The bullet catches him in the forehead, just above his right eye. His grip releases. Natalia stumbles forward as he crumples backward, hitting the concrete with a sound that barely registers above the ringing in my ears.
Anton Kozlov, Pakhan of the Vegas Bratva, the man who murdered his wife, sold his daughter, and controlled every room he ever walked into, dies on the floor of his own warehouse.
Natalia runs to me. Full sprint. She crashes into my chest and I catch her with my good arm, pulling her in so tight that my cracked ribs scream and I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.
“You absolute idiot,” she chokes against my neck. “You could have missed.”
“Wasn’t going to miss. Not with you.”
She pulls back. Tears and blood on her face, I don’t know whose. Her hands are shaking so badly she can barely hold onto me.
There are a hundred things I should probably say first.Are you hurt?Can you walk? We need to get out of here.But they all get trampled under the weight of the one thing that has been clawing its way up my throat for days now, maybe from the moment she found me bleeding on that beach and decided not to let me die.
I press my forehead to hers.
“I love you.” I cup her face with my bruised hand. “I think I have from the start. I loved you when I didn’t know my own name, when all I knew was that I wanted to be near you. And I loved you after I remembered. When I knew exactly who I was and exactly why I shouldn’t, I still loved you. I’m always going to. You’re it for me, Nat.”
She kisses me. Hard and desperate and tasting like blood and salt, and I kiss her back with everything I’ve got left, which isn’t much, but it’s hers. All of it. Whatever I am, whatever’s left after tonight, it belongs to her.
She pulls back just far enough to look me in the eye. “I love you too.” Her voice cracks on it. “So much, Luca.”
For one second, I can’t say a damn thing.
Because no one has ever chosen me like that before. Not cleanly. Not with their whole heart.
“Then I’m yours,” I say, my throat tight as hell. “For the rest of it.”
Around us, the gunfire fades. Bratva soldiers drop weapons. Dario is barking orders. Matteo is moving through the room, clearing threats, efficient as always.
Natalia’s gaze drops past me to the warehouse floor, to where Anton lies sprawled near the side door and Nikolai is a ruin by the broken crates. I feel the shiver that goes through her.
Then she looks back at me.
“For the first time in my life,” she says softly, “I think I’m free.”
I brush my thumb under her eye, catching the last tear there. “You are.”
And this time, with Anton dead at our feet and Nikolai never getting back up and the whole rotten Kozlov machine finally broken open around us, I know it’s true.
40
NATALIA
“I wantthe fuck out of here. I’ve been in this damned hospital bed too long.”
Luca scowls at the ceiling as I wedge his pillow more carefully behind his back and then fuss with the angle again because he’s acting like a giant impossible toddler. And also because if I don’t keep my hands busy, I might start thinking too hard about how much blood was on him the night we found him.
“It’s been three days,” I tell him. “That’s not too long. That’s barely any time at all.”
“It’s at least a year in hospital time.”
I smooth the blanket over his legs even though it doesn’t need smoothing. “The doctor said you’ll probably be released tomorrow.”
“Probably,” he repeats darkly, like the word has somehow wronged him.
I sit back down in the chair beside his bed, trying not to smile too much because Luca in a bad mood is still, somehow, unfairlyattractive. He has one shoulder strapped up in a sling, bruises blooming across half his body, and enough swelling left in his face to make him look dangerous even while he’s pouting.
Which, to be clear, he is.
