Updated Apr 20, 2026 • ~5 min read
Chapter 30: The Extra Bedroom
Riot
Two years after the day Riot walked into Nadia’s office as her bodyguard, he wakes up in their bed—they sold the penthouse and bought a house in the suburbs with actual yard space and room for the future they’re building—and watches his wife sleep with the same sense of wonder that’s never quite faded.
She’s different now than the terrified woman who hired him to keep her alive—softer around the edges, quicker to smile, willing to trust in a way that would have been impossible before she learned that loving someone doesn’t always end in loss.
And Riot’s different too, he knows—less haunted by the men he couldn’t save, more focused on the people he can protect, finally able to believe that he deserves the happiness he’s found instead of treating it like borrowed time.
“Morning,” Nadia murmurs, her eyes still closed but a smile playing at her lips. “What time is it?”
“Early,” Riot says, pulling her closer. “We don’t have anywhere to be for hours.”
“Good,” Nadia says, and rolls to face him properly, her wedding ring catching the morning light. “Because I have news.”
“What kind of news?” Riot asks, reading the nervous excitement in her expression.
“The kind where we’re going to need that extra bedroom we’ve been keeping empty,” Nadia says, and watches understanding dawn on Riot’s face. “I’m pregnant, Riot. We’re having a baby.”
For a moment, Riot can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t process the information beyond the pure overwhelming joy that crashes through him like a tidal wave.
“We’re having a baby,” he repeats, his voice rough with emotion, and his hand is already moving to her stomach like maybe he can feel the tiny life growing there through sheer force of will. “Nadia, we’re actually—”
“Having a baby,” she confirms, and there are tears in her eyes—happy ones, he’s learned to recognize the difference. “Are you happy? I know we talked about it but actually doing it is—”
“I’m so happy I can’t find words for it,” Riot interrupts, pulling her into his arms and holding her like she’s the most precious thing in the world—which she is, always has been, always will be. “A baby. Our baby. Nadia, this is—you’re—we’re—”
“Eloquent as always,” Nadia teases, but she’s crying and laughing simultaneously. “I love you too.”
Riot kisses her with a reverence that has everything to do with the miracle she just told him about and the life they’re building together, and thinks: *This is what I was protecting all along.*
Not just Nadia’s physical safety, though that was always the priority.
But this—the future they’re creating, the family they’re starting, the happiness they fought for and earned and are brave enough to keep choosing every single day.
🔥
Three months later, Riot stands in what will be the nursery and paints the walls while Nadia directs from her position in the doorway, one hand on her barely-showing stomach and bossy instructions about which shade of green is “too green” versus “perfectly green.”
“You’re overthinking the paint,” Riot says with amusement, but he adjusts his technique anyway because making Nadia happy is his favorite occupation.
“You can’t overthink nursery paint,” Nadia argues. “This is where our child will sleep. It needs to be perfect.”
“It’ll be perfect because you’re making it perfect,” Riot says, setting down the roller and crossing to pull her into his arms. “Just like everything else in our life.”
“Our life is pretty good, isn’t it?” Nadia says, settling against his chest with the ease of two years of marriage and absolute trust. “We’re safe, we’re happy, we’re having a baby. How did we get this lucky?”
“We fought for it,” Riot says simply. “We chose each other even when it was terrifying. We trusted when trust felt impossible. We were brave enough to believe that love could last.”
“And it did last,” Nadia says, tipping her head up to look at him. “It’s lasting. It’s going to keep lasting.”
“Forever,” Riot agrees, and kisses her with the absolute certainty that this—them, their love, their family—is the mission that matters most.
Not the clients he’s protected over the years, though each one mattered.
Not the lives he’s saved or the threats he’s neutralized.
But this: loving Nadia, building a life with her, becoming a father to their child.
This is the protection that saved him.
“I’ve protected a lot of people,” Riot says quietly, his hand covering hers on her stomach where their baby is growing. “But protecting you? That’s the mission that made me believe I could be more than my past. That I deserved happiness. That I could have a future worth living.”
“We both get futures worth living,” Nadia says, and there are tears in her eyes again—the happy kind, always the happy kind now. “Together. With our baby. With the life we built.”
“Together,” Riot echoes, and holds his wife in the nursery of the home they bought, in the life they created, surrounded by the absolute certainty that love won.
That trust won.
That choosing each other every single day—through the fear and the danger and the healing—was the bravest thing either of them ever did.
And as the afternoon sun streams through the window and Nadia laughs at something on her phone and Riot goes back to painting the nursery perfect-green, he thinks:
*This is happily ever after.*
Not perfect, not without challenges, but real and honest and built on love that refused to end in loss.
Built on protection that became partnership.
Built on a bodyguard who fell first and a CEO who learned to trust.
Built on forever.
🔥
END
**THE END OF TRAPPED WITH MY BODYGUARD**
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