“I hate that somewhere between the surveillance and the stalking and the murder, I started to—” She stops herself, shakes her head. “This is fucked up beyond repair.”
“Probably.”
She laughs, and it’s still broken but less sharp than before. “We’re really doing this? Making this nightmare real?”
“We already did. Tonight, when you ran and I came after you. When I killed for you and you watched me do it. When you chose to stay instead of running as far and as fast as you could.” I stroke her cheek with my thumb, gentle despite everything that just happened. “We’re past the point of no return.”
Chapter Eleven - Elara
The elevator ride to the penthouse feels like ascending through layers of pressure, each floor adding weight to the silence that sits between us like a living thing. Nikola stands beside me, close enough that I can smell gunpowder on his clothes, feel the heat radiating from his skin, sense the controlled violence still humming beneath his surface.
My hands won’t stop shaking. Not from cold or shock, but from something more complex—adrenaline that has nowhere to go, terror that keeps replaying in loops, and underneath it all, something I don’t want to name. Something that responded to watching him kill for me with a mixture of revulsion and dark, dangerous gratitude.
The penthouse doors open onto familiar space that feels completely foreign now. The same bulletproof windows, the same stark furniture, the same careful arrangement of safety and control. But everything looks different through eyes that have seen blood on concrete, that have watched my husband execute a wounded man without hesitation or remorse.
These walls aren’t just protection anymore. They’re a reminder of how close I came to never seeing them again. How close I came to disappearing into whatever hell Marcus Hale had prepared for me.
Nikola moves toward the kitchen, probably to pour himself the whiskey that seems to be his default response to violence. The casual normalcy of it—the way he shifts back into domestic routine after putting bullets in a man’s chest—makes something snap inside me.
“Don’t.” The word comes out harsh, stopping him mid-stride. “Don’t you dare pretend that was normal. Don’t pouryourself a drink and check your emails and act like you didn’t just murder someone in front of me.”
He turns slowly, hands visible, expression carefully neutral. “What would you like me to do instead?”
The question infuriates me more than anger would have. His calm, his control, his fucking unshakeable composure in the face of everything that just happened—it’s like he’s speaking to me from behind bulletproof glass, untouchable and unreachable.
“I want you to acknowledge what just happened!” I’m shouting now, voice echoing off the stark walls. “I want you to admit that this is insane, that what we’re doing is insane, that you’ve dragged me into a world where people get shot like dogs in alleys!”
“You dragged yourself into that alley,” he says quietly. “I just pulled you out.”
“You’ve been controlling every aspect of my life since the moment we met! You destroyed my career, stalked me for weeks, manipulated me into a marriage I didn’t want, and then locked me in this fortress like some kind of princess in a tower!” The words pour out of me, raw and unfiltered. “You made every decision for me, Nikola. Every single one. And when I finally tried to make one for myself, I nearly died.”
“Yes.”
The simple admission stops me cold. No justification, no explanation, no attempt to soften the truth with pretty words about protection and necessity.
“You could have warned me,” I continue, but some of the fire has gone out of my voice. “You could have told me about Celeste, about how deep this goes, about what they were really planning.”
“I only just found out myself. Besides, you wouldn’t have believed me. A week ago, you thought I was the enemy.”
“You are the enemy!” The words explode out of me. “You’re exactly what everyone says you are, a man who takes what he wants and calls it protection. A monster who kills people like it’s solving math problems.”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t argue. Nikola stands there absorbing my fury like he’s been expecting it, like he knows he deserves every word.
“You’re right,” he says.
I blink, thrown off-balance by his agreement. “What?”
“You’re right. About all of it. I am controlling. I did manipulate you. I do make decisions for you without consulting you first.” He steps closer, and I should retreat, but I don’t. “I also kept you alive tonight. That man in the alley? He was going to take you somewhere that would have broken you in ways you can’t imagine. When they were done breaking you, they would have sold what was left to whoever paid the most.”
The words hit like ice water, but he’s not finished.
“So, yes, I’m a monster. Yes, I kill people. Yes, I control everything I can control because the alternative is watching the people I care about disappear into nightmares I can prevent.” His voice remains steady, matter-of-fact, devastating in its honesty. “If you’d been taken tonight, Elara, there would have been no negotiation, no rescue, no undoing it. They would have erased you completely.”
“Stop.” I press my hands to my ears, but it doesn’t block out the truth in his words.
“You think this is about power? About some sick need to own you?” He’s closer now, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “This is about the fact that I can’tbreathe when you’re in danger. Can’t think, can’t function, can’t be anything other than the kind of monster that tears apart anyone who threatens you.”
The confession hangs between us, raw and honest and more intimate than any physical touch. I can see something unguarded in his face, something that looks almost like pain.
