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I turn.

She looks furious and wounded and more beautiful than she has any right to look while dismantling me.

"I know what these people can do," she says. "I know they could kill me. I know they could hurt my mother to get to me. I'm not asking you to pretend otherwise. I'm asking you to remember that surviving something isn't the same as having a life afterward."

"Dead people don't have either."

"Neither do prisoners."

"You are not a prisoner."

"Then stop making decisions for me."

I drag a hand over my jaw. "And if you make the wrong one?"

"Then it's mine."

"That's unacceptable."

"Why?"

"Because I won't stand there and watch you get yourself killed to prove a philosophical point."

"It's not philosophical to me."

"It is when I'm the one cleaning your blood off the pavement."

The image is so vivid that it makes my voice roughen around the words. Elena hears that too, and some of her anger changes.

Not disappears, just changes. She walks closer, but this time there's no challenge in it.

"You can't save Nikos by imprisoning me."

My jaw locks. She continues before I can stop her.

"And you cannot..."

She hesitates. It's tiny. A fraction of a second. But I see it.

"You cannot love me by refusing to let me live."

Everything inside me goes silent. She hears what she said. I know because her breathing changes, even though my own does not. Love. The word does not belong here. Not between us. Not yet.

We haven't said it. We haven't even circled it openly. We have fucked, fought, investigated murders, nearly died together, shared grief and slept tangled in the same bed.

None of that gives the word permission to exist.

I look away first.

"Your mother keeps the security."

Elena exhales. "Adrianos."

"Listen. Two men. Discreet. They don't interfere with her routine, they don't speak to her, and if this ends without evidence she's in danger, I remove them."

She considers it.

"One week."