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There it is. The truth stripped of power, orders, and security protocols.

"I can survive you hating me. I can survive you leaving. I can survive knowing you're somewhere else, furious with me for the rest of your life. But I cannot stand beside another grave knowing the person inside it died because I couldn't keep them safe."

Elena stares at me, her eyes shining. Then she crosses the space I put between us.

"Sending me away won't stop you from loving me."

My jaw tightens.

She reaches for my hand. "And leaving you won't stop me from loving you."

Everything inside me goes silent.

"I love you, Adrianos. I am terrified enough by that without you deciding loving me gives you the right to remove me from my own life."

"You almost died tonight."

"So did you. A bullet missed your head by inches."

"That's different."

"No, it isn't. You just think your life is the acceptable one to risk."

I say nothing because she's right, and I hate that she's right.

Elena tightens her fingers around mine. "I know what choosing you means. I know what your world is. I know there could be another attack tomorrow, and I'm not pretending love makes any of this safe. But you don't get to decide I'm safer without you when I'm telling you I choose you."

Every argument I have disappears. She chooses me knowing exactly what I am. Not the man I might become. Not some cleaner version of me she can imagine into existence. Me.

I reach for her and pull her against my chest.

There is nothing gentle about the way I hold her. My arms close around her until no space remains between us, and Elena holds me just as tightly. I bury my face against her hair and breathe in slowly.

Then my body betrays the control I've spent a lifetime perfecting. My hands begin to shake against her back.

I tighten my grip, but the trembling spreads through my arms. Elena feels it immediately. She doesn't comment, doesn't tell me everything will be fine, and doesn't offer promises neither of us can make.

She simply holds me harder.

I close my eyes and stand with her in the wreckage of the safest place I own, surrounded by proof that someone can penetrate my security, my organization, and perhaps the Crown itself.

For years, I believed power meant eliminating anything capable of hurting me. Elena has made that impossible. Because the one thing that can destroy me is already in my arms.

And I love her too much to let her go.

29

Elena

By sunrise, Adrianos's penthouse no longer feels like a home.

Men move through the rooms carrying weapons, equipment cases and expressions that tell me nobody expects to sleep anytime soon. The damaged security panel has been stripped from the wall. The bedroom door hangs crooked where Adrianos forced his way through it, and a dark stain remains on the carpet where the man who came for me died.

I avoid looking at it.

My own bullet left a hole in the wall six inches from where I'd intended to hit him. I keep remembering the recoil, the violent crack, and the terrible second afterward when I realized I'd missed. Adrianos insists I bought myself time. Technically, he's right. I hit the man's arm badly enough to slow him down, and those few seconds helped keep me alive. Knowing that doesn't stop my hands from trembling whenever the memory returns.

So I do what I have always done when reality becomes too loud.