He turns his palm, and I slide my hand into it. Heat blooms where our fingers meet. His thumb strokes once across my knuckles and stops. If I were the kind of woman who could sleep in a storm, I would do it now. But there are words turning over inside me, sharp side up.
“Do you hate me?” I whisper.
The question rips something in my chest. I am scared of the answer because I know what I was ready to do. I was willing to put a blade where his heart beats. I was willing to trade one life for three and carry that act like a stone in my pocket. He murdered his son for me and mine. He has plenty of reasons to hate me.
Roman does not make me wait. He pulls me across the space between us. His arm wraps around my shoulders without touching his wound. He presses his mouth to my hair and holds me there. “I could never hate you,” he says. “Not in this life. Not in the next. I love you more than I thought possible.”
The idea of a next life with him cracks me open. I place my hand over his bandage and feel the heat there, the pulse under it, his body’s stubborn refusal to quit. He killed for me. He killed for our sons. I was willing to kill for them too, and the only reason I did not is because he did it for me.
My voice shatters to a whisper. “I hesitated. When the moment came, and I knew what I had to do to save our sons, I hesitated.”
“You hesitated long enough for me to see him in the knife’s reflection. That hesitation saved us.”
“I hesitated because I wanted the last thing you saw to be me in love with you. I wanted that to be the memory if I took you away from the world.”
He tightens his hold and then loosens it so I can breathe. A red light washes the windshield and blinks to green. The driver keeps us smooth and unremarkable. Roman tilts my chin so he can see my eyes.
“Are you angry with me,” he asks, “for hesitating before the kill shot? For offering prison instead of death? Can you forgive me?”
There is tenderness in the way he asks for forgiveness, as if mercy is the flaw. “There is nothing to forgive. If it were my son, I could not do what you did. No matter what he had done. The instinct to protect your child is primal. It crushes thought. I am shocked you were able to do it at all. I was bracing to step in. I thought I might have to finish it if you could not.”
He closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, they are darker. “I know you would have. But I never wanted that for you. Killing someone, even someone as wretched as Vitaly, it stains your soul.”
I know that. Not from experience, but I’ve known enough people in his shoes to know that. “I would have done it for our family.”
He presses a kiss to my forehead. “My hope is that you never have to.”
We ride in a pocket of quiet. The city slides by in lit windows and empty benches and a woman walking a tiny dog as if the night minds its own business. I lean into him and listen to the steady music of his breath. My mind tries to make a list of everything that needs to happen next. Find my mother and the boys. Find out what happened at the retreat. Wash the blood from his cuff. Throw away the dress that now belongs to a ghost of me.
Random thoughts come out of my mouth. “I keep thinking of your face. When you aimed without turning. You looked at me as if I were the only sight that mattered.”
“You were. You are.” He lifts my hand and kisses each knuckle. His mouth is warm. The gesture makes my throat ache. I stare at our hands and see a ring that is too new for us to have this much history attached to it. I drag the pad of my thumb over the metal and think of vows that did not predict this night and still cover it.
“I was afraid you would hate me.” I can’t seem to shut up. “For asking the walls to rise. For wanting to hide with you in that box. For wanting to deny him his show.”
“He never deserved a show,” Roman says. “He never deserved anything at all.”
The driver takes a turn that leads to a bridge. Water below is black and sparkles under the city lights. The reflection makes me think of that blade again, that narrow piece of truth. I squeeze his hand.
He threads our fingers together again. His pulse beats against mine. The radio clicks once. The voice in it says all clear. He nods toward the windshield as if the night needed permission to continue. “I keep thinking of your mother.”
“So do I. Where do you think she is?”
“Vitaly, for all his finesse, was a creature of habit in certain respects. This is not the first time he took a hostage, and I suspect we will find her in his warehouse. Which is why we’re heading there now.”
A hint of relief crashes into me. Not enough to make me feel better—that won’t happen until my babies are in my arms and I see she’s okay. But for now, it’s enough to keep me breathing.
“I thought you said we were headed home.”
“That was for the benefit of anyone who might still be loyal to Vitaly.”
“You think you have a mole?”
His lips form a flat line. “He didn’t get close enough to our home for you to see him hold your mother without having a man or two on the inside. We will have to root them out to be sure, but that comes after our family is secured.”
We pass the last exit before the bridge ends. The edge of town hosts industrial buildings where people don’t ask questions. They simply handle their business without noticing too much.
I’m not sure if I want to know the answer to this question. “After tonight, can you still be with me?”
