Liev drags a hand down his face. “Start talking. Now.”
I inhale slowly, arranging the truth into something I can afford to give him.
“Hinto saw us at dinner,” I say. “Public setting. Private room. He drew conclusions.” It’s a guess; an assumption based on what I saw, but a good one. I could have my men confirm it, but that would waste time.
I need Liev to believe this and understand that Hinto’s threat wasn’t empty.
“Why would he think Aly is important to you?” Liev asks sharply.
“I don’t know,” I answer blandly. “But that doesn’t matter. The point is, itiswhat he thinks. So he’s going to take her. Unless she’s here with me, under my protection.”
He scoffs. “You expect me to believe that there isn’t more to this? That you didn’t cut off the line because something else was happening?”
I can see his fury, determination, and panic. Liev suspects that I’m up to something, but he can’t put it together. He wouldneverguess that Hinto’s assumption was right—going after Alyona was a good idea.
Because if she isn’t mine, I want her to be. And he or his men saw it that night.
I meet her father’s gaze without flinching. “Yes.”
His shoulders drop incrementally, but it’s enough. I’ve known Liev long enough to recognize when logic is overriding his instincts.
“Hinto is probing my boundaries,” I continue. “Savannah is an obvious pressure point. He doesn’t know Alyona. He knows optics, proximity, leverage. He knows she was atmytable that night.”
“And your solution,” Liev says, his voice edged with disbelief, “is to make her your fiancée.”
“It makes her untouchable,” I reply. “Publicly. Privately. To everyone who matters.”
Liev laughs once, sharp and humorless. “He won’t touch what’s yours. That’s what you think?”
The implication hangs between us, heavy and dangerous.
“That’s what I know,” I say evenly.
He steps closer, his anger sharpening into something more focused. “Then swear to me you won’t touch her.”
The room seems to still.
“At all,” he adds.
For the first time since this began, I hesitate.
Alyona’s face flashes through my mind, defiant and flushed. The way her pulse jumped under my fingers when I lifted her chin, and the way her breath betrayed her even as her words cut. The idea of not touching her feels like agreeing to cut off a limb.
A week ago, it would’ve seemed doable. But now that I know what she feels like… just how soft, pliant, wet she is for me…
“I can agree to that,” I say finally.
The lie settles heavy in my chest.
Liev studies me, searching for something in my expression, and I give him nothing he can use. After a long moment, he nods once.
“Then we proceed,” he says. “But if you break that promise?—”
“I understand,” I say.
Nika’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, but he says nothing.
The meeting breaks apart shortly after, men reentering the rooms, screens shifting through other metrics, the low hum of the command center fading into the background.
