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“I gave him the reason.”

“No.” Alessia’s voice turned harder. “You gave him an excuse. Men like Yuri always find one when they want blood.”

“I knew the Volkovs retaliated through families,” I said. “They killed my parents long before her. They took Mila because they knew what she meant to me. After the report, I understood something I have never been able to forget.”

“What?”

“Love creates targets.”

The sentence came too easily. It had been the foundation beneath every camera, guard, route, and reinforced door I had built since.

“If a woman entered my life, someone would study how to reach her.” I looked toward the photograph on the desk. Mila laughing on the kitchen counter, alive inside a room that no longer existed. “Every protection plan I have made since then began with the assumption that affection is a weakness someone will eventually exploit.”

Alessia was quiet for several seconds, and then she released my hand. The loss of contact felt painful. I watched her as she picked up Mila’s photograph.

My body locked before my mind caught up, an old instinct objecting to anyone holding the only image I had kept. Alessia noticed. Her gaze lifted to mine, but she didn’t put it down.

“She was beautiful,” she spoke the words softly. “She looked happy too.”

“She was.”

“And you loved her.”

“I did.”

Alessia studied the photograph again, her thumb resting against the silver frame rather than the image itself.

“I will not compete with Mila,” she began. “I won’t pretend she mattered less because you married me, and I won’t ask you to make the child less important so I can feel more secure. You are entitled to your grief.” She placed the photograph beside the open report. “But I’m not her replacement.”

“I know that.”

“And I’m not the next body you get to mourn before someone kills me.”

“Alessia—”

“You watch me sleep and prepare yourself to find blood. You hear a door open and imagine the last time you were too late. I understand why. But you cannot make me live inside the grave Dmitry wants you to dig.”

“I know.”

She picked up the report. The desire to take it from her rose so quickly that my fingers curled against my palm. I had kept those pages folded the same way for thirteen years. No one else had read them. No one else had held the physical proof of the mother and child I failed to protect.

“These belong to you now,” I said, forcing my hand to open.

Alessia stared at me. “Sergei⁠—”

“The photograph. The report. You may hold them, return them, destroy them, or place them wherever you believe they belong.”

“I would never destroy them.”

“I know that, sweet girl.”

Alessia looked down at Mila’s face, then she carried the photograph to the bookcase along the interior wall. My shelves were arranged by subject, language, and height. There was no empty space between the Russian history texts and the small brass clock my mother once kept by her bed. She placed Mila’s photograph between them, facing outward.

Then she crossed to the desk, folded the report along its old crease, returned it to the envelope, and opened the top drawer. The drawer held pens, a sealed backup phone, and three blank notebooks. She placed the envelope inside. She came back to me and touched the notch in my ear, following the scar with one careful finger. Her wedding ring brushed my skin.

“You loved them,” she said. “They should be a part of your life.”

My throat closed around the words I had been unable to give her before the wedding.