“No,” I say again, louder now. “No, no, no, fuck, no.”
My voice cracks on the last word. There’s no one here to hear it, and that makes it worse somehow.
If Kai were here, he would stand near the door and say my name in that low, infuriating voice.
If Maksim were here, he would say something stupid and angry because he doesn’t know what to do with tenderness unless he can disguise it as a threat.
If Vincenzo were here, he would climb onto my lap without asking, take my face in both hands, and say something sharp enough to make me want to kiss him.
But Vincenzo isn’t here.
He’s not late. Not obeying a boundary. Not trapped in a meeting. Not walking toward a hotel room with that look in his eyes, the one that made me feel like I’d finally dragged him back from a grave neither of us had finished digging.
He’s gone, and he’s never coming back.
The sobs become harder then.
There is no dignity in it. No controlled grief. No beautiful collapse worthy of the man I lost. It’s fucking ugly. It rips out of me in broken, violent waves that bend me over until my forehead nearly touches my knees.
My hands stay clenched around the ring at my chest while my body shakes so hard the bed frame creaks behind me. I try tostop it once, then I give up because there’s no command left in me strong enough.
“Vincenzo, please…” I say, but it comes out wrecked, barely his name. “Vincenzo.”
My husband.
I press the ring harder against my chest until pain blooms under my hand.
He said it first.
My husband.
In his bed, crying and smiling and so fucking alive, wearing the ring I had made for him because I had been stupid enough to think we might steal something real from the world after everything it took.
He said it, and I felt the whole room tilt under the truth of it. Not legal, public, or clean, but real. More real than anything else in my life.
He was mine for one night after the vow.
One night.
The laugh that breaks through the sobs is terrible. It scrapes my throat raw.
“One night,” I say to the empty room. “I got to be your husband for one fucking night.”
The grief twists.
“Fuck,” I choke out against my fist. “Fuck, Vincenzo.”
His name breaks free, and the next sound worse. I bend forward until my forehead hits the floor. The stone is cold. Good. Cold is real. Cold does not care. Cold does not ask me to be sane.
I press the ring to the floor in front of me and stare at it through a blur I refuse to name for half a second before the tears make everything useless.
I’m crying hard enough that breathing becomes labor. My chest and throat hurt, but I can’t stop. Every time I think therecan’t possibly be more, another wave comes up out of the dark in me and breaks across my ribs.
I laugh once through the sobbing, and it sounds deranged.
“Look at you,” I whisper to myself, voice mangled. “Pakhan Dragovich. On the fucking floor.”
Vincenzo would hate that.
