She yawns softly, tracing circles on my skin with her fingers. “I want to protect you too, you know,” she says, groggy but sincere. “You act like I’m fragile, but maybe I’m stronger than you think.”
I laugh quietly. “Protect me, huh? From what exactly?”
“From yourself.” Her voice is fading, but the words linger, brushing against something deep in me.
I stare down at her, silent. The woman has no idea what she does to me—how her tenderness makes all my walls crumble. I press a kiss to her hair and whisper, “Sleep, Elara.”
She tilts her head up to look at me, her voice barely above a whisper. “Are you going to be here when I wake up?”
I hesitate. It’s a fraction of a second—barely noticeable—but she catches it. Her eyes dim, and she forces a small smile. “Never mind,” she murmurs, turning her face into the pillow.
I don’t answer. The words stick in my throat, heavy and cruel. I stay silent, tracing the curve of her back with my hand until her breathing evens out and she drifts back to sleep.
I stare at her for a long time, memorizing the way the moonlight touches her face, the soft rise and fall of her chest. My jaw tightens. “After the war is over,” I whisper, my voicebreaking the stillness, “you’ll always see me when you wake up, Elara. Forgive me for now.”
An hour later, I slip out of bed. The room feels colder without her in my arms. I dress quietly, holstering my weapon, and leave the suite without looking back.
From midnight until morning, I work without pause. While Luka handles preparations for the trip—coordinating the men, securing transport, and confirming the flight to Texas—I focus on locking down the estate. Every gate, every guard rotation, every surveillance feed. If I’m leaving Elara behind, there can’t be a single weakness. Not one.
I move from the security room to the armory, checking ammunition counts, assigning watch shifts, testing communication lines. My body runs on adrenaline and habit; exhaustion doesn’t touch me. Not today.
Every time her name crosses my mind, my resolve sharpens. I hardly catch a minute to sit, but I don’t care. Elara is my priority. Keeping her safe is the only thing that matters.
I eventually tell the boys about my plans to go to Texas and ambush David, but they’re not having it. Especially Adrian and Lukin. They call me on video, faces tight.
Adrian’s the first to lean forward, jaw tight. “Roman, you don’t just walk into another country and start a war,” he says. His voice is low and steady—exactly the calm that makes the blow hit harder. “That’s an international mess. You pull a stunt like that, and we become headline fodder. We can’t afford the attention.”
Lukin doesn’t even bother hiding his impatience. He snaps, “You want to rush in because you’re angry. That’s not strategy, that’s theater. We need time, intel, clean windows. We wait. We pick the moment.”
I let their words hang in the air long enough to polish them into my answer. “Waiting is a recipe for a body count,” Isay. “You want me to hold while men knock through my gates and take what’s mine? You want me to wait while they parade a girl—my girl—at an auction and laugh about it? No.”
Adrian shakes his head. “You’re asking us to risk our people, Roman. For vendetta. For pride.”
“For her,” I correct, flat. “Not pride.”
“We get it—David’s rotten, and you’re right to want him found. But Roman, you can’t just bring Dimitri and a handful of shooters across a border. There’s law, there’s fallout. People will die for that headline.”
“People die anyway.” The words come out harder than I meant. “If we let Chang operate, if we let his brokers keep buying and selling—if we let him think he can sell a woman to settle a debt—then more people die than if I strike him cold and fast. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for another outrage.”
Lukin’s face goes stony. “You think you’re the only one who feels that? We all feel it. But we live by rules. The Rusnaks have always moved under the radar—kept our shadows thin. You pulling a cross-border war puts the whole family on notice.”
“Then we keep it surgical.” I lay the plan out in the barest terms—no flourishes, no heroics: a small strike team, targeted nodes in Chang’s network, bankers and brokers who move the money, trusted pilots, satellite eyes, off-grid safe houses, extraction windows. “We hit resources, not people in the street. We burn his ability to pay mercs and brokers. We don’t give the press a scene.”
Lukin exhales, the fight draining out of him in a grudging way. “You’re a stubborn son of a—” He stops, then nods. “Fine. You get your window. But I want absolute control of the extraction plan. If anything goes sideways, we pull everything and disappear.”
“Agreed.”
With the Pakhan’s go-ahead, the rest of the planning slides into place. Dimitri shows up that evening—hair perfect, grin in place—even though we’re about to drag him into a firefight. Luka has already packed my bag, and it’s in the car trunk. All that’s left is to tell Elara.
She’s in the chair by the suite window, book open on her knee, when I push the door. The second she sees me, she’s up—hands warm as she wraps me in a hug so fierce I almost drop to my knees. She’s never acted this way with me before. Ever!
“I haven’t seen you all day!” she breathes into my chest.
I let her hold me for a beat longer than I should. “I’m sorry, it’s been a very long day,” I say, threading my fingers through her hair. “What are you reading?”
She snorts and pulls back enough to blink at me. “Some silly French novel Vivian insisted I try. It’s boring, but the language is pretty. What about you? Did you eat anything today or just stare at logistics all afternoon?”
“Logistics have their own appetite,” I say, sliding onto the edge of the bed. “I had a sandwich shoved at me earlier. Luka calls it food.” I tilt my head at her. It’s a mundane, silly conversation, but I love it. Her presence softens the day in ways I can’t explain.
