Page 68 of My Wedding Night Massacre

He’s still, the cloth in his hands, his eyes on my face.

I hold his gaze. “You were the only one. You always were.”

He sets the cloth aside and lies down beside me, his weight settling into the mattress, his face close to mine in the low light. He looks at me for a long moment, and I can see the last door opening.

“I never stopped either,” he says. His voice is low, stripped of everything except the truth of it. “In Palermo, when the rage was the only thing keeping me moving. Your face was there. Every night, every morning, every time I needed a reason to get back up.” He pauses. “I hated it for that. I needed it to do that. I hated that I needed it.”

I reach up and touch his jaw. He turns his face into my hand, his eyes closing for a second.

“I don’t need the rage anymore,” he says. His eyes open, finding mine. “I love you, Pavlina. I’m ready to feel it without anything underneath it holding it in place.”

The room is very quiet.

I move closer, pressing my face to his throat, his arms coming around me, pulling me against his chest. His heartbeat under my ear, steady and real. Misha’s people are on the doors. Denis is asleep in the back room with his thumb in his mouth.

Slava’s hand moves slowly across my back, and I close my eyes, feeling peaceful, content, and satisfied.

40

Slava

The alarm on my phone goes off at five-thirty, and I’m already awake.

Pavlina is beside me, her hair across the pillow, her breathing slow and even. I watch her for a moment in the dark, the curve of her shoulder, the soft rise and fall of her chest. Then I get up, dress without turning on the light, and go downstairs to where Misha is already at the table, coffee in hand, the final intelligence summary spread in front of him.

He looks up when I come in. Doesn’t say anything. Pushes the second mug toward me.

We go through it one last time. The gate rotation, the mobile guard, the floor plan, and the position of every man we know is inside that house. By the time we’re done, the sky outside the villa windows has begun its slow shift from black to grey, the city beginning to remember itself as it does every morning, indifferent to what’s about to happen inside it.

I go back upstairs.

Pavlina is awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, already dressed. She looks up when I come through the door, her honey-brown eyes finding mine in the low light, and doesn’t ask if I’m ready because she already knows the answer.

“Stay with Denis,” I say. “Don’t open the door for anyone except Misha.”

She reaches up and straightens my collar. Both hands, smoothing the fabric flat, the same gesture from the wedding night three years ago in a dark room on the third floor. I catch her hands and hold them there for a second.

“Slava,” she says.

“I know,” I say.

She pulls her hands back, nods once, and goes to Denis’s room without looking back.

Misha is at the bottom of the stairs with his jacket on, his good arm loose at his side, the left held slightly close to his body. He looks at me when I come down.

“Romeo’s already on the east perimeter,” he says. “Luigi and Giorgio at the rear. Lorenzo and the others spread across the approach routes.”

“Bogdan’s security rotation?”

“Confirmed last night. Six men on the house, two at the gate, one mobile. The mobile one is the problem.”

“I’ll take the mobile one,” I say.

Misha nods and picks up his jacket. “The Italian crew is ready.”

We go.

The city is barely awake, the streets running at their minimum, the sky still more dark than light. The car moves through it without ceremony, Romeo driving, Misha beside me in the back, the plan running in my head in clean sequential steps. Entry. Security. The men who had a choice and made the wrong one. Then Bogdan.