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“Then I choose you too,” he says. “I’ve been choosing you since the moment I saw you. I just didn’t know how to say it.”

I lean down and press my forehead to his, breathing him in, feeling his heartbeat against my palm.

“Then say it again,” I whisper.

“I choose you,” he says. “Always.”

Epilogue - Maxim

Several months have passed since Davina came back to me.

The Bratva continues to function under my leadership. The territories are secure, the operations running smoothly, the men falling in line as they always have. Nothing has changed in the structure of my world.

Yet everything feels different.

I’ve stopped making decisions based solely on strategic advantage. There’s a new variable in my calculations now—her. Where she is, what she’s doing, whether she’s safe. I tell myself it’s just practical concern. A valuable asset deserves protection. I know the truth, even if I don’t say it out loud.

I’ve become a man who cares about something beyond power.

It unsettles me.

Davina moves through my world now like she belongs in it. She’s not an outsider anymore, not a hostage, not a reluctant guest. She has her own work, and she moves between that life and this one with a fluidity that shouldn’t be possible.

Some mornings I wake to find her already gone, her side of the bed cold, and I have to fight the urge to track her down. Davina always comes back. She always tells me where she’s been.

The part of me that spent years controlling everything still bristles at the not knowing.

Other mornings she’s still there when I open my eyes, curled against my side like she’s been there all night, and something in my chest loosens in a way I don’t have words for.

The mansion feels different now too. Less like a command center, more like something that breathes. Her things are mixed with mine: books on the shelves, her laptop on the coffee table, her scent in the pillows. The staff has adapted to her presence without comment, and I catch them sometimes, the way they look at her when they think I’m not watching. There’s respect there. Wariness, still, but also something warmer.

She’s earned it. She’s earned all of it.

I’m in my office when she finds me that evening. I’ve been reviewing reports for hours, the endless stream of information that keeps my organization running, and I didn’t hear her come in until she’s already standing in front of my desk.

“We need to talk,” she says.

I set down my pen. “About what?”

“About the security detail you’ve assigned to me.”

“What about it?”

She crosses her arms. “There are four of them now. Four, Maxim. I had two before, and that was already too many.”

“It’s necessary.”

“Necessary for what?”

“For your protection.”

“I don’t need that much protection.” She leans forward, her hands on my desk. “I need to be able to move freely. I need to be able to go to meetings without a parade of armed men following me into the lobby.”

“They’re not surveillance. They’re security.”

“They’re the same thing when there are four of them!”

I stand, rounding the desk until I’m standing in front of her. She doesn’t back down, and the fire in her eyes makes something tighten in my chest.