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He didn’t tell me Henry would understand someday. He didn’t promise I would have another chance or insist motherhood could survive every absence. He remained with me inside the part that couldn’t be repaired.

That was when I began to understand.

It wasn’t the way Rurik watched the doors or positioned himself between me and every unfamiliar sound. Protection could come from duty, guilt, or a man’s need to prove he was stronger than danger. It wasn’t the food he remembered I liked, the secure phone, or the keys he had returned to my control.

It was the space he made for everything that prevented me from belonging to him.

He listened when I spoke about Salvatore. He protected the son I had given to another family. He absorbed my anger without demanding gentleness in return. Whatever Rurik wanted from me, he had accepted that my heart remained buried with my husband.

He loves me.

The realization arrived without warmth. It frightened me because I knew what loving me had already cost other people. Salvatore had died carrying secrets meant to protect us. Dad had suffered when the truth came out that I was his daughter. Mom had built her life around a secret that tortured her soul to keep me safe.

I didn’t want Rurik’s name added to the list.

He looked toward the curtained window. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You have been staring at me for several minutes.”

I lowered my gaze to the tablet. “I was trying to understand you.”

“Did you succeed?”

“Yes.” The answer changed something in his face, though neither of us named it. “Though I’m not sure you want me to.”

Rurik stood and carried the tablet to the cabinet where he kept the secure equipment. “Whatever you believe you owe me, you do not.”

“I wasn’t going to say I owed you.”

“No.” He locked the cabinet and rested his hand against the key. “You were going to explain what you cannot give.”

I couldn’t deny it.

“Don’t,” he said quietly. “I have not asked you for anything.”

He left the room before I could tell him that silence didn’t make the truth less dangerous.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Early Fall...

By the time the first leaves began collecting along the fence, I had been inside the safe house long enough to recognize every sound it made. I knew which floorboard complained outside Rurik’s bedroom and how the pipes knocked twice before hot water reached the kitchen. The house no longer felt unfamiliar, but familiarity wasn’t the same as belonging. Nothing about hiding had become a life simply because I had learned its rhythms.

After I realized Rurik loved me, nothing between us changed. He continued leaving tea beside the secure phone before my morning call to Cian. I continued speaking about Salvatore whenever silence made his absence unbearable. Rurik never touched me without reason or allowed what I knew to become a question waiting for an answer. His restraint should have made the truth easier to carry, but it followed me through every room.

I began noticing the moments I had once mistaken for duty. The way his attention found me whenever grief pulled me too far inside myself. The patience with which he listened to stories about the man I would love until my last breath. The care he took not to make his feelings another burden I was required to survive.

Rurik loved me quietly, and I pretended not to know because acknowledging it would force both of us to examine a future neither of us could have.

The news from Nebraska changed something in me.

Uncle Sal’s son’s clubhouse had been attacked. People had died; others were badly hurt. I didn’t know Kingston O’Rourke. I didn’t know most of the people caught in the middle of it. But they were still family, connected to me by blood and by the same tangled web Sylvia St. James seemed determined to tear apart.

That was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about.

My father had nearly died because of her. Now another branch of my family had been targeted. People I had never even met were bleeding because one woman had decided all of us belonged inside whatever war she was waging.