Even Miroslav’s shadow doesn’t appear as I pass through the kitchen and up the back staircase. I move like a ghost, tired and gritty-eyed, the smell of pine and smoke still clinging to my coat.
I half expect her to have locked herself in her room. I wouldn’t blame her. But I find Talia in the hallway, standing just outside the door to my study, arms folded tight over her chest, hair falling in a dark tangle around her face.
She’s not expecting me, but she doesn’t flinch or run. She just waits, watching, defiant even in the soft light spilling from a lamp down the hall.
I stop a few feet away, hands open at my sides. “I know you hate me,” I say, my voice low, stripped of the iron and ice I wear for everyone else. “You deserve the truth.”
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t move. I see her knuckles whiten where she grips her elbow, her body held taut as a wire.
So I tell her. Everything. I tell her about Eli—about the threat he posed when his stories began unraveling secrets that would have started a war. I tell her about the meeting with my father’s men, the choices that weren’t choices at all, the compromise I made to keep the Bratva from tearing itself apart. How I buried her brother’s name not out of cruelty, but because the alternative was blood on the walls—hers, mine, Eli’s, everyone’s.
I tell her about the old compound, the silent guards, the locked rooms and coded orders and the heavy guilt I have carried since the day I signed off on his disappearance.
I tell her everything, and she listens, her face unreadable, eyes flat and dark, her jaw working as if she’s chewing on a piece of glass she refuses to spit out.
When I’m finished, there’s nothing left to say. The confession hangs between us, raw and unfinished. She turns to the window, her back straight, her hands pressed to the cold glass. The city beyond is empty, washed in moonlight.
“You did it to protect yourself,” she says eventually, voice so quiet I almost don’t hear it.
I walk closer, slow and careful, as if she might shatter. “I did it to protect what I built. To protect my people. Now… that includes you.”
Her breath hitches just a fraction, just enough for me to hear it. She doesn’t look at me, not directly, but I see her reflection in the glass. This time, it’s not the fire I’ve come to expect. It’s something cracked. Something fragile. Not just angry, but wounded. And that is so much worse.
For a moment, all I want to do is reach for her—pull her close, shield her from every consequence that followed my decisions. I know better. Some wounds need to breathe. Some truths can only be borne in silence.
She speaks again, her voice steady, almost cold. “You could have told me. You could have let me choose. Instead, you lied. You made me grieve for a brother who wasn’t dead. You made me fall in love with you—”
She cuts herself off, pressing her forehead to the window. Her shoulders shake, just once. I ache to touch her, but I stay where I am, letting her have the space I stole so many times before.
“I know,” I say softly, uselessly. “If I could take it back—”
She laughs, brittle. “You can’t.”
The silence that settles is different this time. There is no room for anger. Only exhaustion. Only the pain of all the lives I changed with one act of supposed mercy.
I clear my throat. “Eli is alive. You can see him, if you want. You can bring him here. You can do whatever you need to. I won’t stop you.”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t even breathe for a second. Then, quietly, “Would you let me go? If I asked?”
I hesitate, the answer sticking in my throat. Finally, I whisper, “If you asked, I would let you go. Even if it killed me.”
She closes her eyes. A tear runs down her cheek, glinting silver in the light. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, fiercely, as if daring me to mention it.
“I just wanted the truth,” she says, voice breaking. “I wanted to believe we were something real.”
I take a step closer, my own hands shaking now. “It was real. Everything I feel for you is real, Talia. Even if it’s built on all the wrong things.”
She turns, finally meeting my eyes. For a moment, we just stare at each other—the villain and the would-be avenger, each undone by the other’s impossible, inconvenient heart.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admits, broken and beautiful. “I don’t know how to hate you and still want you. I don’t know how to forgive you. Not yet.”
“I’ll wait,” I promise, meaning every word. “As long as it takes.”
Her lips tremble. She turns back to the window, hugging herself as if trying to hold all the pieces together. I watch her reflection, my own face pale and haunted beside hers in the glass. I want to reach for her, but I know this is the price of the truth.
So I stand behind her, silent, and wait for whatever future she will let us have, no matter how fragile, no matter how uncertain, no matter how much it costs.
Chapter Twenty-Three - Talia