"I mean it, Maksim. Everything. Who you're working with, what you're planning, what the risks are. I need to know what I'm walking into."
"You'll know everything I know." The promise came out steady. True. "I've been keeping secrets to protect you—I understand now that was the wrong approach. You can't protect yourself from threats you don't see coming."
Something in her face softened. Not quite trust—we weren't there yet—but the first crack in the wall she'd been building.
"And when it's done," she continued. "When Anton is dealt with, whatever that means. I get my life back."
The words hung between us.
She wanted out. When this was over, she wanted to return to her studio and her dog and her north-facing light and the quiet life she'd built before I dragged her into a war zone. She wanted the option to walk away from me.
I should have been prepared for that. Should have expected it, even welcomed it—she deserved the choice, deserved to decide her own path without the weight of obligation or trauma binding her to someone who'd brought violence into her world.
Instead, something cracked in my chest.
"When Anton is dealt with," I said carefully, "you can have whatever you want."
The words came out lower than I intended. Weighted with something more than professional agreement.
Her breath caught.
I watched her register the promise underneath—not just freedom, but me. Not just her life back, but the option of something else. Something that included the man sitting acrossfrom her, blood memory on his hands and devotion burning in his chest.
Whatever she wants.
I meant it completely. If she wanted to disappear, I would let her go. If she wanted to stay, I would spend the rest of my life earning that choice. If she wanted something in between—part-time partnership, occasional contact, a connection that existed in the spaces between danger—I would take whatever pieces she was willing to give.
I was hers. Had been hers for five months, maybe longer. The violence of tonight hadn't changed that. If anything, it had crystallized the feeling into something harder, sharper, more unshakeable.
She was silent for a long moment. The city glowed beyond the windows. Ghost's breathing was slow and steady between us.
"Okay," she said finally. The word was small, but it carried weight.
"Okay?"
"Okay, I'll help you." She held my gaze. "Partner."
The word settled something in my chest. Not resolution—there was too much uncertainty for that. But foundation. Something to build on.
Thenegotiationhadgivenher energy. I could see it in the way she sat straighter, the way her eyes had sharpened with purpose instead of fear.
But I could also see what she couldn't.
The tremor in her hands when she wasn't actively using them. The shadows carved deep beneath her eyes, darker than they'd been at the gallery. The particular pallor of someone running on empty—adrenaline and shock and sheer stubborn will carryingher through a crisis that should have sent her into shutdown hours ago.
Her body was failing even as her mind kept racing.
I'd seen this before. In operatives who pushed through injuries. In my brothers during the worst of the Volkov conflict. The human machine could run on fumes for a surprisingly long time, but the crash, when it came, would be devastating.
"When did you last eat?"
The question came out in the Daddy voice before I could stop it. Low. Firm. Not asking so much as requiring an answer.
Her eyes flicked to mine. Something shifted in her expression—surprise, maybe, or recognition. The particular awareness of someone who had heard that tone before, across five months of careful conversations, and knew exactly what it meant.
"I—" She stopped. Considered. "Before the gallery. I had almonds."
"That was two days ago."
