I drag my gaze from the picture to Niko, to the ink still burning on my thigh where his mark sits. My mark of choice. My decision.
Anton may have claimed me once. But I’m not his anymore.
Niko stares at the picture too long, his jaw tight enough to crack bone. The vein in his temple throbs, and the silence between us grows heavy, suffocating.
I’ve never been afraid of silence before. But this one—his silence—terrifies me.
Something has shifted inside me, something I can’t quite put into words. Suddenly, it matters—what he thinks, what he feels. Whether he sees me in that photo as something tainted, as someone who once belonged to another man.
My hand trembles as I reach for him, fingertips brushing his arm. The contact is tentative, a plea more than a touch.
“Niko,” I whisper.
His head turns sharply toward me. For a heartbeat, his eyes are unreadable—stormy, dangerous, like the ocean before it swallows a ship whole.
I’ve never seen him like this, stripped bare of his usual control.
“You belonged to him,” he says, the words rough, like they cost him.
I shake my head quickly, almost violently, because no. No, that’s not the truth. My throat tightens, but I force the words out. “I never belonged to him, Niko. Not the way you think. I didn’t feel anything for him. It was survival. That’s all it ever was. I was just…trying to get out.”
His jaw works, his gaze locked on mine, as if he’s weighing every word, searching for cracks. My chest aches with the need for him to believe me. For the first time in a long time, I need someone to see me clearly.
I wait with bated breath, my pulse hammering, bracing for the explosion I’m sure is coming. For his anger. For punishment. That’s what men like Anton taught me to expect.
But instead, Niko pulls me into his arms so suddenly my breath catches. His embrace is fierce, crushing, like he’s trying to fuse me into himself. His voice rumbles low against my hair, raw with something I can’t name.
“If I had known what you were going through,” he says, every word a vow, “I would have burnt the whole damn city down for you.”
The words pierce me deeper than any threat ever could. My throat burns, and my eyes sting. I don’t know what shocks me more—the violence in his promise, or the tenderness threaded through it. For the first time, I believe it. He would have.
I laugh softly, even though nothing about this is funny. “You can’t burn the city down every time something happens to me, Niko. I’ve been through worse.”
His head snaps toward me, his eyes narrowing. “Worse? What the hell do you mean by that?”
For a second, I want to retreat. To shove it all back into the box I’ve kept sealed for years. But he’s looking at me like he wants the truth, like he won’t settle for silence.
So I give it to him.
“My parents,” I begin, and my voice almost cracks—but I force it steady. “They were drunk most of the time. High the rest. When they weren’t passed out, they were…hitting me. Yelling. Taking everything out on me. I was twelve when I ran away. Thought it would be better on the streets.” I let out a bitter laugh. “It wasn’t.”
I glance at him, but he’s stone-still, listening.
“Eventually, national security picked me up. From there, it was foster home to foster home. Some decent, some just as bad as my parents. I learned to survive, to keep moving, to never depend on anyone. I scraped through undergrad, even got into medical school. But after a year, I couldn’t afford it anymore. That was the end of that.”
The words taste like ash. I don’t usually talk about this. I don’t talk about it at all.
“I’ve already lived through hell, Niko. Anton was just…another version of it. Another cage. So believe me when I say you don’t need to burn down a city for me. I’ll always find a way out.”
When I finish, there’s this awful quiet between us. I almost regret saying anything at all. I expect him to talk—tell me he understands, tell me I’m strong, maybe even promise me some kind of revenge on ghosts that no longer exist.
But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t say a single word.
Instead, his arms come around me again—firm, steady, unshakable. He holds me like I might break, but also like I never will, like nothing in the world could touch me as long as I’m pressed against him.
And that’s what undoes me.
