"Do you really believe that?"
"I have to believe it." His thumb strokes across my cheekbone, but I don't lean into his palm. "I want you to be safe and happy and whole, and I want to be the one who gives you those things."
I don't know what to say. Part of me wants to say yes, wants to fall into his arms and let him promise me everything will be okay. But another part—the part that remembers the sound of gunfire—that part knows better than to trust anything he says. He may not have lied about the enslaved women, but he wasn't upfront about how dangerous pretending to be Ana Veche would be.
"I need time to think about all of this," I finally manage. "It's too big a decision to make right now when everything's still so raw…"
"I know." He presses a kiss to my forehead and then pulls back, letting his hands fall from my face. He stands and stretches,his joints popping audibly from the tension of the night we've survived. "I'm gonna try to light the pilot light for the water heater. A hot shower would go a long way toward making both of us feel human again."
"Okay." I watch him disappear down a hallway, making old floor boards creak, and then I turn back to the fire and reach for another log to add to the flames.
The wood is dry and catches quickly, sending sparks spiraling up the chimney like tiny stars escaping into the storm above. I sit there watching them rise and thinking about Lev's request, turning it over in my mind.
Could I really be with a Mafia hitman, a man who kills people for a living? His life is so different from everything I've known. I don’t know that I could learn to live with the danger and the violence. What he does is abhorrent and dangerous, and what if he just didn't come home one night? What would I do then?
The flames crackle and pop, filling the silence with their voice, and I pull my knees up to my chest again and rest my chin on them while I stare into the dancing orange light.
I don't have any answers for any of the questions that swarm my mind. Maybe I won't have any for a long time, or maybe I never will. But I know I feel safer when I'm with him.
Call me a fool because without him there's no danger, and that would mean I'm inherently safer, but I don't think so. He brings a grounding to my soul I need—that I've always needed. And I don't know what my normal, boring life would look like without having that newfound hope.
Maybe the real question isn't whether I can be happy with Lev.
Maybe the question is whether I can be happy without him.
21
LEV
The spring storm rolls across the fields, lightning flickering on the horizon like distant artillery fire. I stand on the farmhouse porch with a cigarette between my fingers, watching the sky crack open while Vivika sleeps in the house behind me. The wee hours of the morning have always been my thinking time, the quiet space between midnight and dawn when the world feels suspended and anything seems possible.
We stayed up late working on her act, running through scenarios and body language until she could barely keep her eyes open. If she's going to convince Luka Kolar that she's Ana Veche, she has to be more like Ana than ever before—more confident, more commanding, more like a woman who was born to lead a criminal empire. And right now, despite all the progress she's made, Vivika still seems too meek and passive for the role she's about to play.
I take a long drag of my cigarette and let the smoke curl from my lips. The problem isn't her intelligence or her ability to recite the facts of Ana's life. The problem is something deeper, somethingfundamental to who Vivika is as a person. She's spent her life being small and quiet and careful, and that's the opposite of everything Ana Veche represented.
The screen door creaks behind me and I turn to see Vivika stepping onto the porch, wrapped in one of the blankets from the bed and barefoot. Her hair is tousled from sleep and her eyes are still heavy-lidded, but she moves toward me with uncertain steps and a weary gaze.
"Couldn't sleep?" I ask.
"The bed was cold without you." She stops beside me and leans against the porch railing. "What are you doing out here?"
"Thinking." I offer her the cigarette and she takes it, bringing it to her lips and inhaling deeply. It's a bit surprising considering I've never seen her smoke before. "I didn't know you indulged."
"I used to. Before…" She exhales a thin stream of smoke and hands the cigarette back. "Before all of this, I mean. I quit years ago." When her head hangs, I realize I'm a dead weight sucking her back to a bad habit she wants to leave behind.
I drop the cigarette and stamp it out and rub a hand over my eyes. There's been a gnawing sense of dread that I've carried for a few days now. Vivika wants normal. It's what she craves. But even in the simplest things, I can't give her normal. I'm the antithesis of everything she wants, right down to a bad habit she's quit that I'm dragging her back into.
"I'm sorry," I say softly, and it may well be one of the first sincere apologies I've ever issued.
"For?" Vivika steps closer until her body stretches along the length of mine and her head rests on my shoulder.
"You're not like me, and I just…" I can't even finish. The words I have are inadequate and useless. She deserves more than words, but I can't give her what she deserves.
"Kiss me?" she says softly, and at first I'm not sure what she's trying to say. But I press a kiss to her forehead and she straightens. "No, really kiss me, Lev."
I reach up, curling my fingers around her neck and pulling her down for a kiss. Her hands slide under my shirt, her fingers trailing across the muscles of my stomach and up to my chest, and I feel my body responding to her touch the way it always does. But something makes me pull back to catch her wrists and hold her at arm's length even though every instinct is screaming at me to take what she's offering.
"Wait," I growl. This is a learning experience, and though I hate myself for thinking this way, I have to take advantage of it.
