Moments later Alexei stormed into the room, the door slamming against the wall with a crack that sounded like a gunshot. I backed away, my breath hitching in my throat. He didn’t stop until he was inches from me, his presence overwhelming, smelling of cold air and iron.
“How long?” he demanded.
The question wasn’t a shout. It was a low, dangerous vibration.
I froze. My lips parted, my mind racing to find the words, anything to stave off the look in his eyes. But there was nothing. The silence stretched between us, heavy and suffocating. In that silence, I watched the realization settle into his features. I watched his jaw clench so hard I thought bone might snap.
My silence was his answer.
“How long, Mila?” he repeated, his voice dropping an octave. “How long have you known your father was alive while I cleaned up after his ghost?”
“Alexei, I—”
“You hid this from me,” he whispered.
The lack of volume in his voice was what broke my heart. If he had screamed, I might have fought back. I could have channeled my own anger. But this was quiet. This was cold. It was the sound of a bridge collapsing.
“I was protecting him,” I said, my voice trembling but gaining strength. “I knew what you would do. I knew your wrath. He’s my father, Alexei. What was I supposed to do? Give him to you to be executed?”
“You were supposed to be mine!” He finally snapped, his hand slamming against the wardrobe beside my head. I didn’t flinch, but the sound echoed through the room. “Total transparency. That was the pact. You aren’t just a woman I took; you are the woman who sits beside me. And you made me a fool. You let me walk into a trap with my eyes closed while you held the key the whole time.”
He began to pace, his movements fluid and frantic, like a caged wolf sensing the hunters closing in. “The Italians have the one piece of leverage that can bring this entire empire to its knees. They’ll use him as bait, and I’ll have to choose between the stability of the Bratva and the woman who lied to my face for months.”
“I wasn’t conspiring against you,” I cried out, stepping into his path, trying to force him to look at me. “It wasn’t a plot. It was a daughter trying to save the only blood she has left. I thought if I kept him hidden, I could find a way out. I thought I could solve it without blood.”
“In this world, there is nothing without blood,” he spat. He looked at me then, and the betrayal in his eyes sliced deeper than any physical wound. He looked at me as if he didn’t recognize me. As if I were just another enemy infiltration.
“I wasn’t even sure of what he was reaching out to me for. I was… I was still trying to put the fragments together,” I explained, my voice sounding like a plea.
He didn’t say anything.
The tension in the room was a physical weight, a cord stretched so tight it was humming. The air felt thin, ionized by our mutual fury and the underlying, desperate current of fear.
Alexei stopped pacing. He looked at the window, at the gray, overcast morning, and then back at me. I saw the struggle in him—the Bratva boss who needed to punish a traitor, and the man who was married to her.
“You’ve put everything at risk,” he said, his voice returning to that terrifyingly calm rasp. “Every life under my protection. Every street we control. Because you couldn’t trust me.”
“I couldn’t trust the monster!” I shouted back. “I trust the man, but the man isn’t always the one in charge, is he?”
He lunged.
It wasn’t an attack, but it felt like a collision. He dragged me against him, his hands gripping my waist with a bruising strength. For a heartbeat, I thought he might strike me, or cast me out. Instead, his mouth crashed onto mine.
It wasn’t a kiss of reconciliation. It was a kiss of desperation. It was a bruising, frantic exchange, the kind of contact that happens when two people are drowning, and they’re clawing at each other just to stay above the surface. I answered back with the same ferocity. I bit his lip, tasting the copper of blood, my fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer even as I hated the situation we were in.
We fell back onto the bed, the sheets cold against my skin, but his body was a furnace. There were no words. There were no apologies. There was only the raw, visceral need to reclaim what was ours in the only way we knew how. We fought through theclothes, through the anger, using our bodies to say the things our pride wouldn’t allow.
Every touch felt like a brand. Every movement was a desperate attempt to bridge the gap that my secret had created. In the heat of it—just for those few moments—the Italians didn’t exist. My father didn’t exist. There was only the friction of skin and the sound of ragged breathing.
Later, the room was silent again.
The adrenaline had ebbed, leaving behind a hollow, aching exhaustion. I lay tangled in the damp sheets, my body heavy. Alexei was behind me, his chest pressed against my back. I could feel the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart—a heart I had broken, yet one that still beat for me.
His lips brushed against the sensitive skin of my shoulder, his breath warm.
“I don’t lose what’s mine,” he whispered.
The words were soft, almost a lullaby, but they chilled me to the bone. It was a promise that he would protect me, that he would fight the world to keep me. But it was also a threat. It was a reminder that I belonged to him, that my secrets were his, and that there was no corner of the earth where I could hide from his reach.
