Chapter 21
LYRA
The apartment is so quiet when I walk in it almost rings. I drop my bag on the couch, toe off my shoes, and stand there for a beat, letting the silence sink in. For a few days, I’d been able to pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. Now that I’m home, reality creeps back in.
No matter what happened on that island, Damien is still in the Bratva. It’s a harsh, punishing truth.
I pull my laptop from my bag and sit at the kitchen table.
My hands hover over the lid for a heartbeat before I open it.
The screen glows in the dim room, washing my fingers in light as I log into the private server I built.
I haven’t had time to check it since Damien whisked me away on our vacation.
One click and I’m connected to the feed.
Static hums in my ears before voices start coming through. Most of it is in Russian, rapid and sharp, the cadence clipped in ways I can’t follow. My grasp of the language is nonexistent, so the words slide over me without meaning. I jot down timestamps anyway, hoping I can translate them later.
Minutes pass. Then an unfamiliar voice speaks in English, the words cutting cleanly through the noise.
“He’s not going to stop until Rurik is gone. You know that.”
Another voice answers, low and certain. “And Rurik isn’t going to stop until Damien is dead.”
My stomach twists. The air turns heavy, making each breath harder. This isn’t a vague suspicion anymore. It isn’t Becca’s worried voice telling me to be careful. It isn’t my imagination. Damien is planning to kill someone. Someone is planning to kill him. The danger isn’t just real, it’s imminent.
I lean closer to the laptop, needing every scrap of information I can get. Footsteps shuffle in the background. A door creaks. Then the feed drops back into Russian, and I’m left staring at the screen with my pulse pounding in my ears.
I press my hands to my face, trying to think.
I don’t know how to help him. I don’t even know if he’d let me.
Damien is all sharp edges and control when it comes to his business.
I can’t exactly tell him what I heard, and I can’t admit I know who he is.
But I can’t just sit here and hope he makes it out alive. It’s an impossible situation.
A pounding rattles the door so hard the sound vibrates through the floor.
My head snaps up, heart lurching. The knocks aren’t polite.
They’re demanding and dangerous. The laptop is shut before I even think, my fingers flying to close the lid, to hide what I’ve been doing.
I stand frozen for a heartbeat, then force myself to the door. I look through the peephole.
It’s Damien.
His jaw is hard, his eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them. He’s not calm or collected. He’s furious, and the energy rolling off him is so sharp it prickles my skin.
I unlock the door and pull it open. He doesn’t wait for an invitation.
“Are you carrying my child?” His voice cuts like a blade, right there in the hallway.
The world narrows to that one sentence. Heat rushes to my cheeks in shock. I almost feel like I’ve been slapped. I glance both ways down the hall before grabbing his arm and tugging him inside.
The door slams shut behind us. My back is pressed to it, my heart hammering. Half of me is scared. This isn’t the Damien who teased me by the pool or kissed me under the moonlight. This is the man Becca warned me about.
“Yes,” I say, my voice steady even though my pulse is anything but.
His eyes narrow, a flicker of shock or rage passing through them before it all hardens again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The words are nearly a growl.
I push off the door and stand straighter, meeting him head-on. “Because I’m not one of your lieutenants or whatever you call them.”
That makes him stop for a second and take a step back. Now he looks like the one who’s been slapped. His brow pulls tight and he stares back at me in surprise. “What?”
His tone is incredulous, but I see the truth in his eyes. He’s been made.
“I’m not one of your little underlings you can order around. I don’t take orders from you, Damien. Not about this. Not about my body. Not about my child.”
Damien stares at me, his jaw still set, but the heat in his eyes shifts. He’s still angry, still tense, but something else is creeping in. A pause, maybe, as if he’s recalculating.
“I’m not here to give you orders,” he says slowly, the anger leaching out of his tone with every word.
I hold his gaze. My voice is a challenge. “Are you angry that I’m pregnant, or are you angry that I didn’t tell you about it?”
His brows pull together, the sharp lines of his face shadowed in the dim light of my living room. “You should have told me,” he finally says, more evenly. “Lyra, I thought that we had something special. I still do. Why would you keep this from me?”
I sigh heavily, suddenly feeling very tired. This is happening now, whether I’m ready for it or not. I grab his hand and pull him toward the couch. Neither of us is going anywhere soon.
“I didn’t know what to think,” I admit, my throat tight. “When I first found out about the baby, we’d only been seeing each other for a month. It seemed too fast to tell you about it. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to trap you.”
He opens his mouth to argue, but I put up a hand to stop him. Now that the words have started coming, I can’t stop them.
“But then, I found out about… your other activities,” I say, unable to meet his eyes. “And I was terrified. I didn’t know what it meant for us, or for me. I definitely didn’t want to tell you about the baby if…”
“If things went south,” he says, cutting me off.
I meet his eyes, and he looks so sad it makes my heart ache. For a long moment, the room is silent except for the faint hum of my refrigerator. Damien’s posture softens just enough that I notice. His hands curl loosely at his sides instead of into fists.
“You have no idea what it’s like to live in my world,” he says finally, his voice lower now. “Everything is a threat. Everyone is a potential enemy.”
I take his hand and look at him. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you. I’ve been thinking about all of this every day since I found out who you are. Your life poses a serious risk and it’s not just me I have to think about now. I’m responsible for this fragile little life that’s barely begun.”
His eyes narrow slightly, but there is no sharpness in them now. There’s only sadness. “I would never hurt you,” he says quietly, his voice almost breaking.
“I believe that,” I answer firmly. “But your life could hurt me. It could hurt this baby. I needed to decide what that meant before I let you in.”
Something in his expression cracks then, just slightly, like a thin line running through glass.
He exhales and looks away, toward the dark window.
“I didn’t choose this life, Lyra,” he says after a moment.
“When I was a kid, my father was everything to me. He was strong and respected. He was always in control, but he was still kind. He kept his business separate from home. Or at least he tried to. I was too young to understand the politics back then, but I knew his name meant something to people.”
I stay quiet, letting him speak. His voice is steady, but there is a weight behind it that draws me in.
“He ran this organization for years,” he continues.
“One day my father was killed,” Damien continues. “The son of one of his rivals came after him. His name is Rurik Vasiliev.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until I feel the hot tears hit my lap. I swipe them away quickly, not wanting Damien to think I can’t handle this.
“I watched my mother break apart,” he goes on.
“I buried him knowing who had killed him, and knowing the man would keep breathing because the timing was wrong for revenge. By the time I took over the bratva, Rurik had made himself untouchable. I have spent years waiting for the right moment to make him pay.”
His eyes meet mine then, and they’re darker than I have ever seen them.
“So you’re planning to kill him,” I say, feeling like the wind is being knocked out of me. “Because if you don’t kill him, he’s going to kill you.”
Suddenly, everything I heard on the recording clicks. The pieces fall into place. It doesn’t necessarily make any of it right, but at least now I can start to understand why Damien is like this.
“Yes,” he answers simply, staring me down.
He’s challenging me, I know. He wants to see if this information is going to scare me away. If it will break me. Honestly, I don’t know how to feel.
I swallow hard, my pulse pounding in my ears. This is the truth, stripped bare.
“I was scared to tell you about the baby,” I admit. “Scared that if I told you, you would either push me away or pull me in too close. Scared that I would lose the little bit of distance I had left, the part of my life that was still mine.”
Damien pulls me into him, closing the space between us. His anger is gone now, replaced by something much more intimate.
“I would never push you away,” he says as he strokes my hair. “But I need you to understand that being with me means living with this. The danger will always be there in some form. I can shield you from most of it, but I can’t erase it.”
I feel the sting of tears but keep my voice steady.
“I know,” I answer honestly. “And I’ve been trying to decide if I can live with that. Not just for me, but for our child. And the truth is, I don’t want our baby to grow up without you.”
His grip around me tightens slightly, and I can feel his heartbeat quickening.
“I don’t want that either,” he says. “But I need you to understand that this is who I am. And I have to kill a man to keep our baby safe. Do you think you can handle that?”
I nod slowly, the knot in my chest easing just a little.
“Only if you let me in. If we’re going to do this, then I have to be your partner. Not just in parenthood, but in everything. No more secrets.”
Damien pulls away just enough to search my eyes. For a long time, we sit there, staring at each other. Then he moves in to kiss me, and I let him.
“I think I can handle that,” he says, smiling against my lips.