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His smile turns sharper, predatory. “No. This is need. Deeper than love. Love fades. This never will.”

The way he says it makes something inside me give.

Ivor

Her silence tempts me, but I don’t want silence from her. Not anymore. I want her voice, her name, the truth behind the little lace mask she hides behind.

I trace the edge with my thumb, tilting her chin until she has no choice but to look at me. “Enough games, little dove,” I say quietly. “Your name.”

She hesitates. For a long beat, I think she’ll defy me again. But then her hands lift, trembling just slightly, and she slides the mask away from her face.

The sight of her without it stuns me more than it should. Pale skin flushed from my touch, lips kiss-bruised, eyes stormy grey with defiance and something else… something only I get to see.

“Natasha,” she says, her voice low, raw. “Natasha Adeley.”

The sound of it hits me like a blade sliding home. I’ve had women whisper names into my ear before, but this one feels different. Like a vow.

“Ivor Reznikov. And what are you doing here, Natasha Adeley?” I murmur, dragging the lace mask from her fingers and tossing it aside.

Her laugh is bitter, sharp. “Trying to do the one thing they told me I’d never be good enough for.”

I frown. “Which is?”

“Real journalism.” Her eyes flash, anger curling in every word. “Not food reviews. Not fashion blurbs. Not puff pieces on charity fetes. Every editor I’ve ever worked for thought I was good enough for that and nothing more. The men get the bylines that matter. They get the scandals, the exposés, the stories that make history. I get… cake competitions.”

The words drips with venom. She shakes her head, voice rising. “So yes, I lied my way in here tonight. I thought if I could get one piece of evidence, one name, one shred of proof that men like your father own this city, maybe I’d finally get a seat at the table. Maybe I’d finally stop being laughed out of rooms just because I’m a woman.”

Her chest heaves. The fury in her voice could shake the walls of this room.

And it makes me want to give her the world.

I lean down, brushing my lips against her temple. “Then you’ll have your story.”

She stiffens, surprised. “What?”

“You want names?” I whisper, my hand splayed across her stomach. “You want the kind of proof that will make your editors choke on their words? Then I’ll give you more than scraps. I’ll give you the feast.”

Her eyes widen. “Why?”

“Because you’re mine,” I say simply. “And my woman doesn’t beg scraps from men too weak to see her worth. If you want to set a fire, I’ll hand you the torch myself.”

I sit back just enough to look her dead in the eye, letting her see I mean it. “Tomorrow night, when you leave on my arm, you’ll carry a story no journalist has ever touched. Not gossip. Not whispers. Truth so sharp it cuts the city down. You’ll have the names of judges on our payroll. Senators. Police chiefs.You’ll have the kind of story that makes history pages, not gossip columns.”

Her lips part, stunned.

“But,” I add, my voice going low, “if you write it, you don’t get to stand outside. You write it as mine. As the woman who belongs to me. And when they ask how you know, how you saw, you tell them the truth.”

She swallows hard. “Which is?”

“That you were inside the Bratva,” I murmur, my hand closing gently but firmly around hers, “because the Bratva was inside you.”

Her breath shudders, a flicker of want and horror all tangled together. But she doesn’t pull away.

She doesn’t even try.

For a heartbeat she just stares at me, her bare face pale against the sheets, mask discarded at her side. Then the fury comes back into her eyes, bright and sharp.

“You don’t understand,” she says, voice cracking. “Even if you gave me the story of the century, I could never work again. Do you know what they’d say about me? That I slept my way into it. That I traded my body for a byline. That I’m not a journalist, just another—” She cuts herself off, choking the word back.