She hates me.
The words loop through my skull on repeat. A broken record I can't shut off.
I lift my head. The mirror shows exactly what I expected—the same face that's stared back at me for thirty years. Dark eyes. Sharp jaw. The kind of features women call handsome right before they call me too much.
But tonight, I see something different.
I see a lot of men I've met.
Men who kept a secret family. Men who proved that love and loyalty couldn't coexist in our world.
I swore I'd never be that kind of man.
Congratulations, asshole. You're worse.
I told myself I was protecting Kristen. Protecting Lily. That paying off the debt and making Jack disappear was the right thing to do. That keeping them here, keeping them safe, was better than the alternative.
But that's not why I did it.
I did it because I couldn't let her leave.
The truth sits in my chest like shrapnel. Sharp. Embedded. Impossible to remove without bleeding out.
I paid off her debt to the Bratva and I never said a word.
Because I knew.
I knew the second she found out she was free, she'd take Lily and run. Not from the Russians. Not from Jack. From me.
And I couldn't fucking handle it.
Love is a liability.
Pietro's voice echoes in my memory. Our father's voice. The lesson hammered into every Sartori son since birth. Love makes you vulnerable. Love makes you compromise. Love gets people killed.
I believed it. For thirty years, I believed it like gospel.
Then Kristen Thomas walked into my miserable life.
And I thought...
Maybe.
Maybe I could have this. Maybe the philosophy was wrong. Maybe love didn't have to be a weapon that destroyed everyone who touched it.
I lean closer to the mirror. Study the face of a man who should've known better.
"You fucking idiot," I whisper.
Kristen didn't see through me. She saw what I wanted her to see.
But tonight she saw the truth.
I hate you.
Her voice replays. The way her gray-blue eyes went flat when she said it. No heat. No passion. Just cold, dead certainty.
She meant it.
