Chapter 1 #2
“Trying?” he cuts in with a scoff. “You don’t try, Salvatore. You either succeed or you fail, and what you did in here was fail. Spectacularly.”
My jaw tightens, but I don’t argue.
“You let him provoke you,” he continues, his gaze cutting worse than a dagger ever could. “You let a Russian dog drag you down to his level in front of every family that matters. Do you have any idea what that makes you look like?”
I swallow, the words sitting heavy in my chest. “No, sir.”
“It makes you look weak. I won’t have my son behaving like a street dog at the slightest provocation. You are a Vieri. You do not rise because some Bratva brat bares his teeth and wants a spectacle.”
The disappointment is worse than the anger would have been. It always is. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he says. “If you understood, I would not have had to look at you at all.”
That one lands the deepest because it’s true. My father doesn’t correct in public, unless he has no choice. The fact that he had to rein me in means I gave him something ugly enough to notice.
He steps closer, his voice lowering. “Do not make me ashamed to call you my son again.”
“I won’t, sir.”
His expression tells me he doesn’t care whether I mean it, only whether I obey.
I stand in the empty room after he leaves, jaw aching from how hard I’m clenching it. The guards avoid looking at me as I walk, leaving through the private elevator to my floor.
I loosen my tie as I wait, my father’s words replaying in my head, keeping me small and ashamed.
When the doors open, I step out without hesitation, walking toward my room where I can be alone with this.
I lock my door when I enter and turn, closing my eyes and resting my back against it with a sigh. “You should leave.”
“That’s no way to greet me.”
Ruslan walks toward me; jacket off, sleeves rolled up to show off his tattooed forearms, black shirt open at the throat.
“You’ve got a talent for showing up where you’re not wanted,” I say.
His mouth tips up at one corner, dimples showing. “You always say that.”
“And yet, you keep proving me right.”
I shrug my jacket off and toss it over the back of a chair harder than necessary. He watches every movement with full, dangerous attention, waiting for that exact moment I might lose my temper and give him exactly what he came for.
“That was a good idea you had in there. Shame you couldn’t defend it without losing your temper,” he says casually, as if he didn’t spend the last hour dismantling it.
My hands curl into fists at my sides before I can stop them. The restraint I’ve been holding onto since my father looked at me is starting to crack at the edges.
“You provoked me on purpose.”
“And you took the bait so quickly, your father had to rein you in,” he counters easily, gaze never leaving mine as he steps into my space. “That’s on you, Salvatore.”
The mention of my father is the final push, and before I can stop myself, I swing.
My fist connects with his jaw with a solid, satisfying crack. The impact jarring up my arm, and for a split second, there’s a sense of release that cuts through everything else.
He barely reacts before he’s coming back at me faster than I expect. His fist slams against my ribs, knocking the breath out of me as I stagger back.
We don’t stop after that.
There’s no pause, no hesitation; just the movement, impact, and kind of violence that’s been sitting under our skin for too long.
Fists, shoulders, and bodies collide as we crash into furniture and walls. It’s messy, unrestrained, and nothing like the controlled brutality we’re both trained for.
And that’s what makes it worse; that’s what makes it feel personal.
He’s stronger than me, he always has been, and he knows it. But it doesn’t stop me from going at him again, or trying to get the upper hand, even when I can feel it slipping through my fingers.
He catches my wrist when I try to swing one last time, twisting it to throw me off balance before he uses it to push me back until my spine hits the wall hard.
I try to shove him off, but he’s already pressing in, pinning me there with his weight while he forces my arms up, trapping them above my head.
“Still think you’ve got control, malysh?” he murmurs, that endearment landing exactly where he intended it to.
“Fuck you,” I spit.
He grins, tilting his head to the side, and his hair falls loose over his forehead, making him look younger and infinitely more dangerous. “Hmm, you already did that this morning.”
The bastard.
I turn my head before he can see the traitorous twitch at the corner of my mouth, but he catches it anyway. Ruslan knows my body better than even me.
His expression changes first; that’s the only way I know how to describe it. The rage doesn’t vanish, but it thins enough for something softer to show.
He loosens one of my hands and looks at me the way he only ever does in private—the peek behind all his blood and armor.
“Salvatore,” he breathes, and lowers his head to kiss me.
It isn’t rough the way it should be after a fight. It isn’t punishment or victory, either. It’s hunger with relief tangled through it.
The second his lips touch mine, everything hard in my body gives way so completely, it’s almost shameful. I melt under him; all that rigid fury runs out of my body as if he’s reached inside and switched off every defense I own.
My hands stop fighting him, and my body arches toward his on pure instinct. I kiss him back with a desperation that makes my chest ache. When he lets go of my wrist to cradle my jaw instead, I make a sound against his mouth I’ll deny until my dying day.
His kiss turns deep and goes slower; one hand sliding into my hair, the other braced on my hip.
The room disappears. The meeting disappears. My father disappears.
The only thing is this—Ruslan and the taste of blood, whiskey, and home where there should be none. He always does this to me. He takes the noise out of my world with a single touch and leaves me raw in the quiet that follows.
When he finally breaks the kiss, we’re both breathing hard. His thumb strokes my cheekbone once, gentle in a way nobody who knows him would ever believe.
He’s watching me with that same unbearable softness he’d never survive showing anyone else. It settles over the room, over the bruises and the blood and broken edges of my temper.
The meeting downstairs belongs to our fathers, to legacy, to humiliation, control, and all the things we inherited.
This belongs to us—stolen, temporary, and dangerous enough that wanting it already feels like treason.
This should have ended at Vintermoor two years ago.
The thought comes again, uninvited, and I tamp it down.
“What did he say to you?” he murmurs.
I break eye contact and stare at the opposite wall. “Nothing I haven’t heard before.”
His jaw tightens. “Salvatore.”
I could lie. I should lie. That’s what men like us are taught from birth—that pain is private, and weakness is bait. But this is Ruslan, and he already knows my soul too deeply. He knows how quickly I go quiet when my father changes his tone. He knows the bruises that never show on my skin.
“He was disgusted by my outburst and called me weak for losing my temper,” I say, and hate how flat my voice sounds.
Ruslan goes very still in front of me. That silence is dangerous in him—more dangerous than shouting. I place my hand on his chest and shake my head.
“Don’t,” I say.
His eyes meet mine, cold with a fury that isn’t aimed at me. “One day, you will stop shrinking for him.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “That’s easy for you to say. Your father lets you bare your teeth in rooms like that and calls it strength.”
Ruslan’s expression immediately changes from soft to guarded. “My father expects blood in private if I embarrass him in public. Don’t romanticize what you don’t know, malysh.”
There’s no self-pity in his words, only cold fact. That makes his words land harder.
I study him for a second—this violent, impossible man holding me in the wreckage of my hotel suit like I’m something worth calming.
Ruslan lifts my hand to his mouth, presses his lips to my knuckles, and looks at me with a softness no one else in the world would believe lives in him.
“I missed you, lyubimiy.”
I close my eyes for a second because there’s no point pretending I don’t fold for it. Beloved. Favorite. Mine in every way that matters and none that can ever survive daylight.
I am weak in exactly the way my father despises. I am twenty-three, furious, and so tired of being carved into shape for other men’s expectations.
So, I slide my arms around his neck, rest my forehead against his, and whisper the truth back into the wreckage he’s made of me.
“I missed you too, cuore mio.”