She pulled back to look at me, her eyes searching my face. I didn't know what she saw there—blood, probably, and exhaustion, and the remnants of a violence that would take days to process. But whatever it was, it didn't make her flinch.
"You came for me," she said.
"I promised I would."
"You could have died."
"I didn't."
"But you could have." Her voice cracked. "You could have, and then I would have—"
I kissed her. Cut off the words with my mouth, poured everything I couldn't say into the contact. She kissed me back, desperate, her hands sliding into my hair, holding on like she'd never let go.
When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard.
"Let's get out of here," I said.
Yegor met us at the bottom of the stairs.
His face was grim but relieved when he saw us—saw Keira on her feet, saw me with my arm around her. "The building is secure. All hostiles neutralized."
"Casualties?"
"Two wounded on our side. Nothing critical."
"Good. Get everyone to the vehicles. We're leaving."
"And the bodies?"
I glanced back up the stairs, toward the place where Branko's corpse lay cooling on the floor. "Burn it. Burn the whole thing. I don't want anything left."
Yegor nodded and began issuing orders into his radio. I guided Keira toward the door, keeping her close, shielding her from the carnage we passed on the way.
The night air hit us like a wave—cold, clean, carrying the smell of pine and wet earth. After the stale decay of the manor, it felt like surfacing from underwater.
Keira stopped on the front steps, her face tilted up toward the sky. I watched her breathe, watched her absorb the reality that she was free.
"It's really over?" she asked.
"Branko is dead. Cormac is dead. The immediate threat is neutralized."
"And the Petrovics? Branko's father?"
"Milos is in Serbia. He'll be a problem eventually, but not tonight." I took her hand, lacing our fingers together. "Tonight, we go home."
She looked at me, and I saw something in her expression I hadn't seen before. Not fear, not relief, not exhaustion. Something else.
Trust.
"Home," she repeated, like she was testing the word.
"Home."
***
We didn't go back to the penthouse.
The security had been compromised—the Petrovics had known the codes, known the layout. Until we could figure out how, it wasn't safe. Instead, I took her to a safe house in the city. A brownstone in the West Village that I'd owned for years but rarely used. Off the books, unknown to anyone except Yegor and my brothers.
