She keeps talking. Crying now.
I can’t fucking stand crying.
It gets under my skin. Makes me want to break something just to drown it out. Makes the walls feel too tight. Makes my own body feel like a bad fit.
And worse—worsebecause it’s her.
Her scent is still all over this room. Sweet under blood and soap and fear. My body knows her before my head can make sense of any of this. Knows the sound of her. The feel of her. The way she melts and fights and laughs and shakes in my hands.
And now she’s standing in front of me telling me she wassenthere for me.
“I didn’t tell him anything,” she says, voice breaking apart. “I didn’t want to give him the ledgers. I didn’t want to hurt you. I—”
She chokes on it, like the words are fighting her on the way out. “I love you.”
Everything in me stops.
My eyes snap to hers.
“What the hell did you just say to me?”
Tears spill faster now. “I love you.”
The wordsare so foreign in her mouth I almost don’t know what to do with them.
“I love you,” she says again, shaking. “I didn’t want to do this. It wasn’t even supposed to be you. I just—I couldn’t get away from him. There was no getting away from him, Maksim! Every time I said no—”
Her hand jerks weakly toward her face. Toward the bruising.
Something black flashes across my vision.
“Do you know what I have to do now?” I say, and my voice comes out low enough to scare even me.
She goes still.
“If the Bratva finds out who you are,whyyou were here, what youtook—do you understand what that makes you?”
She just stares at me. Too wet-eyed. Too hurt.
I can’t look at her for long.
I turn away, drag both hands over my face, pace once, twice, then stop at the radiator beneath the window.
Old iron. Bolted into the wall.
Solid.
My eyes burn just staring at it.
Behind me, her breathing changes.
She knows.
Good.
Because I need her to know this is real. What she’s done is real. I turn, cross the room, grab up the rope and catch her by the wrist.
She jerks back on instinct. “Maksim—”
