressed the glass into my fingers.
"Come with me first." Her voice was low and warm, right at my ear. "Just us. Bring the water."
I followed her down the hall.
Sienna and Jade did not follow. I felt them not follow. I felt the unspoken thing sitting in the room behind us like a fourth person.
Lily's master bath was all pale marble and soft light and the faintest trace of her rose hand soap. She crossed to the vanity, pulled open a low drawer, took out a small flat box, and put it in my hand.
I looked down at it. My hand wasn't quite steady. I knew what it was before I read the front.
"You think?" My voice came out smaller than I meant.
"I do." She was already turning her back, giving me the room. Her voice stayed gentle. "Take your time."
I sat on the edge of the tub with the test on the marble counter, and I did not look at it. I looked at my hands instead. They were folded in my lap and they looked like somebody else's hands. I looked at the small framed satin slipper Lily kept on the shelf above the towels, the one she said reminded her of who she was before any of this. I looked out the window at the bare branches of the oak in the courtyard, late autumn light catching on the last copper leaves.
I thought about Daniil's hand at the small of my back. I thought about the way he said my name into my hair. I thought about Rhea showing me how Beom-Beom liked to be held.
I thought, oh.
Lily was leaning against the doorframe with her arms loosely crossed when I picked up the stick. Two lines. Clear as anything.
My chest opened and closed around it at the same time. I didn't cry. I just looked at it. Then I looked up.
She read my face in a second and crossed the room in two long strides and pulled me into a hug so tight the test almost slipped out of my hand. Her arms were stronger than they looked. She held me the way somebody holds a person they've decided is theirs.
"Oh, sweet girl," she said into my hair.
I held on.
When we walked back out, Jade and Sienna were sitting on the couch in the sitting room with their hands in their laps like two students waiting for a verdict. They looked up at the same second. Their faces were already braced for it.
I tried to find my voice. I found it.
"I'm pregnant."
Jade's reaction was instant and deadpan and committed. "Sienna. Throw out the stew. That dish is officially cursed. Right, Chloe? It's awful. The whole pot."
A beat.
Then her face cracked wide open into a grin that took up the entire room. "God, I'm so happy for you."
Sienna's eyes were already wet. "Awful pot," she said, in the same dry voice she used in conference rooms. "Garbage."
They crowded me. Three sets of arms around me at once. I felt Lily's chin on top of my head and Jade's apron string against my hip and Sienna's small steady hand on the back of my neck, and the thing I'd been holding in my chest let go, and I started tocry. Happy cry. The kind that comes out of you when something you didn't know you wanted is suddenly real and standing in the room with you.
The door from the hall opened.
Daniil came in first. Mikhail right behind him, talking about something. Alek behind them, calmer. Ivan last, head turning automatically to scan the room the way he couldn't help doing in any room, ever.
"Good news," Daniil said as he stepped in. "No threats to the family at the moment."
He stopped.
I felt him take in the scene. Three women crying into one woman who was also crying. Four wine glasses untouched on the side table. His Chloe in the middle of it.
