Page 73 of Savage Reckoning
“You won’t see me again after tonight,” she says, her voice carrying a finality that sends a chill through me. “Whatever he does to me, whatever happens next, remember that I love you. In the only way I knew how.”
Blake gestures for her to stand. After a moment’s hesitation, she complies, allowing herself to be guided toward the elevator alongside Isabel.
As they move past me, I take an instinctive step to follow. Nico’s hand on my arm stops me, gentle but firm.
“I don’t think you should watch this next part, Lea,” he whispers.
The blood drains from my face as his meaning sinks in. All this time, all these weeks of manipulation and games and shifting alliances, I’ve never directly asked what would happen when we finally cornered Isabel and my mother. I’ve been too afraid of the answer. Too afraid of what it would reveal about Nico—and about me, for choosing to stand beside him.
But now, watching my mother being led away, I can’t avoid the question any longer. I need to know exactly who I’ve allied myself with. What kind of future I’m walking into.
“Are you going to kill her?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “My mother?”
Nico looks down at me, and something extraordinary happens. All the ice, all the calculation, all the fury of the king melts from his expression, replaced by a profound, startling sincerity.
“No,” he says, his voice soft but resolute. “I can’t kill the mother of the woman I love.”
The words hit me.Love. He’s never said it out loud before. Never even hinted at it. Our relationship has been built onmanipulation, desire, power games, and, eventually, a reluctant partnership—but never love. It wasn’t a word that belonged in our vocabulary.
Until now.
He sees the shock in my eyes and continues, his hand moving from my arm to cup my face. “But she will not go free. There are people... powerful people... who have been looking for her for a long time. They are extremely interested in what a high-level North Korean spy has to say.” His thumb brushes gently across my cheekbone. “She’ll have the rest of her life to think about what she’s done.”
I stare up at him, trying to process the enormity of what he’s just revealed. He has declared his love and my mother’s fate in the same breath. He has chosen a path of intricate justice over simple vengeance, a choice madefor me.
“Why?” I ask, my voice barely audible. “You could have killed her. After what she did to you, tried to do to you... why show mercy?”
His dark eyes hold mine, more open and vulnerable than I’ve ever seen them. “Because I know what it’s like to lose a parent to violence,” he says simply. “I watched my parents die. I wouldn’t inflict that on you, no matter what she’s done.” He pauses, something raw and honest flickering across his face. “And because I want whatever exists between us to be built on something other than blood.”
In that moment, I see him—truly see him—for perhaps the first time. Not as the monster I first believed him to be, not as the manipulator who orchestrated my investigation, not even as the dominant lover who broke down my defenses. I see the manbeneath all those masks: complicated, damaged, capable of both terrible cruelty and unexpected mercy.
A man who has just changed the rules of his world for me.
“Nico,” I begin, not sure what I’m going to say, not sure what words could possibly encompass the hurricane of emotions inside me.
He shakes his head slightly, stopping me. “Not here,” he says, glancing toward the elevator where Blake is waiting with our captives. “We have business to finish first. Then we can talk.”
I nod, understanding the necessity of his compartmentalization. The king must complete his conquest before he can return to being a man.
As we move toward the elevator, Nico guides me with a hand on the small of my back—a gesture that has become familiar, possessive without being controlling. It steadies me, grounds me in this surreal moment.
The doors slide open. Isabel and my mother stand inside, flanked by Blake and another of Nico’s men. My mother’s eyes meet mine one last time—dark pools of something I can no longer read. For an instant, I see a flash of the woman who raised me, who loved me in her own twisted, conditional way.
Then the doors close, taking her away forever.
Nico and I remain in the silent gallery, surrounded by priceless art that now seems trivial compared to the human drama that just unfolded before it.
“What happens now?” I ask.
Nico turns to me, his expression softening. He reaches up, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear with unexpected tenderness. “Now,” he says quietly, “we build something new. Something neither of us has ever had before.”
“And what’s that?” I ask, my heart pounding against my ribs.
His answer is simple, devastating in its honesty.
“A future not built on lies.”
As we stand there, beneath the harsh gallery lights, surrounded by the aftermath of truth and deception, I feel something fundamental shift within me. The woman who entered this building tonight is not the same one who will leave it. The daughter seeking vengeance; the journalist chasing a story, the pawn in other people’s games—all of those versions of myself have been burned away, leaving someone new in their place.
