So, I let him take me back through the villa, past the open glass doors and the soft white walls and the impossible ocean just outside, into the bedroom where the curtains move with the breeze and the sheets are still rumpled from the night before.
He lays me down like I’m something precious.
Then proves, very quickly, that precious doesn’t mean safe.
What follows is all warmth and skin and laughter that turns into gasps, mouths finding familiar places, hands learning them better. It is softer in some places than what came before, and somehow more dangerous for it. Because there is no more pretending now. No more strangers in hotel corridors or bullets in windows to explain away why we’re doing this.
Just us.
Just the reckless, growing certainty that whatever line we crossed is very far behind us now.
And when it is over, when we’ve both caught our breath and the world has narrowed to the white sheets and the quiet ocean outside and his arm heavy over my waist, I lie there listening to his heartbeat and decide I’m not letting him drift away into silence this time.
I turn slightly to look at him.
He’s staring up at the ceiling, one hand behind his head, the other splayed lazily over my hip. For the first time since I’ve known him, he looks almost… unguarded.
It makes him seem younger. Not actually young. Just less carved by whatever made him.
So I ask, carefully, “Tell me more about your family.”
His eyes shift to mine. “That’s not exactly post-coital pillow talk.”
“It can be.”
His mouth twitches faintly. “You are alarmingly persistent.”
“Yes.”
A pause.
Then, surprising me, he doesn’t dismiss the question.
He exhales once and looks back at the ceiling. “My grandfather was the architect,” he says. “Everything started with him. He built the business, the real estate, the influence. By the time I was old enough to understand what family meant, it already came with bodyguards and people who never used full names in front of children.”
I stay quiet.
He seems to like silence when it isn’t demanding something from him. “My father,” he continues, “inherited the worst parts of him without the discipline. He likes power. He likes possession. He likes the feeling of breaking a room just by entering it.” His voice turns flatter. “He also likes being obeyed.”
I think of the way Aleksei’s jaw tightens whenever his father comes up. “And you didn’t.”
“No.” That earns the faintest, bitter laugh. “I was disappointing very early.”
I prop myself up on one elbow to look at him better. “Your mother?”
That changes him. Not dramatically. But enough.
His gaze softens somewhere I’m not sure many people ever get to see. “She stayed longer than she should have,” he says quietly. “For me, probably. For the image of the family. For reasons I still don’t fully understand.”
I swallow. “Was he cruel to her?”
His eyes cut to mine, and I know immediately that I asked the right question and the worst one. “Yes,” he says.
Just that. No details. He doesn’t need them.
I feel something in my chest pull tight. “I’m sorry.”
He studies me for a second, then looks away. “You say that like it changes something.”
