The towel wicks meltwater down my temple. I touch his wrist with my free hand. “You didn’t fail.”
He huffs a humorless breath. “Lights cut. Gate compromised. Man in your room. That feels like failure in every sense of the word.”
I tighten my fingers. “You didn’t know,” I say, slowly and deliberately, so it will get through. “You put men on every door. You locked mine yourself. You were downstairs, stopping the rest of them from getting in. And when you realized—” My throat squeezes; I push through it. “You broke a fucking door to get to me.”
His jaw flexes like he’s chewing glass. “After you’d already had to fight. After you…” He shakes his head. “After you had to kill a man.”
“I’m still here,” I say. “We’re still here.”
His eyes close for a beat and open brighter. The apology turns rawer, smaller. “Earlier tonight, you told me that you didn’t want this life to change you. Make you someone you’re not. And a few hours later, you had to kill a man, Elena.”
His hand tightens around the towel. “It’s what I feared most,” he says. “This thing touching you, making you do something that will sit inside you. I dragged you into a war.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say, shocking him. “This isn’t some new version of me. That monster came after me. He came after our baby. It was him or us. I chose us. I chose to stay alive. I chose to keep our baby alive.
“That’s not being changed, Luca. That’s being a mother. That’s being human. That’s being me.”
He swallows, throat working. “It will still mark you.”
“Of course it will.” I hold his eyes. “But marks aren’t the same as rot. I’m not going to like what I had to do. I’m not going to celebrate it. I’m going to have nightmares, and I’m going to remember the smell of his breath, and I’m going to hate that forever. But I know why I did it, and I know I did the only thing Icoulddo.” I tap my sternum with the hand that isn’t gripping his wrist. “That matters.”
The line of his shoulders loosens a fraction. He drags a palm over his mouth.
“I know why I did it,” I repeat. “And I would do it again if I had to.”
He closes his eyes briefly, then opens them. “Then I’ll carry the rest,” he says.
“I’m not porcelain,” I say, softly.
“No,” he agrees. “You’re steel. But I’m going to take on the extra weight from the woman I love when she’s already carrying enough.” He leans in, touches his forehead to mine, breathes with me once. “Therapy. Whatever it is you need. We do that on my dime or yours, I don’t care. We do it.”
A laugh breaks out of me, small and wrecked. “On your dime,” I say. “I’m temporarily unemployed.”
His mouth twitches. “Done.”
“But we still do it my way with Akers,” I tell him. “We tip it in. We make them look.”
He curses. “Elena, no. Not after this.”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “Even more after this. We link him with the Russos. We don’t just cast doubt. We take everything he cares about. We ruin him. Completely.”
Luca’s eyes darken, a bit of heat jumping in them. “You being vindictive is really doing it for me,” he whispers roughly.
“Perv,” I whisper back.
“For you? Always,” he says a moment before knuckles rap softly at the door. He doesn’t look away from me. “Come,” he calls, and only then turns his head.
Dr. Bianchi slips in with Roberto behind her, a bag in one hand, hair pulled back, eyes already cataloging. Luca eases to the side but keeps one hand on me. As the doctor kneels by my ankle and murmurs her first questions, Luca looks back at me once more.
“I’m sorry,” he says, quiet and clear, as if he needs the words to be recorded by the walls.
“I heard you,” I say. “And I believe you. Now, you have to believe you.”
He nods and tightens his fingers on mine. He does not let go of my hand.
Chapter Forty Three
Luca
