“Yes. Sitting here while you risk your life to avenge my father makes me complicit in potentially losing you too.” Zita reaches for my hand. “We’re stronger together than apart, especially when we’re dealing with something this personal.”
“This isn’t a business negotiation, Zita. This is killing people who’ve already proven they’ll target anyone we care about.”
“That’s why I need to be involved instead of being protected from it.” She squeezes my hand. “If something happens to you while you’re trying to protect me, I’ll be alone and defenseless anyway.”
The logic is sound, even if it goes against every protective instinct I have. More importantly, excluding her from this will damage the partnership we’ve built more than including her will. “You follow my lead. You don’t take unnecessary risks, and you trust my judgment about when situations become too dangerous.”
“Agreed.”
“If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to hide, you hide. No arguments or second-guessing.”
She nods solemnly. “Agreed.”
That night, we spread maps and intelligence reports across the kitchen table, planning our approach to ending the Federoff threat permanently. Zita’s insights into her father’s business connections provide angles I hadn’t considered, while my knowledge ofBratvaoperations helps her understand how they’re likely to respond to pressure.
Working together on something concrete helps restore the easy collaboration we’d been developing before Claude’s death. It’snot the same dynamic we had before because her grief and my lingering guilt have changed both of us, but something new that accounts for what we’ve lost and what we’ve learned about each other.
“Thank you.” Zita’s voice is quiet as we organize the intelligence files for tomorrow’s planning session.
I arch a brow. “For what?”
“For letting me be part of this instead of trying to protect me from it.” She looks at me directly.
I nod. “Thank you for not giving up on us when it would have been easier to blame me for everything.”
“I thought about it.” Her honesty is typical of the directness that defines our relationship. “For about a week after the funeral, I thought about hating you and walking away from everything we’d built.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I realized that losing Papa was horrible enough without also losing you.” Zita reaches for my hand across the table covered with plans for violence and revenge. “Grief was trying to steal the only good thing that came from this whole mess.”
“What good thing?”
“Us. What we’ve become together, and the partnership that’s stronger than anything either of us could build alone.”
I bring her hand to my lips, pressing a gentle kiss to her knuckles before we head to bed. The woman I married never could have planned someone’s death. The woman walking beside me toward our bedroom has been shaped by loss into someonecapable of doing whatever it takes to prevent more loss. I meant it when I told her I loved her, and I love both versions, but I have a preference for the warrior she’s becoming even though I’d rather keep her locked away safely in the cabin. She won’t allow that, and I won’t risk losing her by imposing my will on her, so I have to trust her strength and resolve to see this through.
21
Zita
The silence in the cabin stretches between us like a wire ready to snap, punctuated only by the occasional creak of settling wood and the distant sound of our guards patrolling the perimeter. I’ve been curled in this corner of the couch for hours, watching the fire die down to glowing embers while Tigran moves restlessly through the small space behind me. Every footstep on the hardwood floors, every rustle of papers when he takes his encrypted calls, and every careful breath he draws seems amplified in this confined sanctuary where we’ve been hiding from the Federoffs for nearly a week.
My father’s funeral was three days ago, though it feels like a lifetime has passed since I watched them lower his casket into the frozen ground while armed men scanned the cemetery for threats. While I heard the hollow sound of dirt hitting mahogany while the priest spoke words about eternal rest that felt meaningless when Claude Lo Duca died with violence and blood and a bullet in his chest. It’s been three days since I realized that the last conversation I’d ever have with my father was himapologizing for selling me into this world of guns, contracts, and men who solve problems with death.
“You need to eat something.” Tigran’s voice cuts through my spiral of thoughts, rough with exhaustion and something else I can’t quite identify. He stands in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, holding a plate of food I won’t be able to taste anyway.
“I’m not hungry.” The words come out flat and empty, matching the hollow space in my chest, where my grief has carved out everything that used to feel like hope.
“You haven’t had anything since yesterday morning, and even then you only picked at the toast.” He moves closer, setting the plate on the coffee table carefully. “Starving yourself won’t bring him back, and it won’t make this hurt less.”
The casual way he talks about my father being gone fills me with anger. “Don’t you dare talk about him like that.”
“Like what?” Tigran settles into the chair across from me, his movements controlled and measured in that way that makes me want to throw something at him just to see if I can crack his perfect composure.
“Like he’s just another casualty of your world that I should accept and move on from because that’s how things work in theBratva.” I finally look at him directly, letting him see the fury that’s been building beneath my numbness for days. “Like his death is just part of the cost of doing business with the Belsky family.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
