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She left with a final squeeze of my hand at the door, and the apartment settled back into silence the moment it closed behind her. I busied myself for the next hour by tidying things that didn’t need tidying to keep myself from watching the clock.

*****

Nikolai came home around 9:00 pm, and the second I saw him step out of the elevator, every ounce of relief I’d been holding onto collapsed into raw panic.

His shirt was torn at the collar and stained dark red down one side. Bruises along his jaw were already looking purple, and he moved with a stiffness that told me he was protecting ribs that hurt worse than his face did. Behind him, Yuri lingered near the elevator doors for a moment. He exchanged a brief look with me that told me more than I wanted to know, and left without a word.

“Nikolai—”

“I’m fine.” He said it before I’d even finished his name, though the effort of standing upright told me a different story entirely.

“You are not fine.” I crossed the room and got an arm under his shoulder despite his obvious reluctance to lean on anyone. “To the bathroom.”

He sat on the edge of the tub while I worked, cleaning the shallow cut along his jaw first, then pressing gauze gently against tender and swollen skin. He watched me the whole time with an expression I’d rarely seen on him—quiet and clear exhaustion. His hands rested loose on his knees with none of that deliberate stillness he usually carried.

“The location was real,” he said, once I’d moved to the deeper bruising along his ribs. “Records confirmed. Financial trails, intake logs going back years. Graham’s people fought harder than we expected. That’s where this came from.” He gestured vaguely at himself. “But Mateo’s name wasn’t in any of it.”

I kept working, my hands steady even as something in my chest cracked slightly at the news. “Okay.”

“I need you to understand something.” His hands found mine, stopping them mid-motion so I’d look at him fully. “Trafficking victims rarely survive years inside operations like Graham’s. I haven’t stopped looking, and I won’t. But I need you to be prepared for the possibility that we may only ever find the truth of what happened to him, not the man himself.”

“I know,” I said, and meant it more fully than I’d expected to. “Some part of me has known that for a long time, probably longer than I let myself admit. What matters now isn’t whether I get some impossible reunion. It’s knowing. It’s making sure no other family spends four years the way I did, not knowing anything at all.” I set the gauze down and took his face gently in both hands, careful of the bruising. “You’ve fought harder for me than anyone ever has in my entire life. I don’t think I fully understood how rare that was until right now, watching you come home bleeding because you refused to stop looking.”

Something moved behind his eyes, raw and unguarded in a way I’d only glimpsed once or twice before. He pulled me against him carefully, mindful of his own ribs. We stayed there for a while, with his head against my chest as I stood between his legs.

“You should rest,” I suggested.

I assisted him to the bed, and he sat on the edge while I brought him a pair of pajamas. He stood and took off his already unzipped black trousers.

“You know how funny it is that you’re looking away?” he asked in a teasing tone he rarely used.

“It’s just… the polite thing to do,” I answered, finding myself smiling shyly without meaning to.

“Don’t be polite,” he said, sitting after pulling the pajama pants up. “I’m wearing boxers. You’ve seen me naked many times.”

Half-embarrassed, I reached for the pants he took off, heading for the closet.

“I don’t need this,” he said, forcing me to turn around to see his heated yet playful expression.

He was holding out the cotton shirt from his pajamas to me. I took it from him and disappeared into the closet again.

When I emerged, he said, “Come here.”

“Yeah. I’ll join you shortly. I just have to turn off the lights in the—”

“No, now,” he cut in, taking my hand in his.

He stood again and claimed my lips in a slow but ardent kiss, his hand coming around my waist. I kissed him back, the tenderness of my emotions pouring into the kiss.

“We can’t… you’re injured,” I told him when we finally broke apart for oxygen.

“Which means I can’t be on top,” he answered, raising a brow at me.

I opened my mouth, but my self-consciousness killed any sound that would have come out. His lips collided with mine again before moving to my neck, silencing my thoughts. His hands removed my clothes and underwear in the blink of an eye as he simultaneously took off his pants and boxers.

He lay down and moved me to straddle him. The heat in his eyes was enough to drive me wild, and I ran a hand through my hair, making it fall to my back.

“I must have done something really good in my past life to have a sexy angel like you ride me.”