I don’t expect Vivienne to say it back. So when she murmurs, “Love you too,”it undoes me.
That’s all I need.
I thrust into her in one hard stroke, burying myself to the hilt. She gasps, her back arching, her body clenching tightaround me. The heat of her nearly undoes me, but I force myself to move, slow at first, then faster as her moans grow louder, sharper.
The bed creaks beneath us, dust falling from the rafters, but none of it matters. Only her. Only this. Her legs lock around my waist, pulling me deeper, her nails scratching down my back hard enough to draw blood. I bite her throat, sucking until I know I’ll leave marks, claiming her in every way I can.
“Harder,” she gasps, her voice breaking.
I slam into her, again and again, each thrust shaking the bed, shaking us both. She cries out, her hands clutching me, her body shuddering beneath mine. I kiss her, swallowing every sound, every moan, every whimper.
Her walls tighten around me, and I feel her breaking apart beneath me, her orgasm tearing through her, her cry muffled against my mouth. I keep moving, chasing my own release, until I can’t hold back any longer.
With a final thrust, I spill inside her, groaning her name like a prayer, like a curse, like both at once.
We collapse together, breathless, sweat mixing with dust and cold air. My forehead rests against hers, my chest heaving, my heart hammering so hard it feels like it might break free.
Her eyes flutter open, still glazed with pleasure, and she smiles faintly, a rare, fragile thing. “Damn, that was incredible.”
I laugh and collapse beside her, pulling her against my side.
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Vivienne
Months pass, and somehow I don’t feel like I’ve been counting them. The world outside our walls is loud, shifting, merciless, but in our house—the small one tucked against the tree line—it feels different.
The mornings are always mine. I wake earlier than him, always have. I pad into the kitchen barefoot, the wooden floor cold against my feet, and start the coffee. The smell fills the house, sharp and bitter, grounding. Some mornings I sit at the table with a stack of briefs, highlighter poised between my fingers, preparing arguments I’ll later deliver to judges who pretend not to notice the Bratva stamp in every line.
Other mornings, I flip on the television and watch the news anchors read from teleprompters about “insufficient evidence” or “unexpected technical delays” that led to cases against Bratva assets collapsing in real time. My work. My signature hidden in the background, my hours spent poring over precedents and loopholes turned into soundbites.
It’s a strange thing, sipping coffee while the world debates whether the syndicate is too slippery for the courts or too deeply embedded in the system to ever be cut out. Once upon a time, I’d have been furious. Now I take another sip and make a note for my next hearing.
Some days I trade the kitchen table for the courtroom itself. I walk through marble hallways in heels that echo, hair pulled tight, suit sharp enough to cut, folders tucked under my arm. I stand at the defense table with Alexei’s men watching from the gallery, their presence heavy even when silent.
Judges glance at them, jurors shift uncomfortably. When I speak, the air changes. I build my case brick by brick,dismantling the prosecution’s arguments until there’s nothing left but doubt.
Doubt is all I need. Doubt is all it takes to send another soldier or lieutenant home instead of into a cell.
Alexei never comes inside the courtroom. Not officially anyway, but he’s there.
Sometimes at the back, just a dark silhouette leaning against the wall. Sometimes in the hallway, waiting with his arms crossed, the gold of his watch catching in the sterile lights. He never says a word while I argue, but I see the glint in his eyes when I corner a prosecutor, when I cut through their evidence like it’s nothing. Pride. He won’t ever name it, but I feel it.
At night, it shifts again. The calls still come. Sometimes I’m half asleep when the phone on his nightstand buzzes, and he answers in Russian, his voice low, clipped, commanding. Other nights, he leaves altogether, slipping out into the dark with his gun holstered, returning hours later with blood on his hands or smoke clinging to his coat. He doesn’t hide it from me anymore. He never says the details, but he doesn’t need to. The stains tell their own stories.
What’s changed isn’t him—it’s the space he’s carved for me inside that darkness. I don’t wait behind locked doors anymore. I walk with him through the shadows, even if sometimes it’s only with a pen in my hand instead of a gun. He lets me see it all, the empire raw and jagged, and for the first time it feels like mine too.
Our war is over, but the empire isn’t. Neither of us is pretending to be clean.
That honesty—the lack of pretense—has become the spine of what we are together. If it’s even romance, what we have—it’s not soft. It’s sharp-edged, stitched together with choice and defiance.
We clash often. He growls when I push too close to danger, when I offer to stand in places his men think no woman should.
I bite back when he tries to cage me, when he forgets that I didn’t choose him just to be shielded. Some mornings, we fight bitterly before I leave for court, his temper colliding with mine until words cut deeper than they should.
Then we stand side-by-side at the defense table, immaculate, unflinching, untouchable. No trace of the argument bleeding into the way we move together.
It unsettles prosecutors. It unsettles judges. Two figures who should have torn each other apart long ago, united instead, unshakeable.
Sometimes, I catch his eyes on me as I speak in court. Watching me tear holes in the opposition’s argument, steady and sure, his expression unreadable to anyone else. But I know the glint. I know what it means.
