Page 78 of Wicked Mafia Beast
"Everything we have on your family. The trafficking. The shell companies. The bodies. Your mother." I hold it out to her. "It's yours. For your article. For testimony, if it comes to that. For whatever you need."
She stares at the drive resting in my palm. Months of her own research, abandoned at her father's house. And here, in one small piece of metal, is more than she ever could have gathered alone.
"Why?"
"Because you chose to stay. Because I trust you." I press it into her palm, closing her fingers around it. "Because you deserve to be the one who tells this story."
She grips the drive, her knuckles whitening, and lifts her gaze to mine. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. Luca's intelligence is thorough and deeper than what is in that folder. Some of what's on there will be hard to read."
"I know." She already found the files on her mother. She knows exactly how hard it will be. "But I need all of it. Every piece. If I'm going to burn them down, I'm going to do it right."
Pride. Love. Terror. They collide in my chest and I don't try to separate them.
I carry her to the bedroom. Not with urgency. Not with the frantic need that has driven us into walls and across desks. With care. With intention. With the deliberate tenderness of a man who understands that what happens next will redefine everything.
I lay her on the bed. She reaches for me, pulling me down by the front of my shirt.
"I haven't said it back." Her whisper trembles against my lips. "The words. I'm not ready."
"I know."
"But I'm choosing you. That has to be enough for now."
"It's enough. It's more than enough."
I undress her slowly. Reverently. Kissing every inch of skin as it's revealed, the freckles on her shoulders, the curve of her waist, the soft swell of her belly. She shivers beneath my mouth, not from cold but from being seen. Fully, completely, without armor or pretense.
"I've got you," I murmur against her skin, my lips tracing the line of her collarbone. "I've got you, ??????."
When I slide inside her, we both exhale. The sound fills the room, twin releases of breath that carry the weight of everything we've survived to reach this moment. She wraps around me, legs hooked behind my back, arms circling my neck, her face pressed against my throat.
We move together. Slow. Deep. Her hips rocking against mine in a rhythm that has nothing to do with urgency and everything to do with connection. Her walls grip me in warm, pulsing waves, and I match her pace, watching her face in the morning light.
She comes with my name on her lips. I follow with hers.
Afterward, tangled in sweat-dampened sheets, her cheek pressed against the roses inked over my heart, she traces the barbed wire on my arm. Her fingertip follows the raised ridges of scar tissue hidden beneath the ink, reading the story written on my skin.
"You promised," she says. "No more secrets."
"No more secrets." I pull her closer, tucking her against my chest. My arm tightens around her waist.
"His name was Volkov." My voice comes out flat, controlled, the way it does when I'm discussing operations. Clinical distance. It's the only way I can do this. "He ran a trafficking ring out of Moscow. Children, mostly. Boys and girls pulled off the streets or bought from families too desperate to say no."
Her fingers still on the barbed wire. Her breathing changes, going shallow and careful, the way you breathe around a wounded animal.
"How old were you?"
"Twelve when he took me. Sixteen when Rafael got me out. We've been friends, brothers, for what seems like two lifetimes. Then and now."
The silence that follows is heavy with math she's doing in her head. Four years. She presses her face harder against my chest, her fingers curling into the ink on my ribs.
"Volkov used wire." I stare at the ceiling, my jaw locked, the words coming out in short, measured bursts. "When we disobeyed. When we tried to run. When we didn't perform well enough for the men who paid for our time." My hand finds her hair, threading through the dark strands, grounding myself in the warmth and the present. "Barbed wire wrapped around the wrists. The ankles. The throat. Tight enough to cut but not enough to kill. He wanted scars. Evidence that we'd been punished. A warning to the others. And the men who paid for us loved seeing the pain we suffered. Some even paid to watch."
Her body trembles against mine. A warm drop of moisture hits my chest and trails down my ribs. She's crying again, silently this time, the tears falling without sound.
"The tattoo covers the scars." I trace the barbed wire on my arm with my free hand, following the same path her fingers mapped a moment ago. "Every line of ink follows a line of scar tissue. Luca's artist spent forty hours turning Volkov's marks into a choice. My choice. The wire is still there, but now it's mine. And the roses grow through it because I needed to believe beautiful things could survive what I survived."
