I frown. "Can what?"
"Study. If you want to." He says this with a shrug, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
I stare at him. "Aidan, I just married into the Bratva. I didn't escape it. I just moved from one branch to another."
"You moved into my branch. And in my branch, my wife does whatever she wants. I mean, look at my sister, do you think anyone could control her?" He snorts at the thought and a smile cracks the corners of my mouth.
“No, I can’t imagine anything stopping her from doing what she wants.” And it’s true. Iris is a powerhouse wrapped in the kind of confidence that can only exist when you are surrounded by unwavering support.
“Right. So if you want to study, then study.”
The words settle around me like something warm being draped over my shoulders. I want to push them away. I want to find the angle, the caveat, the small print that says this freedom is conditional and temporary and designed to make me compliant before the real expectations kick in. But Aidan is looking at me with that steady, patient certainty, and I can't find the angle.
"You can't just say things like that," I tell him. My voice sounds wrong. Thin. Like the walls are so close to coming down that my words have to squeeze through the cracks.
"Why not?"
"Because it makes me..." I stop. Swallow. Try again. "It makes me want to believe you. And believing people has never ended well for me."
He pulls me onto his lap, and as much as I want to fight it, I can’t. "It will this time," he says gently.
The silence that follows isn't heavy. It's open. Like a door I can walk through or not, and either way, he'll still be sitting here when I decide.
I lean my head against his shoulder. "Tell me about renovating this place," I say.
He looks at me for a moment. Then he starts talking. Low and unhurried, the way he does everything. About the beams he salvaged from the original structure. The months he spent stripping the stone walls back to their bones. The fireplace he rebuilt by hand because the mason he hired did it wrong and he couldn't stand looking at something that wasn't right.
I listen. His voice is steady and warm and real, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I don't feel the need to protect myself from the person sitting beside me.
It terrifies me. But I stay.
Aidan
A week changes everything.
Not in the way most people would notice. Tanya still holds herself like a woman who's been trained to expect the worst, but she laughed at dinner last night. Iris said something about Killian's cooking and Tanya laughed, and the sound of it went through the room like sunlight through a crack in a wall, and everyone heard it, and no one said a word about it because the Orlovs know instinctively when to leave a good thing alone.
She sits on the sofa in our home with her legs tucked underneath her and reads. Actual books she found my shelves on the second day and went through them without asking, which I took as a good sign because Tanya doesn't touch things that don't interest her. She reads fast and she remembers everything, and when she disagrees with something, her nose creases in a way that makes me want to abandon whatever I'm doing and just watch her.
She sleeps in our bed. Close enough to me that I can feel her warmth, close enough that she reaches for me in her sleep without knowing she's doing it. I know because I wake up before her every morning and I lie there and I feel her hand find my chest or my arm or my hip in the dark, and I hold still and let her.
She eats breakfast in the main house now without bracing first. Ma has learned that Tanya likes her eggs scrambled, notfried, and her coffee with one sugar and cream, and that she'll eat a second piece of toast if no one draws attention to it. These are small things. Tiny victories. But in the landscape of Tanya's armor, they feel tectonic.
This morning, I leave her in bed.
She's propped against the pillows with her hair loose and sex-mussed, my t-shirt hanging off one shoulder, reading something that she holds against her chest when I lean down to kiss her, like she doesn't want me to see it.
I see it anyway. University brochures. Three of them. One for a school about thirty minutes from here, one for a program that can be done partly online, and one that looks like a full prospectus for a psychology degree.
I don't say anything. I kiss her forehead and she makes a soft, irritated sound that means she was concentrating and I interrupted her, and I leave the house with something expanding in my chest that I don't trust myself to examine too closely because I might do something stupid like smile for the rest of the day.
Liam's already in his home office when I arrive, behind his desk with his sleeves rolled and the expression he wears when something needs handling.
"Morning," I say.
"Sit down."
The tone tells me this isn't a casual conversation.
