I disliked her in that moment. I hated how much she mattered. I hated that she was the only person on earth who could make me feel like I was losing a war I had already won.
I didn't think. I just moved.
I grabbed her waist and pulled her into me, my mouth crashing down onto hers. It wasn't a soft kiss. It wasn't an apology. It was a desperate, primal attempt to silence the argument, to reclaim the territory that was slipping through my fingers.
She fought me for a second, her hands pushing against my chest, but then something shifted. A soft, broken sound escaped her throat, and her fingers tangled in my hair, pulling me closer with a frantic, starving energy.
The fight didn't end; it just changed form. It turned into a wildfire.
I pushed her back against the wall, my hands gripping her hips like a promise and a curse. I dragged my mouth down the curve of her neck, my teeth grazing the skin over her pulse point. She didn't push me away. She arched into me, her breath coming in jagged, desperate gasps.
"Alexei," she whispered, and I couldn't tell if it was a plea or a prayer.
I didn't care. I needed to feel her. I needed to drown out the suspicion, the Morettis, the letters, and the lies. I took her right there, the silk of her clothes tearing under my hands. It wasn't gentle. It was consuming, raw—a war fought between our bodies instead of words. Every thrust was an assertion of power, every gasp from her a surrender I drank like wine.
In the dark, beneath the shadow of the Lobanov legacy, we weren't a mafia boss and his bride. We were just two people trying to burn away the world before it burned us.
**********
Mila lay beneath me, her hair a dark halo on the pillows, her skin flushed and bruised. The moonlight caught the sheen of sweat on her shoulders and the glitter of a single tear that had escaped her eye.
I looked down at her, the adrenaline beginning to ebb, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity. The passion hadn't solved anything. The letter was still there. The Italians were still waiting.
I leaned down, my mouth brushing against her ear, my voice a ghost of the fury from before.
"You will never lie to me again, Mila," I whispered. It was a vow.
She didn't move. She didn't even open her eyes. But her voice came through the dark, small but rough.
"Then stop giving me reasons to."
I closed my eyes, the weight of her words hitting me harder than any shove ever could. I pulled her into me, wrapping my arms around her in the dark, and for the first time in my life, I felt the terrifying truth.
I had married her to keep her safe from the world. But I had no idea how to keep her safe from me.
Chapter Thirteen
Mila’s POV
The greenhouse had become my refuge, which was ironic considering it was made entirely of glass.
I sat in the wicker chair, a textbook open in my lap that I hadn’t actually read a word of in the past hour. My mind replayed the phone call over and over again.
“Mila.”
Just my name. Just that one word in a voice that had made my knees buckle, that had sent ice flooding through my veins.
I knew that voice. Iknewit. But my brain wouldn’t complete the connection, wouldn’t let me acknowledge what every instinct was screaming. It couldn’t be. It was impossible.
He was dead. I’d grieved him. I’d mourned and raged and finally, finally started to heal.
But that voice…
The man on the phone had told me he was alive, in hiding. Had warned me not to trust anyone, especially the Italians. Had mentioned a traitor close by. And when I’d asked where he was, confused and terrified, he’d just hung up.
Left me standing in the greenhouse with a dead phone in my hand and my entire world tilting sideways.
That had been yesterday. Twenty-four hours of walking around in a daze, trying to act normal while my thoughts spun in endless circles. Trying to figure out who the voice belonged to, why they’d called, what it all meant. Trying to decide whether to tell Alexei.
