The memory surfaces with crystal clarity—Pablo before me, blood streaming from his broken nose, my hand at his throat. The perfect positioning for a kill I’ve executed countless times.The hunger to eliminate the threat permanently vibrating through every muscle.
And yet I hadn’t.
“You could’ve killed him,” Mila continues, her voice soft against the morning quiet. “You wanted to. I saw it in your eyes.”
“Yes,” I admit. There’s no point denying what she witnessed firsthand. “I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.” Her gaze holds mine, searching for something. “Why?”
It’s a question I’ve asked myself in the darkness of my room, in the quiet moments when strategy and calculation give way to something more unsettling. More human. I could offer her the tactical explanation, that keeping Pablo alive gave us leverage with the cartel, that killing him would have escalated tensions beyond repair. All true, but incomplete.
“I wanted to,” I repeat, needing her to understand the full truth. “My instinct was to eliminate the threat permanently. To ensure he could never touch you again.”
I take a slow sip of my coffee, organizing thoughts I’ve never put into words. Mila waits with that patient stillness, giving me space to find the language for concepts I’m only beginning to understand.
“When I first went after the Sokolovs, after Ana died, vengeance was pure. Simple.” I pause, remembering that clarity. “Vengeance was all that mattered.”
Mila leans forward slightly, her focus absolute. Not the clinical observation of a therapist, but the genuine interest of someone who cares. The distinction still unsettles me even as I crave it.
“And now?” she prompts when I fall silent.
I look past her to the gardens beyond the terrace, considering my answer. “Now nothing is simple. When I had Pablo at my mercy, I wanted to kill him, not for strategic advantage, butbecause he threatened you. Because the thought of him existing in a world where you exist was intolerable.”
Her breath catches, a sound so slight most wouldn’t notice. But nothing about her escapes my attention.
“When I looked at you,” I continue, returning my gaze to hers, “I saw something in your eyes I couldn’t bear to lose.”
“What?” she whispers.
“Hope,” I say simply. “Hope that I could be more than this criminal. That there might be a man worth salvaging beneath the calculation and violence. And I knew that if I killed Pablo in that moment, something of that hope would die with him.”
The admission costs me, exposing vulnerabilities I’ve spent years eradicating. Yet, with Mila, the cost seems worth paying.
“It wasn’t just for you,” I add, needing her to understand the full picture. “If it were only that, it would be another form of manipulation—being what you need to keep your favor. It was for me, too.”
She waits, and I continue. “I’m tired of death,” I admit. “Tired of the emptiness that follows vengeance. When Ana died, I let everything else die with her—compassion, restraint, humanity. I became the blade that would cut out my pain by inflicting it on others.”
My thumb traces patterns across her palm that make her breath hitch. “What if I make the wrong choice next time?” I ask,
“Then you try again,” she says simply. “That’s all any of us can do.”
The sincerity in her voice, the unwavering belief in her eyes, it undoes me. This woman who’s seen the worst of me yet believes in better. Not naively, not blindly, but with a clear-eyed acceptance of both who I’ve been and who I might become.
I run a hand through my hair, frustrated by my inability to articulate this properly. “Killing Pablo would’ve been easy.Choosing not to, that was harder. But it was mine. Not strategy or manipulation. A choice to become better.”
Mila’s expression shifts, softening into what makes my pulse quicken. She reaches across the table, her hand settling over mine.
“That’s growth, Yakov. Not perfection, just better decisions, one at a time.”
Her touch burns against my skin, innocent yet intimate in ways that make desire coil tight in my gut. I turn my hand beneath hers, fingers threading together, watching as her pupils dilate
“Why do you look at me like that?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
A hint of color touches her cheeks. “Like what?”
“Like I’m worth the risk,” I say, the words emerging raw and unguarded. “Like I’m more than the sum of my crimes.”
Her fingers tighten around mine, and something shifts in her expression, a decision made, a boundary crossed.
