She turns, eyes bright and wet, and something breaks in me. “If I stay,” she whispers, “you have to promise me you won’t lie again. About anything. Not even to protect me.”
I cross the room, slow and careful, my heart in my throat. I take her face in my hands, tilting her chin until she meets my eyes. “No more lies,” I swear. “No more secrets. Not between us.”
She closes her eyes, a tear sliding down her cheek. I wipe it away with my thumb, pressing my forehead to hers.
“If you go,” I murmur, “I’ll let you. I’ll do everything in my power to protect you and Eli. If you stay, you’re mine. In every way. I won’t let you go again.”
She shudders, caught between longing and fear. “What if I can’t choose?”
I brush my lips over hers, gentle for the first time in weeks. “Then I’ll wait. As long as it takes. You have to decide, Talia. I can’t live in this halfway anymore. Neither can you.”
She pulls back, searching my face. “Are you asking or ordering?”
I almost smile. “For you? I’m asking.”
She takes a long, shaking breath, her fingers curling into my shirt. For a moment, I think she’ll bolt. Instead, she lets herself fall into my arms, silent and trembling.
We stand there, wrapped around each other, on the edge of something that feels dangerously close to hope.
She stands with the burner phone clutched in her hand, knuckles white against the black plastic. Her gaze darts from the phone to the folder, then back to me.
Every line of her body is tense—anger and hope, fear and want, all twisting together beneath her skin. For a moment, I almost wish she’d scream, throw something, shatter the heavy silence hanging in the study.
She only stands there, eyes burning into mine.
“I don’t know what I hate more,” she says, her voice so low it barely makes it across the room, “that I came here to destroy you… or that I don’t want to leave.”
The silence that follows is thick, electric, unbearable. I hold perfectly still, every muscle locked down tight, barely daring to breathe. In that pause—longer than a heartbeat, longer than a confession—I realize she hasn’t chosen yet. Not completely.
Her heart has already started to shift. I see it in the way her jaw trembles, in the way her eyes keep flicking to mine, desperate and furious and almost pleading.
She doesn’t speak for a long time. Just holds the phone like it weighs more than it should, shoulders hunched against everything she’s been forced to carry. I can see the battle in her eyes: war or surrender, flight or forgiveness. I see the longingthere too. The part of her that wants to believe, to be wanted, to stay.
I don’t move. I don’t speak. I just watch her, every part of me coiled in anticipation, every old rule warring with the new reality I can’t unmake.
Finally, she moves. It’s a small thing. Her hand opening, setting the phone down on the table with a dull click. The sound is a rupture, a crack in the silence, a decision made.
It’s not forgiveness.
“I’ll stay,” she says. Her voice is quiet, rough with everything she’s lost and everything she’s still fighting to keep. “On one condition.”
My breath catches, hope flaring even as I brace for whatever demand she’ll make. I meet her eyes, keeping my own expression unreadable, hiding everything that wants to claw its way out.
“My brother,” she says, steady now. “Safe. Alive. I want to see him. I want proof that he’ll be safe after he’s released, that he can live a normal life.”
The room feels even smaller. The risk in her words is enormous; letting a Bratva prisoner go is breaking a rule that has held for generations. A part of me recoils at the thought. Every lesson my father drilled into me, every warning from old men in dark rooms: prisoners do not walk free. Especially not the ones who once threatened the whole house.
Another part of me—stronger now, louder—doesn’t care. I have broken so many rules for her already. I brought her into my world, married her in a cathedral built for violence, gave her the truth I swore I’d never say.
What is one more line crossed, if it means I get to keep her? If it means she chooses me, freely, finally?
I nod, slow and careful. “You’ll see him. I’ll take you there myself. And when you’re ready, you can decide if you want to come home.”
The wordhomehangs between us. I see the way it hits her, the way her lips part and her shoulders tremble. She closes her eyes, pressing her fists to her chest like she’s trying to hold herself together.
I step closer, slow and deliberate. “You have my word, Talia. No more lies. No more secrets. Eli walks out of there with you—if that’s what you want. You don’t owe me anything.”
Her eyes snap open, wild and wounded. “That’s not true. I owe you… I don’t even know what I owe you anymore, but I do know what I owe him. I have to see it for myself.”