Chapter 7: The Interrupted Take
The silence after the kiss was different. It wasn’t empty. It was full of the unspoken thing taking root inside Sydney, a foreign, cellular truth that had already begun reshaping her from the inside. Vanja watched her, the mask of cold analysis back in place, but her eyes—those golden-green blades—held a new, watchful intensity.
“Sit down,” Vanja said, her voice returning to its familiar, clinical register. “Before you fall down.”
Sydney moved on unsteady legs to the white sofa, sinking into its depths. Vanja fetched a glass of water from the bar and placed it on the table in front of her. She didn’t sit. She paced, a sleek predator in a cage of its own making.
“The first season shoots for seven more weeks,” Vanja stated, as if reading from a memo. “You’re already, what, four weeks along? Five? By the time you wrap, you’ll be pushing four months. You’ll need to be careful. Rest more. The fake exhaustion they want on camera can’t be real exhaustion.”
Sydney stared at the water glass, condensation beading on its surface. “I’ll be fine. The costumes are loose. No one will know.”
“I’ll know,” Vanja said, stopping her pacing. “You’ll tell your director you have a hormonal issue. Migraines. Something. You’ll leave set when you need to. You’ll eat what I send. You’ll sleep when I say.”
“You’re not my keeper,” Sydney muttered, but there was no heat in it. The fight had been fucked out of her, replaced by a numb compliance.
Vanja crouched in front of her, her movements fluid and precise. She took Sydney’s chin in her hand, forcing their eyes to meet. “Yes,” she said, her voice low and absolute. “I am. I’m the keeper of every part of you now. Especially this.” Her other hand came to rest, flat and possessive, on Sydney’s lower abdomen. “My little secret. Our little secret.”
The touch, through the thin silk of Sydney’s robe, was a brand.
The next month passed in a blur of fake medieval armor, artificial fog, and Vanja’s relentless, invisible management. Bouquets of ginger arrived on set daily to combat nausea. A private nutritionist delivered meals to Sydney’s trailer. Her call times were mysteriously negotiated to be later, her breaks longer. The director, a man indebted to Vanja’s family for reasons he’d never discuss, only praised her “focus” and “professionalism.”
Vanja visited the set only once, a spectral figure in black jeans and a cashmere sweater, observing from the shadows behind the monitors. She said nothing to Sydney, just watched with those unreadable eyes. It was more unnerving than her presence in bed.
The final day of the shoot arrived under a bleached, relentless sun. The last shot was in the can, the wrap party was a noisy, sweaty throng of relief in a nearby soundstage, but Sydney slipped away. She found herself back in her trailer, the silence a sudden, ringing void after months of constant noise. She felt hollowed out, a vessel now carrying something she couldn’t yet feel, for someone she couldn’t fully understand.
The door opened.
Vanja stepped in, closing it softly behind her. She held a small, black velvet box.
No preamble. No poetry. Vanja simply got down on one knee on the trailer’s cheap linoleum floor. The gesture was so stark, so absurdly out of place amidst the discarded script pages and empty Starbucks cups, that Sydney thought she was hallucinating.
Vanja opened the box.
The ring was obscene. A storm of diamonds clustered around a central emerald the color of Vanja’s own eyes, so deep and green it seemed to swallow the trailer’s fluorescent light. It was aggressive. It was a claim staked in platinum and ice.
“The first season ends in a month,” Vanja said, her voice perfectly even. “You’re already four months along. You need to be careful. You need more rest than you’re getting.” She looked up, her gaze unwavering. “Marry me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was the next logical step in her flowchart. A solution. Protection. Permanent ownership.
Sydney looked from the monstrous, glittering stone to Vanja’s flawless face. She saw no romance there. Only cold, terrifying certainty. And yet, beneath it, that same flicker she’d seen the day of the test—a raw, exposed wire of something like need.
Her throat closed. A choked sound escaped her, half-laugh, half-sob. “You’re insane.”
“Undoubtedly,” Vanja replied, not moving. “But I’m your insanity. And you’re mine. Legally, it makes sense. For the child. For us.”
“For us,” Sydney repeated, the words tasting like ash and something else, something dangerously like hope.
Vanja waited. The only sound was the distant thump of bass from the wrap party.
Slowly, Sydney extended her left hand. It trembled in the air between them. Vanja took it, her grip firm and cool. She slid the ring onto Sydney’s finger. The weight of it was shocking, a gravitational pull anchoring her to this moment, to this woman.
It was done.
Sydney started to cry. Not the messy, soul-wrenching sobs from before, but a quiet, endless stream of tears that tracked through her set makeup. Vanja rose and kissed her. It was a soft kiss, closed-mouthed and chaste, a press of lips that held more finality than any of their feverish fucking.
“Go to sleep,” Vanja murmured against her mouth. “We leave for New York in the morning.”
The news broke two days later. A grainy, long-lens photo of Sydney stepping out of a Manhattan jeweler’s, the emerald beast glittering on her finger, sold for a sum that could have fed a small country. The caption was a single, explosive word: ENGAGED!
The internet convulsed. The narrative wrote itself: the reclusive, brilliant heiress and the the holywood star. A fairy tale. A scandal. A marketing dream.
They were in the penthouse, the city spread out like a circuit board below them. Vanja read the headlines aloud from her tablet, her voice a dry monotone. “‘Hollywood’s Most Unexpected Power Couple.’ ‘hot blonde Soulmates: The Vanja-Sydney Romance.’” She scrolled. “‘Is She Pregnant? A Timeline of Their Whirlwind Affair.’ That one’s closer,” she said, looking over at Sydney who was curled in an armchair, staring at her own ring as if it were a strange insect that had landed on her.
“They’ll find out,” Sydney said quietly. “They always do.”
“Let them,” Vanja shrugged. “But on our terms.” She put the tablet down and walked to the bar. “We’ll release a statement. A few tasteful, owned photos. Control the narrative.”
“Is that what this is?” Sydney asked, looking up. Her weird eyes were clear, direct. “A narrative?”
Vanja poured two glasses of sparkling water, brought one over, and handed it to her. “Everything is.”
That night, in the silk-draped bed, the engagement felt less like a narrative and more like a fever. Sydney was on her back, Vanja hovering above her, supported by her arms. The diamond-encrusted band cut into Vanja’s shoulder where Sydney’s hand clutched it.
Vanja moved inside her with a slow, deep cadence that was entirely new. There was no brutality tonight, no frantic claiming. This was different. A solemn, grinding consummation.
“Look at me,” Vanja ordered, her voice a husky whisper.
Sydney opened her eyes. Vanja’s face was sheened with sweat, a strand of dark blond hair stuck to her temple. In the dim light, her expression was unguarded, fierce with a concentration that looked almost like reverence.
“This is yours,” Vanja said, each word punctuated by a roll of her hips. “This cock. This life. All of it. You swallowed it. You took it. You fucking own it.” She leaned down, her lips brushing Sydney’s ear. “And now everyone knows. You’re branded. You’re mine.”
Sydney’s tears came again, hot and silent. She wrapped her legs tighter around Vanja’s waist, pulling her deeper. “Harder,” she breathed, the word a plea.
Vanja obeyed, her rhythm shifting, becoming more insistent, the slick, wet sounds of their joining filling the room. She fucked her with a focused intensity, her gaze locked on Sydney’s face, watching every flinch, every gasp, every tear.
“My pretty little fuck-toy,” Vanja grunted, driving into her. “My famous, fiancée fuck-toy. You’re going to walk red carpets with my come still dripping out of you.”
The vulgarity, paired with the shocking tenderness of Vanja’s hands cradling her face, pushed Sydney over the edge. Her orgasm built slowly, a deep, coiling tension that finally snapped, washing through her in warm, pulsing waves. She cried out, a broken, grateful sound, her body clamping down around Vanja.
Vanja followed her over, her own release shuddering through her with a low, guttural moan. She collapsed onto Sydney, her full weight a welcome anchor, burying her face in the crook of Sydney’s neck. They lay there, glued together by sweat and spent passion, the enormous ring on Sydney’s hand digging into the skin of Vanja’s back.
Later, Vanja stirred. She pulled out slowly, then slid down Sydney’s body. She pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the slight, barely-there swell of Sydney’s stomach. It was a gesture so intimate, so starkly possessive, that Sydney’s breath hitched.
Vanja looked up, her green eyes glowing in the dark. “Mine,” she whispered, her lips brushing the skin.
Then she moved lower, her tongue finding Sydney’s wet, sensitive core, licking her own release mixed with Sydney’s from her folds with a slow, deliberate thoroughness that felt less like sex and more like a sacrament. Sydney whimpered, her fingers tangling in Vanja’s hair, as Vanja tasted their joined future on her tongue.
Outside, the city glittered, a million anonymous eyes. Inside, in the warm, spent dark, the only eyes that mattered were the ones watching her, belonging to the woman who owned her, utterly. The ring on her finger felt less like a shackle and more like a circuit completing, a current finally finding its ground.
The ring on her finger felt less like a shackle and more like a circuit completing, a current finally finding its ground. That current jolted her awake just past dawn, a sour, metallic rush flooding her mouth. She barely made it to the en suite marble floor, her knees cracking against the cold stone as she vomited up water and bile. It was a violent, undignified heaving that left her trembling and clammy.
Vanja appeared in the doorway, a silhouette backlit by the bedroom’s gloom. She didn’t rush. She observed, as she always did. “So it begins,” she said, her voice sleep-roughened and devoid of pity. She walked to the sink, ran a glass of water, and placed it beside Sydney’s shaking hand. “Rinse. Then brush. The taste will just trigger more.”
Sydney spat, the acrid tang still coating her tongue. “It’s not supposed to be this bad yet,” she mumbled, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The emerald caught the light, a grotesque mockery of her misery.
“You don’t get to schedule it.” Vanja crouched down, her silk robe pooling around her. She pushed Sydney’s lank, fake blonde hair back from her damp forehead. Her touch was clinical, not comforting. “Your body isn’t yours right now. It’s doing what it needs to do for my child.” She said it with a casual ownership that cut deeper than the nausea. “Can you stand?”
With Vanja’s help, Sydney staggered to her feet. The room tilted. Vanja guided her back to the bed, not to lie down, but to sit on the edge. “Wait here.” She returned moments later with a small, amber bottle and a dropper. “Open.” She administered five drops under Sydney’s tongue. “A tincture. Peppermint, ginger, something else. It’ll help. Not a cure. A management tool.”
The herbal bitterness bloomed, a cleaner sharpness that pushed back the nausea’s edge. Sydney took a shuddering breath. “I feel like shit.”
“You look like shit,” Vanja agreed, her tone factual. She traced the darkening circles under Sydney’s weird, glassy eyes. “But it’s my shit. So I’ll manage it.” She stood, looking down at her. “This is the work. The unglamorous part. This is what you signed up for when you let me come inside you raw that first time.”
The crude reminder, delivered in that calm, analytic tone, made Sydney flinch. It was a truth stripped of all romance, all fantasy. This sickness was the direct, physical consequence of Vanja’s manifested cock plunging into her unprotected cunt, of Vanja’s release flooding her womb. It was biology, stark and vulgar.
Vanja saw the understanding—and the shame—flare in Sydney’s eyes. A slow, knowing smile touched her lips. She untied the belt of her robe, letting it slither to the floor. Her body was a pale monument in the half-light, perfect and unmarked. She knelt on the plush carpet, pushing Sydney’s thighs apart with insistent hands.
“What are you doing?” Sydney whispered, her voice thin.
“Changing the channel in your head,” Vanja said, her breath hot against Sydney’s inner thigh. “The sickness is in your gut, in your throat. I need you to feel it somewhere else.” She didn’t kiss or tease. She licked a broad, wet stripe up Sydney’s center, her tongue shoving rudely between the folds. She lapped at her, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet room, and Sydney gasped, a confusing bolt of sensation piercing through the sickly fog.
Vanja’s mouth was ruthless, a focused instrument of reclamation. She sucked Sydney’s clit into her mouth, applying a precise, unrelenting pressure, her fingers digging into the soft flesh of Sydney’s hips to hold her in place. This wasn’t for Sydney’s pleasure; it was a forcible rerouting of her nervous system. A cramp of residual nausea twisted in Sydney’s belly, competing with the tight coil of arousal Vanja was viciously winding.
“Fuck,” Sydney moaned, her head falling back. Her hands fisted in the sheets. “Fuck, Vanja, I’m gonna…”
“Do it,” Vanja ordered, her voice muffled against Sydney’s cunt. “Come. Purge it. Give it to me.”
The command, paired with the relentless suction, tipped Sydney over. She came with a broken cry, her body arching off the bed, a weak spasm that felt more like a surrender than a release. Vanja drank her down, swallowing every pulse, not letting up until Sydney was limp and oversensitive, pushing weakly at her head.
Vanja pulled back, her chin glistening. She looked up, her green eyes blazing with a dark triumph. “See?” she said, crawling up Sydney’s body. “You’re full of me. The sickness, the come, the baby. All me.” She positioned herself over Sydney’s face. “Now clean me up.”
Sydney, her mind hazy with endorphins and exhaustion, obeyed. She licked her own taste from Vanja’s skin, the act a filthy, intimate communion. Vanja sighed, a contented sound, and settled beside her, pulling Sydney into the curve of her body. The nausea was a dull, distant throb now, overshadowed by the heavy, spent ache between her legs and the solid, terrifying comfort of Vanja’s arm around her.
“The press wants a statement today,” Vanja murmured into her hair. “We’ll give them a picture. You, looking fragile. Me, looking protective. They’ll call it a romantic getaway. We’ll call it managing the first trimester. Get some sleep.” She kissed Sydney’s temple, her lips cool. “The work continues. But first, you rest.”
Sydney closed her eyes, the weight of the ring like a lodestone on her finger, tethering her to this bed, this woman, this meticulously managed reality. The sickness was merely the first crisis. She knew, with a cold certainty, it would not be the last.
She knew, with a cold certainty, it would not be the last. The nausea returned three hours later, a clawing insistence in her gut that had her scrambling for the bathroom again. Vanja was already there, waiting, holding back her hair with one hand while pressing a cool cloth to her forehead with the other. Her efficiency was terrifying. “I told you,” she murmured, not unkindly, as Sydney retched over the bowl. “It’s a process. Your body is rebelling against the invasion.”
Later, propped on a mountain of pillows, Sydney watched Vanja pace the bedroom with her phone to her ear. “Yes, noon,” Vanja said, her voice crisp. “The rooftop. The light is best then. Natural, but soft. She’ll wear the ivory cashmere. Her hair down. Yes, the ring will be visible.” She listened, her eyes scanning Sydney’s pale form on the bed. “The statement is short. ‘We are overjoyed to confirm our engagement during this private time. We ask for kindness and space as we plan for our future.’ Nothing more. Release it exactly at one, following the photo drop.” She ended the call and approached the bed, the phone dangling from her fingers. “We’re taking pictures in an hour. You need to shower. The green is gone from your face. You look fragile, but in a pretty way. They’ll like that.”
The shower was a controlled ordeal. Vanja didn’t join her; she supervised, leaning against the marble threshold as steam billowed. “Wash your hair. Don’t condition it. I want it loose and a little wild.” Sydney obeyed, her movements sluggish under the hot spray. When she emerged, Vanja was there with a towel, rubbing her skin briskly until it pinked. She dressed Sydney herself, pulling the soft, expensive sweater over her head, guiding her arms through the sleeves like a child’s. The ivory fabric hung loose, disguising the subtle swell even from Sydney’s own critical eye. Vanja fastened a simple diamond necklace around her throat, the cold stone a counterpoint to her skin.
“Sit here,” Vanja directed, leading her to the vanity stool. Vanja herself took up the brush, dragging it through Sydney’s damp, fake blonde strands with a gentleness that felt alien. She didn’t blow-dry it; she let the air from the open window do the work, tousling it with her fingers until it fell in a way she deemed authentically vulnerable. She applied a touch of cream to Sydney’s cheeks, a swipe of balm to her lips. “No other makeup. Your eyes are perfect already.” She said it not as a compliment, but as an assessment of raw materials.
The photographer, a compact woman with silent movements, arrived precisely at noon. She set up a tripod near the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the private pool, its water a sheet of liquid turquoise below. Vanja orchestrated the poses with a director’s cold precision. “Stand behind her. Hold her from the back, your hands here, just below her breasts. Look down at her hair. Not at the camera. Sydney, look out the window, but not at the view. Look at nothing. Think of the nausea.”
Sydney did. The hollow, empty feeling in her stomach returned, lending a genuine wistfulness to her gaze. The camera shutter clicked, a rapid, predatory sound.
“Now sit on the lounge. Sydney, curl your legs under you. Vanja, sit on the arm, one hand on her shoulder, the other… yes, let your hand rest on her stomach. Lightly. As if you’re protecting something. Both of you look at the ring. Let them see you seeing it.”
They looked down. The emerald monster glared back, a captured sun. Sydney felt Vanja’s thumb stroke her shoulder through the cashmere, a tiny, secret motion the camera couldn’t see. It felt like a brand being applied.
The shoot lasted twenty minutes. The photographer packed up without a word, leaving them in the sudden quiet. Vanja immediately pulled out her own phone, scrolling through the images as they transmitted. She selected three. One of the embrace, one of Sydney alone gazing into the middle distance, one of their joined focus on the ring. “These,” she said to someone on the other end of a text. “The order I’ve sent. Release them.”
She then opened a Notes app and typed out the brief statement she’d dictated earlier. Her fingers flew over the screen. “There,” she said, locking the phone. “It’s done. The narrative is set.”
The reaction was instantaneous, a digital tsunami. Vanja’s phone began to vibrate incessantly, a swarm of notifications. She ignored the calls, but she opened Instagram, a faint, cruel smile playing on her lips. She sat on the lounge, pulling Sydney down beside her, tucking her under her arm. “Look,” she said, holding the screen so Sydney could see.
The photos were already everywhere. The comments rolled in a furious, gushing stream. “POWER COUPLE GOALS 😍💍,” “That RING though!! 🤯,” “She looks so ethereal, vanja looks so obsessed 🥹,” “wait Sydney is marrying the Vanja? How she is so fucking hot omg she? 🤯 even hotter.” Vanja scrolled slowly, absorbing the adulation, the speculation, the performative envy. She kissed the top of Sydney’s hair, a soft, lingering press of her lips.
“See?” Vanja murmured into her blonde strands, her breath warm. “They’re happy for us. They want this story. They need it.” Her voice was a low, possessive hum. “We’ve given them a perfect little fiction.”
Sydney stared at the screen, at the thousands of strangers dissecting the angle of Vanja’s protective hand on her stomach. A cold knot tightened in her own gut, different from the nausea. It was the dread of being seen and utterly misunderstood. Vanja kept scrolling, her fingers occasionally pausing to tap a ‘like’ on a particularly fawning comment.
After a while, Vanja put the phone down. She turned Sydney’s face towards her, her grip firm. “You did well,” she said. It was the closest she’d come to praise. Her eyes drifted past Sydney, around the sunlit room, and landed on the door to an adjacent, unused room they’d kept closed. “Nursery,” Vanja said, the word dropping into the quiet room like a stone in a still pond.
Sydney blinked. “What?”
“The room next door. The one with the eastern light. We need to start planning.” Vanja’s tone was practical, devoid of sentimental cooing. “It needs to be converted. Soundproofing. Climate control. Safety glass. A monitoring system separate from the house.” She was thinking aloud, her mind already blue-printing. “You’ll need a team. A designer I trust. We’ll do a gender-neutral palette, but bold. Not this insipid beige nonsense.”
The casual, cold efficiency of it, the immediate leap from a staged photo to the logistics of soundproofing a nursery, stole Sydney’s breath. This was real. A room in this apartment was going to become a place for a child. Their child. Vanja’s child growing inside her. The surreal fantasy collapsed under the weight of drywall and electrical outlets.
Sydney let out a sound—a weak, airy hiccup of a laugh that caught in her throat. It was a giggle, but it was brittle, hollowed out by shock. “You’ve… you’ve already thought about soundproofing?”
Vanja’s gaze sharpened, focusing back on her. “I think about everything,” she said, her voice dropping, taking on a different texture. The planning tone was gone, replaced by something darker, more immediate. Her hand, which had been on Sydney’s shoulder, slid down, over the cashmere-covered swell of her breast, her thumb finding and circling a nipple through the soft wool. “I think about how your tits will get heavier. How they’ll ache. How sensitive they’ll be.” Her other hand moved to Sydney’s thigh, squeezing possessively. “I think about how this cunt is going to stretch to push my baby out. How I’ll have to fuck you carefully for months, and then how I’ll get to fuck you raw again, once it’s healed.”
The vulgarity was a deliberate shock, a blade slicing through the surreal domestic planning. Sydney’s brittle giggle died. A flush of something hotter than shame spread up her neck. Vanja saw it, her green eyes glittering.
“Stand up,” Vanja ordered, her voice low.
Sydney stood, her legs unsteady. Vanja rose with her, a predatory grace. She didn’t lead her to the bed. She pushed her back against the cool glass of the window, the city sprawling infinitely behind Sydney’s head. The cashmere sweater was ruthlessly pulled up and over Sydney’s head, discarded on the floor. Vanja’s mouth was on her breast immediately, not sucking, but biting through the lace of her bra, a sharp, painful claim. Sydney gasped, her hands flying to Vanja’s head, not to push her away, but to hold on.
Vanja’s fingers hooked into the waistband of Sydney’s loose trousers and panties, yanking them down her hips in one rough motion. They pooled around her ankles. The cool air from the window kissed her exposed skin, a stark contrast to the heat of Vanja’s body pressed against her. Vanja didn’t bother with preliminaries. There was no slow build, no gentle touch.
She shoved two fingers inside Sydney, deep and curling, a brutal assessment. “You’re already wet,” Vanja grunted against her neck, her breath hot. “Thinking about me planning the nursery? Thinking about being a pretty little incubator?”
“Fuck you,” Sydney whispered, but she was pushing back against Vanja’s hand, her hips seeking more.
Vanja removed her fingers, slick and glistening. Sydney heard the familiar, low hum, a vibration in the air she’d come to know in her bones. Vanja stepped back slightly, guiding her own manifested cock into position with one hand. It was fully erect, a flush of angry red at the tip. Vanja spat into her own palm, slicking the length once, a crude, efficient gesture.
Then she drove into Sydney, a single, deep, unforgiving thrust that slammed Sydney’s back against the glass. Sydney cried out, a ragged sound swallowed by the vast room. Vanja fucked her like this, standing, with a brutal, mechanical rhythm. Each thrust jarred Sydney’s body, each impact a punctuation mark in Vanja’s silent, furious monologue of possession. She gripped Sydney’s hips hard enough to bruise, holding her in place as a piston.
“This is what makes it real,” Vanja hissed, her face buried in Sydney’s neck. “Not their fucking comments. Not their likes. This. My cock in your pregnant cunt. My baby in your belly. You’re just a vessel. A beautiful, famous vessel I get to fuck.” Her pace increased, becoming punishing. The sound of skin slapping against skin, wet and obscene, echoed off the high ceilings. Sydney could see the reflection of their joined forms in the dark television screen across the room—a distorted, violent tableau.
Sydney came with a choked scream, her nails scraping down Vanja’s forearms, her vision whiting out at the edges. It was less pleasure than a seismic release of tension, a surrender to the violent physics of their union. Vanja followed, her body stiffening, a guttural groan ripped from her throat as she buried herself to the hilt, pulsing deep inside. They stood there, locked together, panting against the glass, the city’ indifferent skyline bearing witness.
Vanja was the first to move. She pulled out slowly. Sydney winced at the sudden emptiness, the slick warmth trickling down her inner thigh. Vanja looked down at the mess she’d made, a satisfied glint in her eye. She used her own discarded sweater to clean herself, then roughly wiped between Sydney’s legs. The cashmere, now stained, was tossed onto the pile with the others.
“The nursery,” Vanja said, her voice steady again, as if they’d just discussed paint samples. “We’ll start with the architect tomorrow.” She cupped Sydney’s cheek, her thumb wiping away a stray tear Sydney hadn’t realized she’d shed. “Now go lie down. You’re shaking.”
Sydney, unsteady and exposed, shuffled to the bed and collapsed onto the rumpled silk. She curled onto her side, facing the window, the ghost of the city’s grid imprinted on her vision. She heard Vanja moving behind her, the soft tap of her phone being picked up.
Vanja slid in behind her, spooning her close. She picked up her phone again with her free hand, the glow illuminating her face as she resumed scrolling through the Instagram comments. She read them aloud, her voice a soft, mocking murmur against Sydney’s ear. “‘Couple of the decade.’ ‘So much love here.’ ‘Goals.’” She dropped a kiss onto Sydney’s tangled, sweat-damp hair. Her lips lingered.
Sydney stared at the endless, twinkling lights of the city, feeling the slow, deep ache inside her, the new, tender reality taking root in her womb, and the absolute, inescapable weight of the woman molded against her back. The giggle she’d managed earlier felt like a relic from another person, from a life before the glass window and the brutal ownership and the soundproofed nursery waiting in the next room. There was no going back. There was only the terrifying, certain momentum forward, into the future Vanja was so meticulously, so violently, building around them.