He swallows. His face goes completely blank. Stone.
“A fling,” he repeats, his nostrils flaring slightly.
“Yeah.” If I say anything more, I’ll shatter. I’ll tell him that this is the opposite of what I want. That it feels like ripping out something vital and leaving it behind.
But he did this to us.
And no one gets to see me break again.
Never again.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Drago
She’s lying straight to my face.
I saw the contract sitting in Marco’s inbox an hour ago. I recognize the tells in her voice, too. The fractures she can’t hide, the way her breath stutters when she reduces us to a fling like it didn’t cost her anything to say it.
She thinks she can cut this off cleanly. Walk away and still exist in my orbit as if nothing happened.
The worst part is that she’s not doing it because she doesn’t care. She’s doing it because she’s scared.
I can smell it on her. Lily saw Tatiana kiss me, and she’s too afraid to call me out on it. Too afraid to ask the question that she already knows the answer to.
And that shatters me more than her words ever could.
Her eyes aren’t puffy from champagne. They’re swollen from tears I caused. Tears she cried quietly, alone, while I stood on the other side of a door making deals with the devil.
I never deserved my lastochka. I knew that from the start. And still, I chose to be selfish. I chose to taste happiness knowing exactly how dangerous it was.
So maybe she’s right.
If we end it now, there’s no explosion. No confrontation that blows Lev’s world apart. No truth detonated in the open that destroys everything I’ve built to protect her.
A clean cut.
I’m not good enough for her. The light I wanted in my life was never destined for me.
“Okay,” I say, forcing the word past my throat as I swing my legs off the bed. I can’t look at her. If I do, I’ll break. I’ll drop to my knees and beg her not to do this. I’ll tell her that the kiss meant nothing. That it was a transaction, not desire. That I hated every second of it. That I hated myself more. That it was the price of keeping her alive.
And worse, Tatiana knows now. She knows Lily is my weakness. That alone makes Lily unsafe by my side. This is the right thing to do.
“Okay?” Lily repeats softly, like she needs to hear it again to believe it.
I nod once and head straight for the door. I should come to terms with the truth that I was never put on this earth to be happy. That happiness was never written into my fate.
I was built to kill. To hunt. To step into the dark so everyone else doesn’t have to. I exist to save people, then stand back and watch my own life burn while theirs carries on untouched. I’m always the man in the shadows, never the one chosen to stay in the light.
My own parents couldn’t love me. They looked at me and saw something disposable, something useful, something they could trade away without regret. So how the hell am I supposed to believe anyone else could love me and mean it?
Everything I touch eventually breaks. Everything I let myself want turns to ash.
So maybe this is all I get.
Memories.
Monaco.
