When the plates are cleared, we go to the car. The drive home should feel like routine, but it doesn’t.
I realize she’s been quiet for a while.
“Sima.”
“Hm?”
“You’ve got something on your mind.”
She stares out the window, her reflection ghosted in the glass. “It’s nothing.”
“Sima.”
She sighs, finally turning her head towards me. “It’s just…” She shakes her head, frustrated when the words won’t come. “You lead a very dangerous life.”
My brow arches. “You knew that.”
“I thought I did, too. But seeing Dimitri like that…” She twists her hands in her lap. “It got to me, I guess. I can’t stop thinking—what if it had been you?”
“It would have made a lot of things easier,” I say, a bitter note to my voice. “For everyone involved.”
“Not for me.”
“You wouldn’tbeinvolved. You’re only here because I made you.”
But she shakes her head again. “I don’t care about that. I just don’t like thinking about the possibility of you in that bed, hooked to machines. It scares me.”
Youshouldbe scared. Not of the hypothetical world where I ended up in that hospital instead of my brother, but of the real one. The one where I ensnared you and made you mine.
I grip the wheel tighter, unsure what to do with the warmth and the ache that rushes through me. Because Sima cares, and that was never part of the plan.
“You know what I do,” I rumble. “You know the risks.”
“I do.” She nods, eyes on her hands. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
My chest throbs, not with anger or suspicion, but with something far more dangerous. I should remind her—remind myself—that this isn’t real. She’s only here because I sniffed her out and blackmailed her into vows. Because my father left me with an empire to run and a will to uphold, and I couldn’t do the former without dealing with the latter first.
But all I manage is a rough, quiet, “It bothers you.”
She looks back at me. “I mean, yeah. Of course it does. Arrangement or not, you’re still you. You’re my husband.”
The car falls into silence again, but it’s not the same silence as before. This one is heavy with everything unsaid.
You’re you. You’re my husband. You matter.
She matters, too. Despite every attempt I made at keeping her at a distance, she matters.
And I’m tired of pretending she doesn’t.
The second the front door slams shut behind us, I pin her to the wall and kiss her.
“Petyr—”
“Hush.” I press my finger to her lips. “No more talking.”
Her eyes go liquid, and she nods once.
I kiss her again, and again, and again. The rest of the world disappears with each clash of our lips. The Bratva, Mikhael,Kira, even the goddamn Danilos—everything fades into background noise. It’s just her, standing there in the low light, looking at me with those dark, clever eyes that make me forget everything that’s ever mattered.
