“Which is just a fancy word for lackey!” she snaps. “I could kill you right now!”
“But you won’t.”
I smile and press a quick kiss to her lips before she can curse me out again.
“Don’t.” She shoves me back before I can get too close. “No sweet talk. I’m not in the mood after the stunt you just pulled. Imagine my surprise,” she continues, pacing the kitchen, “whenmy father called me into his office this afternoon to discuss syndicate work, only for your name to come up. I don’t know how I kept my blood pressure down while he interrogated me, asking why you trust me and not Marcello.”
“I’m not fucking Marcello,” I say simply. “I’m fucking you.”
“Kirill, I swear to God, if one more word like that leaves your mouth, I’m going to hit you.”
“Why all this aggressive energy toward me,milaya? I did both of us a favor.”
“Oh yeah? How do you figure? How am I supposed to feel when other people make decisions about my life for me? My life, Kill! Mine!”
“Because now we can see each other whenever we want,” I say, turning off the grill and stepping toward her, “and no one will think twice about it because of the deal I made with your father.”
Her brow furrows as the meaning sinks in.
“We don’t have to hide anymore,” I add softly. “We can be together.”
“No, we can’t,” she fires back. “Working together is not the same thing asbeingtogether.”
“It’s a start,” I counter. “And that’s all I want. To start a life with you. I don’t care how the beginning looks, just as long as the ending is us. Together.”
“Kill…” She sounds suddenly exhausted, drained by the whole conversation.
Leave it to Stella to act this way. Every time I start planning a future, she tries to shut me down before I can even speak it into existence.
“What, Stella? What? What exactly do you want to tell me? That we’re just fucking? That we’re having a good time and that’s it? That none of this is real?” My voice sharpens. “What lie will you tell me next? Better yet, what lie will you tell yourself next?”
“I shouldn’t have come,” she mutters. “You’re not making sense today and I’m exhausted after fielding my father’s questions. I should go home.”
I’m so angry that part of me actually considers letting her go.
But the part of me that loves her—the part that can’t breathe without her—fights harder.
“Don’t go.”
Stella stops at the door, hand on the knob, shoulders tight.
I watch her wrestle with herself. Caught between what she thinks she should do and what she wants to do. And she’s been wrestling with that choice for a long, long time, now.
“Do you promise not to talk about the future?”
My shoulders slump. My heart aches. But I concede anyway.
“Yes.”
She turns around, facing me, vulnerability shining in her eyes.
“Do you promise we’ll only focus on tonight and nothing else?”
“Yes.”
“Do you promise to leave all that shit with our families—and all the scheming you’ve done—outside the door, and only concentrate on the here and now?”
“Yes.”
