Page 181 of Ruthless Sin
“I love you. I have loved you since the first minute.”
She does not say it back.
Her forehead presses harder into the side of my neck. Her hand finds the back of my arm and grips, fingers closing on skin, holding on the way she held on when her shoulders were shaking in the dark.
It is everything.
I open my mouth to tell her what to do if I don’t come back. What to do with herself. Who to go to.
Her hand comes up flat against my mouth.
She does not say anything for one beat. Her hand stays flat against my lips.
Then, voice flat and final.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t say it.”
I close my mouth. I kiss the palm of her hand.
She takes her hand away. She puts it back on my chest, flat over my heart, and I put my hand over hers and we breathe.
We dress in the dark without speaking.
I watch her pull the dark shirt over her head, button it to the collar over the chain, layer the jacket over that. Her back to me. Her hair still loose, then her hands going up to pull it back, the efficient movement of a woman who has dressed in the dark before, who knows how to move quietly, who has been preparing for this longer than I have.
She is young and she is going on the river with me and I am going to bring her back.
I am going to bring her back or I am going to die trying, and the second option is not an option because she has had enough people leave, and I promised, and I am done breaking promises to Zakharova women.
I finish dressing. Black shirt. Dark pants. Boots. I leave the watch.
I reach for the velvet bag on the nightstand.
I open it. The wooden cross is inside, small and dark and plain, the same one Alexei has had, that he mailed to me like a taunt, the same one Yelena wore around her neck until he took it from her. I got it back. I have been holding it here in this room waiting to give it to the person it belongs to.
I close my left hand around it for one second. The wood is warm from the bag.
I cross to her.
She is at the desk with her back to me. I touch her shoulder. She turns.
I take her left hand in my right. I put the wooden cross in her palm. I close her fingers around it.
“For after. Carry it. Bring it home.”
She does not say anything. She looks at her closed fist for a long moment. Then she looks at my face.
She nods once.
The cross stays in her closed left fist.
I put my hand at the small of her back. We walk to the door. I open it.
My hallway is the hallway it has been for weeks, the lamp at its low setting, the compound awake below us, Marco’s voice on the phone somewhere in the gallery, the smell of coffee coming up from the kitchen.
Mila is beside me. The cross in her hand. The chain at her throat. The marks I left on her under the layers and the marks she left on me under my shirt.
