My silence confirms what we both know.
“Oh, Yakov.” She closes the distance, her hand finding mine with gentle insistence. “Not saying it doesn’t make it less real. Doesn’t make the risk disappear.”
I study our joined hands, this simple connection that represents all I’m terrified to lose. “I’m not good at this. This…vulnerability.”
“Then let me.” Her voice stays steady despite the emotion in her eyes. “I care about you. Deeply. Beyond every boundary I should have maintained. I care about the man behind the calculations, behind the protection. The man who remembers what dress I wore weeks ago, who teaches me to fight withinfinite patience, who looks at me like I’m the answer to questions you never thought to ask.”
Something unlocks in my chest, a tightness I’ve carried so long I’d forgotten it wasn’t permanent.
“I care about you too.” The admission costs me everything. “More than I should. More than makes sense.”
It’s not enough. Nowhere near enough to capture what she’s become to me. But it’s all I can force past the years of emotional silence.
Disappointment flickers in her eyes before she masters it. “It’s a start,” she says quietly, squeezing my hand before releasing it.
A mask of composure slides back into place as a guard approaches from across the garden.
She walks away, and I’m left with the weight of all that remains unspoken. For the first time since Ana died in my arms, I wish for the language—not for tactical advantage, but simply to make Mila understand that she’s become more essential than breath.
But the words stay trapped.
I watch her go, the savage in me calculating threats while the man screams truths I can’t speak aloud.
27
CORNERED
MILA
My breath comes in short, sharp bursts as I press deeper into the shadows of the alley. The wind cuts through my blouse like a blade, lashing against sweat-damp skin and sending icy tendrils down my spine. The cold cuts deep, but adrenaline burns hotter. All I can hear are footsteps behind me, echoing off cracked pavement. Closer. Hunting.
“You can’t run forever, Dr. Agapova.”
Pablo’s voice ricochets between the brick walls, smooth and unhurried, a serpent’s calm before the strike. He sounds amused. Like we’re playing a game.
We’re not.
“Did you really think a dinner with Nikolai’s wife would be private?” he snarls. “I’ve had people watching your every move for weeks. Waiting for exactly this kind of opportunity.”
My eyes scan the alley—narrow, dark, unforgiving. Yakov’s voice loops through my head like a survival mantra: assess your terrain, identify makeshift weapons, use your environment like an extension of your body.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
I’d insisted on dinner with Katarina this evening, despite Yakov’s reluctance to let me leave the mansion for anything that wasn’t essential.
“I need this,” I’d argued, my voice steady despite the storm in his eyes. “I need to feel normal. To see my oldest friend.”
“It’s not safe,” he’d said, jaw tight with frustration.
“It’s dinner with Nikolai’s wife. At a restaurant his people have cleared. I’ll have an earpiece, security detail?—”
“I’ll be there,” he’d said finally, voice like steel. “Close enough to intervene if anything goes wrong.”
The dinner had started normally. Controlled location. Bratva security positioned with surgical precision—Nikolai’s men watching every point of entry, Yakov positioned with the overwatch team, close enough to intervene.
Katarina had been mid-sentence, telling me about her upcoming trip to Hawaii, when the first explosion hit. We’d been laughing—the first real laugh I’d had in weeks—her familiar warmth making me forget, for a moment, the danger that had become my constant shadow.
And then all hell broke loose.
