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I lowered the phone slowly, my hand shaking badly enough that I nearly dropped it. Nikolai had gone completely still beside me. Whatever careful distance had still existed between us, whatever fragile line we’d been navigating since the night he’d found me crying in my living room, disappeared entirely in that moment. He wasn’t looking at me like a liability anymore, or a complicated ally, or even a woman he was still learning to trust. He was looking at me like someone worth protecting at any cost, and the fury building behind his eyes told me exactly how seriously he’d just taken that threat.

“He just declared war,” Nikolai said quietly, already reaching for his phone, thumb moving across the screen.

I hadn’t just exposed a trafficking network. I’d painted a target on my own back, and now, because of everything that had happened between us, on Nikolai’s as well.

Chapter Sixteen

Nikolai

The color drained out of her face the second the call ended; I watched it happen. Camila didn’t scare easily. I’d learned that about her the hard way, through several confrontations where she’d held her ground against me with nothing but nerve. Graham’s voice alone had undone all of it in under a minute. Her hand shook, setting the phone down, and she pressed it flat against her thigh a second later like she could will the tremor away through sheer effort.

Graham did not make idle threats. I could tell the difference between posturing and genuine intent, and nothing about that call had sounded like posturing. He’d called her personally. He knew her name, knew about the arrangement between us, knew exactly where to apply pressure to hurt me without ever touching me. That last detail sat heaviest. He understood that the fastest way to wound me now ran directly through her, and men like Graham didn’t waste effort learning things they didn’t intend to use.

She had become a target the moment she’d published that article.

“Get your things,” I told her. “You’re not staying here tonight.”

*****

She didn’t argue on the drive, which told me more than any protest would have. She sat in the passenger seat with her hands folded tight in her lap, watching the Strip blur past, her jaw set like she was holding herself together through pure stubbornness rather than actual calm. The silence between us stretched long enough that I found myself checking the mirrors more often than the route required, watching for headlights that lingered too long behind us.

I kept Graham’s voice running on a loop in my head the entire drive, alongside a second, quieter thought I liked considerably less—the image of what his men would do to her if I failed to move fast enough. I had spent years keeping my emotions separate from my decisions, and in the last few weeks that separation had started failing me at exactly the moment I needed it most.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said finally, not looking at me. “Whatever this is. I can handle myself.”

“You handled yourself fine against me,” I said. “Graham isn’t me.”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

*****

The penthouse felt different walking in with her this time, with none of the charged tension from our first night here. I had Yuri on the phone before we’d cleared the elevator, additional men stationed in the lobby within the hour, cameras repositioned to cover every angle of approach to the building. Yuri’s team began tracking chatter from Graham’s known associates immediately, looking for any indication of movement, any sign of exactly how fast this threat intended to materialize. I gave orders in short, clipped sentences.

Camila watched all of it with an expression that shifted slowly from shock to fear, the reality of her situation finally setting in now that she was watching men with guns take up positions specifically because of her. She stood near the window with her arms wrapped around herself, watching the elevator doors like she expected trouble to arrive through them at any moment.

“This is real,” she said quietly, more to herself than to me.

“Yes.”

Yuri caught me alone in the hallway a few minutes later, keeping his voice low enough that Camila wouldn’t hear from across the room. “You’re really doing this, boss?”

“I am.”

“Mikhail’s not going to love the idea.”

“Mikhail will understand it once I explain it.” I met his eyes without flinching. “This isn’t up for discussion, Yuri.”

“Alright,” he said finally, and left it there, which was more than I’d expected from him.

I gave her twenty minutes to settle before I raised the solution I’d been turning over since leaving her apartment. I watched her pace the length of the living room twice before she finally sat, some of the tension in her shoulders easing slightly at the familiar routine of movement.

“We should get married.”

She looked at me like I’d said something in a language she didn’t recognize. “What?”

“Marry me.” I kept my voice level; in the same tone I used for decisions that had already been made rather than ones still open for debate. “Graham threatened you as a private citizen with no protection beyond whatever surveillance I can manage. If he threatens you as my wife, he’s threatening the Golovin family directly. That changes the calculation for him entirely. An attack on you becomes an act of war against the Bratva, not a private grievance he can settle quietly.”

“You’re insane.” She stood, putting distance between us she clearly needed, one hand pressed to her forehead like she was trying to physically hold her thoughts together. “You can’t just decide to marry someone because it’s strategically convenient.”