Page 79 of Scarlet Chains
“Osip, what are you—?”
“Marry me,” he says, and his voice carries the weight of every dream we’ve both been afraid to voice. “Marry me, Ilona. Let’s give our baby the family they deserve. Let’s give Slava parents who choose to love him. Let’s build something beautiful from all this fucked up mess we’ve made.”
The ring hovers between us like a bridge spanning an impossible valley. A princess-cut diamond that must be at least two carats, surrounded by smaller stones… elegant and timeless and perfect. Like he actually knows me, understands what I would want even when I don’t know myself.
“Will you be my wife?” The question cracks on the last word, vulnerability bleeding through his carefully maintained control.
The room spins around me, burgundy walls and crystal chandeliers blurring into swirls of possibility and terror. Marriage. To a man who killed my father. To the father of my unborn child. To someone who might actually understand the weight of carrying impossible secrets.
A thousand practical concerns chase each other through my mind— legal complications, custody arrangements, the challenge of loving someone whose hands are stained withnecessary violence. And Mom. Darling Mom, who needs me so much right now, before she—
I push that thought away, afraid it will poison the moment.
“Will you?” he presses when I don’t answer him immediately.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ilona
My breath catches.
He’s asking me to be his wife?
It takes me a moment to take it in. Marriage. To Osip Sidorov. The man kneeling before me with vulnerability written across his features like a confession, holding a ring that catches the light and throws it back in brilliant beams.
Tears begin to soak my face.
They come without warning, burning and relentless, spilling over my lashes and trailing down my cheeks in silent rivers. I don’t even try to stop them. I couldn’t if I wanted to. My entire body shakes with the force of emotions I’ve been holding back for so long— love and fear and desperate hope all crashing together.
I don’t say anything, and the silence stretches between us, thick and heavy with possibility.
My God, this is impossible.
But then, nothing about us has ever been normal.
My tears are flowing freely now, and my emotions overwhelm me like a dam bursting. Everything I’ve been holding in all this time seems to pour out of me in the form of thick salty teardrops. The fear of loving someone who could destroy me. The desperate want that claws at my chest every time he looks at me. The terrible, beautiful truth that I’d rather risk everything with him than have safety with anyone else.
I’ve always been a crier, and I need this. Need to release the pressure that’s been building in my chest since the moment I realized how deeply I care for this dangerous, complicated manwho’s offering me his heart like it’s the most fragile thing in the world.
He stays perfectly still as I fall apart, his gray eyes never leaving my face. The ring trembles slightly in his extended hand— the only sign that my silence is killing him slowly. But he waits, patient as death, while I wrestle with decisions that will change everything.
Every logical thought in my head screams that I should run, should take my baby and disappear before he can hurt us both.
But my heart…
My treacherous, foolish heart knows something my brain refuses to accept.
This is a man who is desperate for redemption. Who’s lost everything and fought to get it back.
The man who just told me he loves me with every broken piece of his soul.
“I’m scared,” I whisper through my tears. “I’m so fucking scared, Osip.”
His face crumples slightly, pain flickering across his features. “I know,milaya. I know you are. I…” He pauses. “I’m scared too.”
I know these are words that don’t come easily to him.
“What if we can’t make this work? What if we destroy each other?”
