Chapter 6: The Ultrasound
The cold gel hit her skin with a sharp, shocking slickness. Vanja flinched, her fingers tightening around Besim’s hand. His other palm rested on her forehead, smoothing back her hair with a proprietary gentleness that felt like a weight.
“Just relax, Frau Osmani,” the technician said, her voice a bright, professional chirp.
Frau Osmani. The new name was a shackle, already locked in place by the formalities of their rushed engagement. Vanja stared at the acoustic-tiled ceiling, counting the perforations. Besim had insisted on the earliest possible scan. A ‘precaution,’ he’d called it, his eyes holding hers with an unspoken command. To establish a timeline. To make it real.
Erblin stood by the door, a dark, silent sentinel. He hadn’t spoken since they’d entered the clinic’s hushed, carpeted corridors. He’d simply followed, his presence a thick, toxic fog in the small room. Besim had invited him. “You’re going to be a big brother,” he’d said, clapping his son on the shoulder, the gesture a masterpiece of oblivious domination. Erblin had just nodded, his jaw a hard line.
The wand pressed deeper, a blunt, intrusive probe. On the screen, grey shapes swirled and coalesced into a formless, pulsing nebula.
“There we are,” the technician said, her cursor circling a flickering, rhythmic spark. “A strong, healthy heartbeat. One hundred fifty-four beats per minute.”
The sound erupted from the speakers—a rapid, hollow, galloping whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. It was primal. It was undeniable. It filled the sterile room with the raw noise of life.
Vanja’s breath caught. Her nails dug into Besim’s palm, drawing a faint, pleased squeeze in return.
“Beautiful,” Besim murmured, his eyes fixed on the screen with rapturous pride. “Perfect.”
Erblin’s fists were clenched at his sides, his knuckles white. He was staring at the screen too, but his gaze was different—not wonder, but a desperate, forensic scrutiny. As if he could decipher paternity in those shifting grey shadows. He was calculating. She knew he was. The last time they’d been together, rough against the window, had been exactly seven weeks and two days ago. The date of Besim’s return from Albania, and their first night reunited, was six weeks and five days ago. The dates bled into each other, a period of maybe ten days where either man’s seed could have taken root. The heartbeat gave no answers.
“All measurements look excellent for eight weeks,” the technician continued, clicking through the software. “Due date will be…” She tapped keys. “November twenty-eighth.”
Besim leaned over, planting a soft kiss on Vanja’s sweat-damp temple. “Our winter child,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion.
Vanja smiled up at him, a perfect, waxy curve of her lips. Inside, she was splitting open. The whoosh-whoosh was a accusation, a triumph, a prison sentence. She felt Erblin’s stare like a physical heat on the side of her face.
Later, in the clinic’s bathroom, she leaned over the sink, splashing cold water on her neck. Her reflection was pale, her eyes wide with a quiet terror. The door opened behind her.
Erblin filled the frame, blocking the light from the hallway. He didn’t speak. He just looked at her in the mirror, his expression stripped bare of all its usual arrogance. It was just pain, raw and bewildered.
“You knew,” he said, his voice low and ragged. “That night. You knew even then.”
She met his gaze in the glass. “I suspected.”
“And you let me…” He broke off, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “You let me say those things to you. You let me fuck you like that, knowing you might be carrying my…”
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, turning to face him. The space was too small, the air thick with his anguish and her panic.
“Is it mine?” The question was a plea now, stripped of the anger he’d texted.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, the truth a brittle weapon. “And it doesn’t matter. You told me what I was. A cheap Serbian slut. The math is what it is.”
He flinched as if she’d slapped him. “Vanja…”
“No.” She straightened her dress, a simple linen shift Besim had chosen for her. “It’s done. I’m marrying your father. This child will be his. In every way that counts.”
She moved to push past him. He caught her arm, his grip fierce. “You can’t do this. You can’t let him raise my child thinking it’s his.”
“Let go of me.” Her voice was ice. “Or I will scream this clinic down and tell him you assaulted me. See how fast he buries you.”
His fingers loosened, but the look in his eyes was pure devastation. She walked out, leaving him in the dim, antiseptic-scented room.
Besim was on the phone in the lobby, his back to her, speaking rapid Albanian into the receiver. “...yes, everything perfect… Tell Mother to start planning… Yes, the end of November…”
Vanja walked outside into the bland spring sunlight. The world continued, oblivious. A bus rumbled past. A woman laughed. The whoosh-whoosh seemed to echo in her skull, a ghostly twin to the pounding of her own heart.
That night, Besim celebrated. He opened a bottle of vintage Krug, poured her a single glass she didn’t touch, and ordered food from an exorbitant Michelin-starred restaurant. He talked of villas and nurseries, of a wedding by the sea in Albania, of his legacy securing another generation.
He made love to her with a tender, reverent possessiveness that made her skin crawl. He kissed her belly, whispering promises to the faint, invisible swell. He fell asleep deeply, his arm thrown heavily over her, his breath steady against her neck.
Vanja lay awake, staring into the dark. Her mind kept returning to the clinic bathroom, to the shattered look on Erblin’s face. To the feel of his desperate grip on her arm. A part of her, a dark, wounded part, thrilled at his pain. It was vengeance for his words, for Elsa, for the sheer fucking audacity of his youth and his beauty and his ruinous desire.
But another part, a colder, more pragmatic part, saw the chink in her own armor. The baby was a fact. Besim’s ring was a fact. But the biological truth was a live wire, coiled inside her, and Erblin was holding the other end.
Her phone, hidden under her pillow, vibrated silently.
A single letter. ‘E.’
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She carefully extricated herself from Besim’s arm, sliding out of bed and padding naked to the floor-to-ceiling window. The city glowed below, a circuit board of endless possibilities and dead ends.
She typed back. ‘What.’
The reply came instantly. ‘I need to see you.’
‘No.’
‘Just to talk. Alone. Not at his place.’
‘There is nothing to say.’
‘I broke up with Elsa.’
Vanja’s lips curved in a humorless smile. She could picture him, alone in his sleek, empty apartment, probably drunk, certainly wrecked. The powerful young star brought to his knees by a secret. The irony was rich.
‘That was always going to happen,’ she typed.
‘It’s because of you. You know it is.’
She hesitated, her thumb hovering. The power shift was palpable, dizzying. He was abdicating, handing her the knife. She could end it now. Block the number. Let him drown in his confusion.
Instead, she wrote: ‘Café Ampere. Tomorrow. 11 AM.’
She deleted the thread and slipped back into bed. Besim stirred, mumbling in his sleep, pulling her closer. She let him, her body pliant, her mind already miles away, plotting the contours of the next day’s sin.
The café was aggressively modern, all brushed steel and exposed brick, filled with the clatter of laptops and the hiss of an espresso machine. Vanja chose a table in the back, partly hidden by a large concrete column. She wore oversized sunglasses and a plain grey sweatshirt, her hair piled under a baseball cap. She looked like any other student, anonymous.
Erblin arrived five minutes late. He looked like hell. Dark circles bruised the skin under his eyes, and he moved with a jittery, exhausted energy. He slid into the chair opposite her, his large frame making the minimalist furniture seem flimsy.
“You came,” he said, his voice rough.
“I shouldn’t have.” She didn’t remove her sunglasses.
A waitress appeared. He ordered a double espresso. Vanja shook her head. Silence descended, thick and uncomfortable.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he blurted out, leaning forward. “About you. About that… thing. On the screen.” He struggled for the word. “The baby.”
“It’s not a ‘thing,’ Erblin.”
“You know what I mean.” He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “What are we going to do?”
“We are not doing anything. I am marrying your father. You are going to live your life. This,” she gestured between them, “never happened.”
“But it did happen!” His voice rose, attracting a glance from a nearby table. He lowered it to a furious whisper. “I was inside you. I came in you. And now you’re pregnant. Jesus Christ, Vanja, don’t you get it? I can’t just… un-know that.”
“You’ll have to.”
“He’ll want a paternity test,” Erblin said, his eyes sharpening. “Eventually. He’s not a fool.”
Vanja took off her sunglasses, finally. Her golden-green eyes were flat, exhausted. “He believes what he wants to believe. The dates are plausible for him. He is choosing to believe it’s his. That is a powerful thing. If you ever suggest otherwise, you will only destroy your relationship with him. You will gain nothing. And you will lose everything.”
“I don’t care about his money or his…”
“You care about your career,” she cut him off, her voice a cold scalpel. “Which he funds. Your image, which he protects. Your family, which is your mother, your sister, your brother. You think this secret, if it comes out, only hurts him? It burns your entire life to the ground. You will be a punchline. The footballer who fucked his father’s fiancée and got her pregnant.”
He looked as if she’d struck him. The truth of it, laid out so brutally, left him breathless.
His espresso arrived. He gulped it down, wincing at the bitter heat. “So that’s it? We just live with this? You raise my child, and I have to call it my brother? Or sister?”
“Yes.”
He laughed, a short, despairing sound. “You’re fucking ruthless.”
“I’m surviving,” she corrected him, her voice dropping. “You started a game you didn’t understand the rules to. These are the rules.”
He stared at her, and for the first time, she saw not the petulant boy or the possessive lover, but a young man truly facing an abyss. His anger deflated, replaced by a profound hopelessness. “I can’t do it,” he whispered.
“You have no choice.”
He reached across the table, his hand covering hers. His touch was feverishly hot. “Tell me,” he begged, his eyes searching hers. “Just tell me. When you think about it… what do you hope?”
She didn’t pull her hand away. She let him hold it, feeling the tremor in his fingers. She thought of the whoosh-whoosh, of Besim’s proprietary kiss, of a life stretching ahead as Frau Osmani, mother to a child that might be a living, breathing monument to this sick, thrilling mistake.
“I hope it’s his,” she lied smoothly, her face a mask of cool reason. “For everyone’s sake.”
He saw the lie. He squeezed her hand tighter. “You’re a terrible liar.”
He stood up abruptly, throwing a crumpled bill on the table. “I can’t be near you,” he said, the words torn from him. “But I can’t stay away.”
He left, weaving through the tables, a figure of palpable turmoil.
Vanja sat for a long time, finishing her cold water. His heat still lingered on her skin. The memory of his confession—I can’t be near you. But I can’t stay away—echoed in the empty space he left behind. It wasn’t love. It was obsession, a sickness they shared. And it was far from over.
Two days later, Besim left for a business trip to Vienna. He kissed her goodbye at the door, his hands cradling her face. “Rest,” he ordered gently. “Take care of my two treasures.”
The moment the elevator doors closed, the penthouse exhaled. The silence was different—charged, full of potential. She spent the day working on her dissertation, the words blurring on the screen. By evening, a restless, prickling energy crawled under her skin. She tried to read. She tried to watch a film. The lavish apartment felt like a gilded cage.
At ten PM, her phone buzzed. A location pin. A hotel. The Vier Jahreszeiten. Followed by a room number.
No message. Just the data.
She stared at it, her blood singing a low, dangerous tune. This was madness. A spectacular, self-immolating madness.
Thirty minutes later, she stood outside the hotel room door, having taken the service elevator. She wore a trench coat belted tight over a simple dress. She knocked, once.
The door opened. He’d clearly been pacing. The room was a suite, opulent and old-world, but in disarray—a room service trolley pushed aside, a minibar bottle open on the desk.
He didn’t speak. He just looked at her, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Then he yanked her inside, kicking the door shut and backing her against it. His mouth crashed down on hers, not with tenderness but with a frantic, starving fury. It was all teeth and tongue and desperate, gulping breath.
“Tell me you hope it’s his again,” he growled against her lips, his hands already pushing the trench coat from her shoulders. It fell in a heap.
“I hope it’s his,” she gasped, as his mouth moved to her neck, biting the tender skin there.
“Liar.” His fingers dug into the hem of her dress, pulling it up, over her hips. He shoved her underwear aside, his touch rough, direct. She was already wet, a traitorous flood of heat that had nothing to do with hope and everything to do with this obliterating need.
He fumbled with his own belt, his jeans already straining. He was hard, thick, a furious line of heat against her thigh. He didn’t bother with foreplay, didn’t lead her to the bed. He just hooked one of her legs over his hip, positioned himself, and drove into her in one brutal, deep thrust.
She cried out, her head thudding back against the door. The stretch was shocking, exquisite. He filled her completely, a raw and punishing reclaiming.
“Whose is it?” he demanded, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in. The force of it rattled the door in its frame.
“I don’t know!” she screamed, the words ripped from her.
“Wrong answer.” He fucked her harder.
He fucked her harder, his hips slamming against hers with a violent, piston-like rhythm that shook the door in its frame. Each thrust was a punishment, a claim, a desperate attempt to rewrite biology with sheer physical force. She clawed at his back, her nails scraping through the fabric of his shirt, her cries muffled against his shoulder.
“Tell me it’s mine,” he grunted, the words hot and wet in her ear. His breath came in ragged gasps.
“It could be,” she moaned, the lie fracturing into a shuddering gasp as he hit a depth that made her vision blur.
“Could be isn’t fucking good enough.” He pulled out suddenly, leaving her empty and trembling against the wood. He spun her around, bending her over with a hand between her shoulder blades. Her cheek pressed against the cool, varnished surface. He shoved her dress up around her waist, exposed her completely, and entered her again from behind in one vicious, reaming stroke.
She screamed. The new angle was unforgiving, a brutal invasion that tore a raw sound from her throat. He held her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh, controlling every jarring impact. The slap of skin on skin filled the expensive room, a crude, obscene counterpoint to the elegant decor.
“You feel that?” he snarled, pounding into her. “That’s me. Remember it. Whatever’s in there, you’ll remember I was here, fucking you raw, after you knew.”
Her fingers scrambled against the door, seeking purchase. Pleasure and pain fused into a single, white-hot wire of sensation, burning up her spine. She was crying, tears streaking the varnished wood, but her body arched back to meet his, a traitorous, wanting curve.
“It doesn’t work like that,” she sobbed, even as she pushed back against him.
“It works how I say it works.” He leaned over her, his chest damp with sweat against her back, his mouth at her ear. “You’re mine. That makes it mine. Say it.”
He slowed, grinding deep, a cruel, circular motion that made her knees buckle. The tension coiled, unbearable.
“Say it, Vanja.”
“Yours,” she whispered, broken.
He drove into her three more times, hard and final, and she felt the hot, pulsing rush of his release deep inside her. A violent, possessive claim. He collapsed against her, his weight pinning her to the door, both of them slick with sweat, panting in the sudden, ringing silence.
Minutes passed, measured only by their slowing breaths. The reality of the room seeped back in—the disordered luxury, the scent of sex and minibar whiskey, the faint traffic noise from the street below. He withdrew, and she felt the immediate, aching emptiness. A trickle of warmth traced a path down her inner thigh.
She stayed slumped against the door, unable to move. He righted himself, zipped his jeans with a casual, brutal finality. He walked to the minibar, poured two fingers of amber liquor into a glass, and downed it. He didn’t offer her any.
“Get cleaned up,” he said, his voice flat now, all the fury spent. He wouldn’t look at her.
She pushed herself upright, her legs trembling. She found the bathroom, a marble cavern, and turned on the tap. She avoided her reflection in the mirror. The water was scalding. She washed between her legs, watching the evidence of him—and of Besim before him—swirl down the drain. A hollow numbness settled in her bones.
When she emerged, the trench coat belted tight again, he was standing at the window, staring out at the night. The room felt colder.
“We can’t do this again,” she said, the words sounding feeble.
He barked a laugh, sharp and bitter. “We’ll do it until one of us is dead.” He finally turned. His face was drawn, shadows under his eyes. “Or until that thing is born. Then we’ll know.”
“And then what?” The numbness cracked, letting in a sliver of sharp, cold fear.
“I don’t know.” He ran a hand over his mouth. “But this… this limbo is killing me.”
She moved to leave, her hand on the door handle. His voice stopped her.
“The twelve-week scan. They can do a blood test on you then. Non-invasive. It can tell the father.”
She froze. She knew this. She’d researched it in a panic at three in the morning, the blue glow of her laptop illuminating her terrified face. “Besim won’t order it. He doesn’t want to know.”
“I do,” Erblin said, and the simple statement was heavier than all his previous anger.
She left without another word. The service elevator descended in a hum of silent judgment.
The scan was different this time. The technician was a different woman, older, with kind eyes. Besim held her hand again, but his grip was less certain. He’d been quiet for days, preoccupied with merger talks, but present. A dutiful expectant father.
Erblin was not there. Vanja had insisted it was inappropriate. Besim had agreed, too quickly.
The wand moved over her now-visible bump. The grey shapes were clearer, more defined. Two distinct, swirling galaxies. Two separate heartbeats, one slightly faster than the other, a discordant, chaotic rhythm echoing from the speakers.
“Well, hello there,” the technician said, her cursor circling one, then the other. “Someone’s been keeping a secret.”
Vanja’s blood turned to ice.
“What?” Besim leaned forward, his brow furrowed.
“It’s twins,” the technician announced cheerfully. “See? Two separate sacs. Two little heartbeats. Congratulations.”
The world narrowed to a tunnel, the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the twin hearts a deafening roar in her ears. Twins. Fraternal. They could have… two different…
Besim’s hand went slack in hers. He was staring at the screen, his face unreadable. Then, slowly, a smile spread across it. A real, wide, astonished smile. He laughed, a sound of pure delight. “Twins! My God, Vanja! Two!”
He kissed her forehead, his earlier tension vanishing beneath a wave of paternal pride. “My legacy. Doubled.”
Vanja felt the room tilt. She managed a weak smile. The technician printed images, pointing out limbs, profiles. Besim chatted excitedly about needing a bigger car, a bigger apartment. Vanja nodded, mute.
In the car home, the sleek 911 feeling claustrophobic, Besim was still buzzing. “Twins. My father had twins in his lineage, you know. This is incredible.”
He reached over, his hand resting on her knee, squeezing. “You have given me everything, zemra ime.”
That night, after he’d fallen asleep, she texted Erblin.
‘It’s twins.’
The reply was instant. ‘What.’
She typed, her fingers cold. ‘I told Besim.’
‘And?’
She took a shuddering breath. The words were a confession and a condemnation. ‘He knows one is yours and one is his. He said it’s good. As long as it’s Osmani, he does not care.’
The typing indicator pulsed for a long, long time.
‘He said what?’
She repeated it, adding the impossible. ‘He said, fuck Erblin, he loves you so much. He said he will let us be together too, if we want. And he said he loves me too.’
The response came back, stripped of all pretense. ‘Of course he does.’
A tear slipped down her cheek, hot and fast. She wiped it away angrily. ‘But it’s a bad idea. You will have to get married eventually.’
The final message appeared, a statement of utter, defiant negation. ‘No. I don’t want. If you marry him, I’m not getting married.’
She stared at the screen until the letters blurred. The declaration hung in the dark room, a promise of permanent, tangled ruin. He was choosing his obsession over any future that didn’t include her. It was madness. It was the only thing that felt true.
Outside, a late spring rain began to patter against the panoramic windows, blurring the city lights into meaningless streaks of gold.