She pulls back just enough to look up at me, eyes searching mine. “And the future? The violence that might still be necessary in your world?”
My hand comes up to cradle her face, thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone. “I will always protect what’s mine,” I tell her, not bothering to soften the truth. “But I’m learning there are choices even in that.”
Her eyebrow raises slightly. “Like with Pablo.”
The name sends a jolt of cold rage through me, but it’s tempered now, controllable. “Yes,” I acknowledge. “I wanted to kill him for touching you. For threatening you. Every instinct I have demanded his blood.”
“But you didn’t take it.”
“No,” I trace the healing cut on her throat where his knife pressed. “I chose something different. For you. For us.”
Her eyes darken, pupils dilating as she presses closer. “That’s what I mean about choosing each other daily,” she says. “Not becoming different people but making different decisions because of what we mean to each other.”
“Move in with me,” I say, the words coming out raw. “Not because it’s practical or safer, but because I want you here. With me. Every day.”
Her smile is answer enough, but she gives me the words anyway. “Yes,” she says simply. “I want that too.”
I feel myself hardening against her stomach, desire flaring anew at the intensity between us. Her breath catches as she feels it too, her body responding to mine with that perfect synchronicity that still amazes me.
“I love you,” she breathes in my arms, bodies and hearts entwined. “Always.”
I silence her with another kiss, unable to form the words, but meaning them all the same.
I love you.
Always.
Later,we lie tangled together, her head on my chest and my fingers tracing lazy patterns on her back. I feel a sense of peace I haven’t known in years. Perhaps ever. It’s fragile, new, but it’s there all the same, tentatively nourishing that dying ember of my heart until it glows with smoldering life.
“I’m not good with words,” I confess quietly, as if someone might overhear. “Never have been.”
She raises her head to look into my eyes. “You don’t have to be,” she assures me. “As long as I know you mean it when you say you’ll always protect me, always choose me. I don’t need declarations.”
“I don’t deserve this,” I admit, voice rough with emotion. “Don’t deserve you.”
The words are a startling confession. Perhaps Mila understands how far I’ve come, how much I’ve opened myself to her, because she leans down to press a soft, sweet kiss to my lips, tears gathering in her eyelashes.
It’s such a foreign concept, belonging with this woman, belonging at all. To my former Bratva brothers, I was expendable, a cog in a machine powered by ruthlessness and blood. To myself, I was little more than a machine, a liability at best and a lethal weapon at worst.
But to Mila—dear, precious Mila—I am a man. I am a partner and a protector, someone worth surrendering her life and career and future to. Someone worth choosing every day.
Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps, in a world of immutable darkness, that is enough.
“What are you thinking?” she asks, pressing a kiss to my bullet scar.
“That I never expected this,” I admit, tightening my arm around her. “Any of it.”
“Regrets?” Her voice is light, but I hear the undercurrent of uncertainty.
I tilt her chin up, making her meet my gaze. “None,” I tell her with absolute conviction. “Not about you. Never about you.”
She studies me for a long moment, those perceptive eyes seeing more than I sometimes wish they could. “I believe you,” she says finally, and the simple acceptance in her voice feels like absolution I haven’t earned but desperately need.
“We’ll make this work,” I promise, sealing the words with a kiss on her forehead. “One day at a time.”
“One choice at a time,” she corrects gently, settling back against my chest.
Outside, the city continues its relentless pace, a world of danger, politics, and violence that won’t disappear just because I’ve found something worth protecting. Pablo’s uncle is still out there, a threat that will need to be addressed eventually. The Bratva families are cautious allies at best. My position with them remains complicated, conditional.
