He clung to her instantly, like his bones recognized her before his mind did. His small fingers fisted in her shirt, face burrowing into her neck, new tears spilling hot and fast.
She curled around him, shielding him with her entire body.
“If you laid one finger on him,” she hissed, voice shaking with fury, “I will end you. I don’t care who you are.”
Then she was gone—vanishing down the hall with her child held tight—and the door slammed behind her like a gunshot that left smoke in the air.
I stood frozen in the wreckage of my surveillance room. Monitors flickering. My shirt soaked in a child’s grief. The ghost of his weight still pressed to my chest.
Minutes bled into hours, or maybe hours bled into minutes—I couldn’t tell. Time lost meaning when the house fell silent and I had nothing to look at but the frozen camera feeds showing rooms empty of the two people who mattered.
At some point—after the pounding in my chest stopped sounding like an execution—the door opened again.
No slam. No fury. Just a slow, quiet push.
Pen slipped inside alone.
Moonlight from the hallway carved her silhouette: silver on her cheekbones, shadow along her throat, the shape of her hips forming a perfect hourglass in her soft cotton shorts. She looked like a memory trying to kill me and a future I couldn’t touch.
She closed the door gently behind her.
We stared at each other.
She broke the silence first, voice low and lethal as a blade dragged across skin.
“You made my son cry.”
“I answered his question honestly,” I said.
She flinched. Barely—but I saw it.
“He asked if I could promise never to hurt you,” I went on. “I told him I couldn’t. But I swore I would protect you both with my life.”
Her eyes scanned every inch of my face, looking for the lie, the manipulation, the trap.
She didn’t find one.
Something inside her shifted. Not softened—but... cracked.
Grief. Fury. Exhaustion. A tenderness she refused to acknowledge. A history she couldn’t outrun.
She walked toward me.
One step.
Another.
Another.
Until she stood close enough that my breath stirred a strand of her hair, close enough that I could see the faint freckles across her nose.
Her scent—jasmine and warm skin—hit me like a fist.
“You want to marry me to save your empire,” she whispered. “Fine. But understand this, Dmitri Volkov.”
She rose onto her toes, leaning in until her lips brushed my ear.
Her breath was warm.
