Chapter 14 - Misha
The rain hasn't stopped since we crossed the Nevada border.
I sit in the back of the SUV, watching water streak across the windows, and try not to think about the blood on my hands.
Not literally—I washed it off at the rendezvous point, scrubbed until my skin was raw—but I can still feel it.
The warmth, the slickness, the way it pools in the creases of your palms when there's enough of it.
There was enough of it tonight.
The extraction went sideways almost immediately. Alexei's intelligence was good, but Crane had more men than we anticipated—reinforcements from a nearby property, called in when our team breached the perimeter. What should have been a surgical strike turned into a firefight.
We got the women out. All eight of them, including Mirella. They're on their way to a safe house now, where doctors will examine them and counselors will try to help them piece together whatever's left of their lives.
But four of Crane's men are dead. Three of them by my hand.
The first one came around a corner and I put two bullets in his chest before he could raise his weapon. The second tried to grab one of the women—Mirella, actually—and I broke his neck with my bare hands. The third was running for an alarm panel when I shot him in the back.
I don't regret any of it. Those men were complicit in horrors I don't want to think about. The world is better without them.
But that doesn't mean their blood washes off easily.
"Fifteen minutes out," Alexei says from the front seat.
I nod, though he's not looking at me. My clothes are still damp with rain and sweat, my shirt stained with blood that isn't mine. I should have changed before we left Nevada. Should have made myself presentable before returning to the estate.
But I'm tired. Bone-deep tired, the kind that settles into your marrow and doesn't let go.
And some part of me—the part that's been growing louder since Bianca arrived—wants her to see me like this.
Wants her to understand what I really am, what I really do, so she can make an informed decision about whether to keep walking toward me or finally turn away.
The gates come into view, wrought iron against the gray sky. The guards wave us through without stopping. Home. If you can call a gothic fortress full of ghosts and armed men a home.
The SUV pulls up to the front entrance, and I step out into the rain. It's lighter now, more mist than downpour, but it soaks through my jacket within seconds. I don't care. The cold feels good. Clarifying.
I'm halfway to the door when I see her.
She's standing at the entrance to the greenhouse path, her hair wet, her clothes plastered to her body. She looks like she's been out here for a while, waiting. Watching.
Our eyes meet across the gravel.
For a moment, neither of us moves. The rain falls between us, soft and relentless. She looks different than she did yesterday—something has shifted in her expression, some wall has come down. I don't know what it means.
Then she starts walking toward me.
My heart stops. Stutters. Restarts at a rhythm that feels dangerous.
She should be running the other way. I'm covered in evidence of violence, reeking of gunpowder and death. Whatever she sees in my face right now, it can't be good. The darkness I carry isn't metaphorical tonight—it's written all over me.
But she keeps coming.
We meet in the middle of the driveway. She stops a few feet away, close enough that I can see the raindrops clinging to her eyelashes. Her eyes drop to my shirt, to the dark stains that the rain hasn't managed to wash away.
"Is that blood?" she asks.
"Yes."
"Yours?"
"No."
She doesn't flinch. Doesn't step back. Just looks at me with those gold-flecked eyes, processing.
"The women from the auction," she says. It's not a question.
"Yes. Mirella and seven others. They're safe now."
"You went yourself."
"It required a personal touch."
She's quiet for a moment. The rain continues to fall, soaking us both, but neither of us moves toward shelter.
"How many?" she asks finally.
I don't pretend to misunderstand. "Three. By my hand. More by my team."
"And the women?"
"Alive. On their way to medical care and counseling."
She nods slowly. I wait for the horror, the revulsion. Wait for her to realize that the man standing in front of her has fresh blood on his hands and no real remorse about it.
Instead, she says: "I found something. In the greenhouse."
It takes me a moment to shift gears. "What?"
She reaches into the pocket of her jacket and pulls out a bundle of envelopes, yellowed with age, wrapped in faded ribbon. "Letters. From your father to your mother. They were buried in one of the pots."
The world tilts.
Letters. My father's letters. I didn't know they existed—didn't know he wrote to her when he was away, didn't know she kept them, didn't know she buried them in her sanctuary like treasures.
Bianca holds them out to me. I take them with hands that aren't quite steady.
The first envelope has my mother's name on it, written in my father's bold handwriting. Maria. Just the name. I haven't seen his handwriting in seventeen years. I hide them under my jacket to protect them from the rain.
"I read them," Bianca says. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have, but—"
"It's all right."
"He loved her. Really loved her. You can feel it in every word."
I look at the letters in my hands. Evidence of a love I barely remember, written by a man I've tried not to think about for almost two decades. My father. The one who taught me to shoot, to fight, to lead. The one who died trying to shield my mother from bullets.
"They used to dance in the kitchen," I hear myself say. "After dinner, when they thought we weren't watching. My mother would turn on the radio, and my father would pull her into his arms, and they'd dance like they were the only two people in the world."
Bianca is silent, listening.
"She sang to us at bedtime. Russian lullabies, the ones her grandmother taught her.
Anna used to request the same one every night—something about a river and the moon.
I can't remember the words anymore." I swallow hard.
"Dmitri pretended he was too old for lullabies, but he always left his door open so he could hear. "
"And you?"
"I used to watch them from the hallway. After they thought I was asleep, I'd sneak out of bed and watch them dance. I thought—" My voice catches. "I thought that was what love looked like. Two people, holding onto each other, moving to music no one else could hear."
The rain falls around us, soft and cold. Bianca reaches out and touches my arm—not romantic, not demanding. Just human contact. Connection.
"You're soaked," she says. "We should go inside."
I look at her. Really look at her—the water streaming down her face, the determination in her eyes, the way she hasn't run even though she's seen what I am, what I've done, what I'm capable of.
"Why did you come out here?" I ask. "Why didn't you stay in the greenhouse where it's dry?"
She doesn't answer immediately. Just looks at me with an expression I can't quite read.
"I don't know," she says finally. "I saw you come back, and I just... I needed to see you. Needed to—" She stops, shakes her head. "I don't know what I needed. I just know I'm tired of running from it."
"Running from what?"
"This." She gestures between us. "Whatever this is. I've been trying to convince myself it's not real. Trauma bonding, Stockholm syndrome, proximity and fear masquerading as something else. But I keep ending up here. Walking toward you instead of away."
My heart is pounding now. The rain has soaked through to my skin, but I can barely feel the cold.
"Bianca—"
"I found those letters," she says, cutting me off. "I read about your parents, about the love they had. And I thought—if they could find something real in the middle of all this violence, all this darkness, then maybe..." She trails off. "I don't know. Maybe I'm losing my mind."
"You're not losing your mind."
"Then what is this? What are we doing?"
I don't have an answer. I've spent seventeen years building walls to keep everyone out, and she's standing in front of me in the rain, asking me to explain something I don't understand myself.
But I know what I want. I've known since the moment I heard her talking about hearts at that gala, since the moment I walked away from her and felt something inside me die.
I want her. Not just her body—though God knows I want that too—but all of her. Her sharp mind, her stubborn heart, her refusal to be managed or controlled.
I want to be the kind of man who deserves her. And I'm terrified that I never will be.
"I don't know what this is," I say honestly. "I don't know if I can give you what you need. I've done things, Bianca. Terrible things. Tonight, yesterday, every day for the past seventeen years. That's not going to change."
"I know."
"I can't promise you a normal life. I can't promise you safety or peace or any of the things you deserve."
"I know that too."
"Then why are you still standing here?"
She steps closer. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of her breath, see the pulse jumping in her throat.
"Because you came back," she says. "You went to Nevada and you saved those women, not because it benefited you, but because I asked.
Because it mattered to me." She reaches up and touches my face, her fingers cold and wet against my jaw.
"That's not the action of a monster. That's the action of a man trying to be better. "
I close my eyes. Her touch is almost painful—too gentle, too kind for someone like me.
"I'm not a good man, Bianca."
"Maybe not. But you're not the monster you think you are either." Her thumb traces my cheekbone. "You're somewhere in between. And so am I."
I open my eyes. She's looking at me with something I've never seen before—not fear, not anger, not the guarded wariness that's been her constant companion since she arrived.
Hope. She's looking at me with hope.
"If you tell me to stop," she whispers, "I will. If you tell me this is a mistake, I'll go back inside and we'll pretend this never happened. But I need you to say it now, because in about ten seconds I'm going to do something I can't take back."
I should stop her. Should push her away, send her inside, protect her from myself. That's what a decent man would do.
I've never been a decent man.
"Don't stop," I say.
She kisses me.
It's not gentle. Not tentative. She rises up on her toes and presses her mouth to mine, and it's like a dam breaking—weeks of tension and longing and fear, all of it flooding out at once.
I groan against her lips and pull her closer, my hands fisting in her wet jacket, her body pressed against mine.
She tastes like rain and something sweeter, something that's purely her. I've dreamed about this for two years—the feel of her mouth, the softness of her curves, the way she sighs when I deepen the kiss. But the reality is better than any dream. The reality is fire.
The rain pours down around us, but I don't feel it anymore. I don't feel anything except her—her hands in my hair, her body arching into mine, her breath mingling with my breath.
"Inside," she gasps against my mouth. "Take me inside."
I don't need to be told twice.
I scoop her up, one arm under her knees, the other around her back. She wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face in my throat, and I carry her across the gravel, up the stone steps, through the front door.
The house is dim, quiet. If any staff see us, they have the sense to make themselves invisible. I take the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding, her weight in my arms both grounding and surreal.
My bedroom. That's where I'm taking her, though I don't remember making the decision. It just seems inevitable—the only possible destination for a journey that started two years ago at a charity gala.
I kick the door open, carry her across the threshold, and lower her onto the bed.
She looks up at me, her hair fanned across my pillows, her chest heaving. Her eyes are dark with want, but there's a question in them too.
"Are you sure?" I ask, even though asking feels like torture.
She reaches for me, fisting her hand in my bloodstained shirt.
"I've never been more sure of anything," she says.
And pulls me down.