The question catches me off guard. “Why?”
“Because in three days, everything changes. For both of us. And I realize I know remarkably little about who you were before you became who you had to be.”
I consider deflecting, maintaining the careful distance that’s served me well in this world. But looking at her face—genuinely curious, unguarded in a way she rarely allows—I find myself answering honestly.
“A pilot,” I admit. “I wanted to fly planes.”
“Commercial or military?”
“Neither. Private aviation. Charter flights to exotic locations, working for wealthy clients who wanted to explore places that don’t show up on normal travel itineraries.” I can hear the longing in my own voice, even after all these years. “Freedom to go anywhere, leave whenever I wanted, no permanent attachments or obligations.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It sounded perfect when I was twelve and already suffocating under family expectations.”
“And now?”
“Now I understand that running away is just another kind of prison. You’re always looking over your shoulder, alwaysplanning the next escape, never actually building anything lasting.”
“Is that what changed your mind? The realization that running wasn’t freedom?”
“No,” I say quietly. “You changed my mind.”
She goes very still. “Me?”
“You made me want to stay somewhere. To build something instead of just surviving until the next opportunity to leave.”
“Even though staying means becoming deeper involved in exactly the life you wanted to escape?”
“Especially because of that.” I turn my chair to face her fully. “I spent years thinking freedom meant isolation, thinking attachment was weakness. But watching you navigate this world—the way you turn limitations into advantages, the way you find strength in connections rather than independence—it made me realize I’d been defining freedom wrong.”
“How so?”
“Freedom isn’t the ability to leave whenever you want. It’s the ability to choose what’s worth staying for.”
The admission hangs between us, more vulnerable than anything physical we’ve shared. Because this is the heart of it—not just desire or convenience or strategic alliance, but the recognition that she’s become the thing that makes this complicated, dangerous life worth living.
“What about you?” I ask. “What did little Kira Petrov dream of becoming?”
“A mathematician,” she replies without hesitation. “Pure mathematics, not applied. I wanted to spend my life solving problems that existed only in theory, finding elegant solutions to questions no one had ever thought to ask.”
“Sounds peaceful.”
“It was the opposite of this world. Clean, logical, predictable. Numbers don’t lie or betray or murder each other for power.”
“Do you miss it? The simplicity?”
“Sometimes. When I’m dealing with family politics or calculating the human cost of necessary decisions.” She pauses, then adds, “But mathematics is beautiful precisely because it’s separate from human messiness. Engaging with actual people, with all their complications and contradictions... there’s a different kind of beauty in that.”
“Even when those people are criminals?”
“Especially when they’re criminals. There’s something fascinating about individuals who’ve chosen to operate outside normal social contracts. The psychology is incredibly complex.”
“Am I a fascinating psychological case study?”
“You were.” Her smile is soft, teasing. “Now you’re just the man I love.”
The casual way she says it—love, as if it’s a simple fact rather than a revolutionary concept—sends warmth flooding through my chest.
