Not physically—he’s still all impossible muscle and lethal beauty—but deeper, beneath the bones. Something inside him has died quietly, and the world didn’t notice except for me. He moves like a man carrying a ghost.
And I know exactly whose ghost it is.
Nico.
Or Alexei.
Or both.
I’m not sure it matters anymore.
He moves like a man who dug a grave tonight: his father’s, and maybe a part of himself, too. It almost frightens me how deeply I feel it, how his fracture echoes in my own chest as if we share ribs. Because God help me, losing him in any way—even to his own darkness—is something I don’t know how to survive.
When he finally tells me what happened, Gustave dead, Nico pulling the trigger, truths unmasked, bloodlines ripped apart and sewn back together, I feel something twist low and vicious inside me.
But beneath all of it lives the question that terrifies me most.
"What happens if Nico chooses war?" I ask quietly. "And if my brother chooses war against him? Where does that leave us?"
He lifts his head slowly. What I see in his eyes could break countries. He steps closer until his heat brushesmy front. "Oksana," he murmurs, voice low and carved in steel, "look at me." He tilts my chin up, forcing me to meet the storm head-on. "You're my wife," he says. "Grigori is my brother-in-law. Nico…" His throat works. "…is whatever he is now. I do not break for anyone."
The vow coils around my spine like a warm hand. "If war comes," he continues, "I stand with you. With La Famiglia. With the alliances that keep us alive. With the decisions that keep New York from burning." His thumb sweeps my bottom lip, slow and possessive. "If I have to choose between blood and you?" His voice drops to a dark promise. "I choose you. Not out of duty. Not out of strategy. But because I'd rather carve the world apart than lose the only person who sees me, even the parts I’m still learning to hate."
My chest tightens, painfully. His words shouldn’t melt me. But they do.
Because Stephano Conti does not give love lightly. He gives it like a man handing over his last weapon, conditional on nothing.
I swallow. "It will be hard to kill Nico," I admit. "I… do like him."
Stephano exhales, eyes closing for a beat. "So do I." He reaches up, fingers sliding into my hair. "Let’s hope he doesn’t make us choose."
The silence settles between us, not heavy, but full. A decision hanging in the air like a blade suspended by a thread. Nico will have to decide which blood runsdeepest through his veins—the Russian legacy hunting him, the Venezuelan shadow that shaped him, or the Italian bond forged between brothers.
A hot shower later,I don't fully feel human again, but at least alive. I’m still toweling off when I catch my reflection in the fogged mirror and snort at the half-feral grin looking back at me.
"You okay?" Stephano asks from behind.
I turn, and God help me, the man is naked except for a towel slung low on his hips, droplets of water sliding down his chest like they belong there. His hair looks almost black when it's slicked back and damp. The haunted look in his gray, stormy eyes has been replaced with hunger. He's making peace withthe past. He also looks like sin carved into muscle and bone. I don’t think I'll ever be tired of looking at this man.
He steps closer, caging me against the counter with his arms, his palms braced on either side of me. The heat of him, the smell of soap and male skin, it all hits me at once, low and heavy.
Arousal flares inside me like a match against gasoline. It’s been simmering beneath my skin for twenty-four hours, ever since Toni’s mansion was attacked. There’s something about a good fight that makes me horny as fuck, and being forced to wait until now has turned the desire into a nearly painful need. And now my husband is looking at me like I’m the only thing keeping him sane. My nipples pebble under the towel. His cock presses against me, long and thick and hard enough to bruise.
"Hard and fast?" he asks.
Fuck, but his words make me drenched. I look him square in the eyes and lick my lips, an answer, a dare. "Wouldn't want it any other way," I whisper, and watch the effect those words have on him. His left hand hooks behind my neck, the right tugs the knot of my towel loose. Gravity and his impatience work together to bare my skin. I'm a little damp, a little goose-pimpled, and a lot ready to be consumed. The contrast of his big, warm palm against my breast makes me gasp, but it's the look on his face—hungry, reverent, obsessed—that really undoes me.
"You're so fucking beautiful," he groans, and it's not a line. It's a thing he needs to say, like he can't believe his hands are allowed this. He thumbs my nipple, slow, then pinches just to check if I flinch, like I'm an experiment he's trying to get right. I don't flinch. I arch toward him, hungry for more friction, more pressure, wanting him to bruise me a little so it doesn't fade with the morning. Every bit of my body aches for everything he hasn't yet done to me.
He kisses me, hard, unleashing his own pent-up desires. No chess match here, just heat. My arms come up around his neck, but he shakes his head, pulls them off, and makes a show of pinning my wrists against the bathroom mirror. My heart pounds so loud I wonder if he can hear it.
"No," he growls. He holds my hands above me with one palm, and with the other, grabs my hip, spinning me so my stomach meets the cold marble of the counter. He releases my wrists, and I grip the edge. My cunt clenches with need so sharp it almost hurts.
He trails his knuckles down my spine and between my cheeks, then parts me, exposing every inch to the cool air. I shiver, desperate, every sense on red alert. He spreads my legs with his knee, and the head of his cock nudges my entrance, torturously slow.
"This," he says, punctuating with a slap to my ass that rings out in the tiled echo of the room, "is for the fucking Sasha stunt and worrying me." I cry out just a little, morewith want than pain. The next slap has me biting the meat of my forearm, muffling the moan.
"You like that," he observes, so fucking smug, and the worst part is he's right.
