I’m still leaning against the wall, blouse open, body trembling, lungs clawing for air, but he doesn’t even look at me. Just turns and leaves. The silence he leaves in his wake wraps around me like a chokehold.
Because I don’t know what I hate more: that he walked away like I mean nothing, or that some part of me wanted him to stay.
ALEKSEI
It’s only supposed to be sex. A release. A means to an end.
That’s what I tell myself as the door clicks shut behind me and I slide into the car, her taste still on my tongue.
But it isn’t. And that’s the goddamn problem.
I drop my head back against the seat, knowing I should’ve stayed away. It’s the only option left to make it through this marriage without losing control.
She’s my wife on paper. My enemy by design. But every time she looks at me—unflinching, furious, daring me to strike first—something in me cracks. Everything I was taught, everything I’ve lived by like a code of honor, starts to slip.
Because she doesn’t just make me forget the rules. She makes me want to break every damn one.
I drag a hand over my jaw, still hard and strung tight with the memory of her pressed against me, her body soft, but her eyes fighting every second of it. She never fully submits. Not even when she’s trembling, gasping my name, and shaking apart around me.
That’s what makes her dangerous. Not her job. Not the way she tried to destroy me in court. The way she feels: too real in my arms.
This was supposed to be revenge. Now I’m not sure who’s paying the price.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
FIONA
It’s beena week since that breakfast. A week since I last saw him.
And every day, it gets harder to pretend that I’m okay with that.
Some nights, I wake to the faint trace of his cologne clinging to my pillow. Other times, I swear I feel the dip in the mattress beside me, like a ghost of his body was there and vanished before dawn. But then morning comes and he’s still nowhere to be found. His side of the bed remains pristine, like he was never there at all.
I don’t know if I’m imagining it. If my mind is playing tricks on me, weaving him into the empty spaces simply because I don’t know how to fill them anymore. He’s become a quiet, yet insistent ache in the background. The only part of him I have is his ever-present bodyguards, one car length behind me wherever I go, reminding me that even when he’s gone, he still owns every corner of my freedom.
But every night, I lie awake wondering where he is. Who he’s with. Whether his hands are on someone else. Whether his mouth is whispering to another woman in Russian, telling her all the things he’s never said to me.
Is he falling for her? Will he give her everything I told myself I never wanted?
I can’t seem to get the images of him with other women out of my head. It’s like a damn life sentence—seeing that, feeling the anger, sadness, and jealousy all wrapped into one insufferable emotion.
When did I start caring this much? Was it gradual? Slow enough to slip past my defenses without setting off alarms? Or did something inside me break the day I met him, and I’ve been bleeding out ever since?
I don’t know who I am anymore. I used to be sure. I used to believe in right and wrong. In justice. In the thrill of hearing “guilty” read aloud in court.
Now, all I feel is chaos.
You seriously need to get it together. Remember who he is.
Men like Aleksei don’t fall in love. They conquer. They consume. They leave behind nothing but wreckage, and I swore I’d never let myself become another broken piece in a long line of casualties.
But knowing something doesn’t make it easier to live with. A sharp pang stretches in my chest as I grip the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the endless stretch of road as I veer off the main highway, pulling into the gravel lot near the tasting room of the vineyard.
The second I park, I register the sound of music floating through the air. The quiet hum of staff outside setting up chairs beneath the pergola and arranging lanterns for what looks like an event.
For the first time in a long time, there’s life here. Real life. Not desperate hope or barely hanging-on optimism.
My throat tightens as I step out of the car and spot my parents standing near the patio, talking to two vineyard employees. My mom’s laughing at something, her hand restinglightly on my dad’s arm while he says something back, and she swats his shoulder with a grin.
