Page 56 of Forbidden Bratva Virgin

“Hazel….”

I shook my head before he could say more, pressing the necklace into his hand. “Just…take it. Please. I don’t regret the years we’ve been together, but I can’t do this anymore, Nathan. I’m sorry. You deserve to be happy, and so do I.”

I should’ve said something more. But what was left? The truth sat heavy in my chest, too much to force out, too useless to hold in: growing distance, the incessant calls that were always work-related.Piper.

His fingers curled around the pendant, his grip tight like he was trying to hold onto something more than just silver and chain. Nathan and I knew each other well enough, and with the way he looked at me, he saw that I didn’t have the strength left to fight for us anymore. He exhaled sharply, then nodded.

“Can I hug you at least?”

That would shatter my heart to more pieces, but it was the least I could do.

He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close enough to wet his shirt with my tears. I held him, breathed him in for one last time.

The final boarding call for his flight rang through the terminal, and I pulled back.

Nathan withdrew without looking at me. He couldn’t with the tears in his eyes. He took a step back. Then another.

And then, while stuffing the necklace into his pocket, he turned and walked away.

***

“Let go of the past and go for the future. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.”

That was what Henry David Thoreau said, and I agreed too suddenly.

I walked away, my steps slow and deliberate, as if the weight in my chest had settled into my bones. Each step took me farther from Nathan, my once-true love, away from the life we had built, and from the safety of what I once believed was unbreakable love.

I should have felt more grief, more hesitation. But instead, the relief was like a quiet exhale, spreading through me in soft waves. The air felt clearer, and the morning was open with possibilities I had refused to acknowledge until now.

Someone else plagued my thoughts, and it wasn’t Nathan.

It was Miron.

His name flickered through my mind like a forbidden prayer, wrapping itself around my thoughts, my breath, my pulse. It was always him, wasn’t it? Even when I tried to fight it, even when I buried the longing beneath the obligations of what was right, he had already carved his place inside me.

I hated myself for it. For how slowly but easily my heart adjusted to abandoning the man I had just left. For how little regret I felt.

Because all I could feel now was hunger.

Thoughts of Miron consumed me, wrapped themselves around my soul so completely that I didn’t know where he ended and I began.

Nathan was no longer in the picture, but there was Amelia and Alina.

It was wrong; I knew that. I should have run from him, severed whatever strange power he had over me before it was too late.

But it was already too late because I knew I couldn’t start the next chapter of my life if I kept re-reading the last one.

As I pulled out my phone, flipping through the folder containing his E-file, I zoomed in on his work address, knowing I wouldn’t stop myself from going to him.

Chapter 21 – Miron

Calmly, I leaned against the desk, folding up my bloodied sleeves while I watched Damir curl his fingers into fists and ram his knuckles into the man pressed up against the wall.

Sweat trickled down his face, drenching the collar of his shirt, and he clenched his left arm, swinging it into the man’s face. Heavy grunts echoed in the room but the man was still on his feet, proving to be a lot tougher than we thought.

Damir gave me a look over his shoulder, silently asking whether to continue. I circled a finger in the air, urging him on. And the shouts continued again.

The body at my feet twitched once, then stilled. I watched, feeling nothing, as the crimson pool darkened the rug. He wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. But he’d been an accomplice to the screaming bastard by the wall and had to take his own share of the package.

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