“I’m asking if you’ll choose me again. Every day. Despite knowing exactly who I am and what I’m capable of.”
“Every day,” she confirms without hesitation. “Will you choose me? Even when I become someone our fathers never intended—someone who rules rather than serves?”
“Especially then.”
She kisses me then, soft and sure, and it tastes like promises and possibilities. The kind of love that survives by transforming rather than by remaining unchanged.
When we break apart, both breathing unsteadily, I see my own transformation reflected in her eyes. We’re not the same people who were forced into this arrangement months ago. We’re not even the same people who walked into that warehouse last night.
We’re becoming something new together. Something stronger than the sum of our individual parts.
Something that might actually deserve the future we’re planning to claim.
CHAPTER 35
Kira
The weightof what we’ve just planned settles over me like a shroud as we save the fabricated messages and close the surveillance programs. In seventy-two hours, I’ll watch my father walk into a trap I helped design. I’ll inherit an organization built on his corpse. I’ll become someone I didn’t plan to be.
Someone I never thought I’d want to be.
“Second thoughts?” Rafa asks, noting my stillness.
“No. Just... processing.” I lean back in my chair, suddenly exhausted by the magnitude of the choice I’ve made. “Three days from now, I’ll be responsible for hundreds of lives, millions of dollars, and operations spanning three continents. Are you sure I’m ready for that?”
“I’m sure you’re more ready than your father ever was.”
“That’s not exactly a high bar.”
“Then I’m sure you’re the most capable person I’ve ever met. If anyone can transform that organization into something better, it’s you.”
The certainty in his voice steadies something in my chest. “And if I make mistakes? If I’m not the leader they need?”
“Then you’ll learn from those mistakes and become better. That’s what good leaders do.” He reaches over to take my hand. “That’s what you do.”
I study our intertwined fingers—his slightly larger, bearing small scars from years of technical work, warm and sure around mine. These hands have killed for me. Will probably have to kill again in the service of what we’re building.
“I’ve never been anyone’s first choice before,” I admit quietly. “Always the backup plan, the contingency option, the useful tool kept in reserve. My father chose Alexei as his heir, chose Nicolai as his strategist, and chose Misha as his diplomatic face. I was just... the smart daughter who could be married off when politically convenient.”
“Their loss.”
“Was it? Because choosing me over them means those relationships are over forever. Means I’ll be responsible for their deaths, directly or indirectly.”
“Do you want to call it off?”
I consider this seriously, weighing love against duty, future against past, the woman I’m becoming against the daughter I’ve always been.
“No,” I say finally. “I want to stop pretending I don’t deserve better than being someone’s contingency plan.”
“You deserve everything. Everything you want, everything you’re willing to fight for.”
The way he says it—like it’s a simple fact rather than a revolutionary concept—makes something warm unfurl in my chest. How did I get so lucky? How did an arranged marriage designed to use me as a weapon somehow give me this instead? Rafa values me… sees me.
“Come here,” I whisper, standing and moving toward the couch in the corner of his workspace.
He follows without question, settling beside me in the soft lighting. The monitors continue their quiet humming, casting everything in blue shadows that separate the moment from the rest of the world.
“I need you to know something,” I say, turning to face him fully. “What happens in three days, what I become after this—it’s going to change me. Make me harder, more calculating, less... innocent, I suppose.”
