Chapter 8 Ruslan #2
That’s when the foolishness deepens. Maybe because the morning has already done too much damage.
Maybe because I’m tired of keeping certain thoughts behind my teeth.
Maybe because watching him here, with sunlight on his face and no father’s shadow between us, makes the future feel like a thing a man might touch if he were deranged enough.
“I’ve been thinking about getting out,” I say.
Salvatore turns, a slight crease between his brows. “Out of what?”
I laugh softly. “Everything.”
He studies me for a second longer, realization creeping into his eyes. Then he sets the cup down on the table between us. “That doesn’t sound like a joke.”
“It isn’t.”
A breeze moves through the olive trees below the terrace wall. Somewhere in the kitchen, the fridge clicks on and hums to life. The whole world seems to lean in a fraction.
I rest my forearms on my knees and look over the garden rather than him, because some truths are easier to say sideways.
“I’m tired of being pointed at things and told they’re duty. I’m tired of every bed, every deal, and every city already belonging to my father before I step into it. I’m tired of playing future king for a man I’d rather bury.”
When I finally look at him, he’s watching me with that dark, attentive stillness of his that always makes me want to confess all my sins.
“You’re talking about… leaving the Bratva,” he says.
I shake my head. “I’m talking about making sure there’s nothing to leave from.”
He sucks in a breath, panic shining in his eyes now. “Ruslan—”
“There are no rules for me to follow if Mikhail is dead.”
The sentence sits between us, ugly and clear, and Salvatore goes completely still. It should shock him less than it does. We come from families that treat murder the way other people treat the weather: regrettable only when it interrupts plans.
Still, this is different, I suppose. I’m talking about killing my father.
“You’re… You’re serious about this,” he says, and I reply with a nod. “Since when? Why now?”
“A while.”
“How long is a while, Ruslan?”
“Long enough that I’ve stopped fucking lying to myself about it.”
He exhales slowly. “Jesus Christ.”
“No,” I say. “Wrong side of the business.”
That almost gets a smile out of him, but not quite. He’s too unsettled. “You’d kill your father.”
“I’d kill anyone standing in the way of me and my freedom,” I say, and I see the way that lands.
“You want honesty, there it is. No father, no rules. No man above me deciding what I’m worth, when I’m useful, and who I have to put in my bed or in the ground.
No more pretending I owe my life to a dynasty that only values me as long as I stay shaped correctly. ”
Salvatore remains quiet for a beat, and I can see my words sinking in. I hope he feels my confession in them, the truth I can’t admit, even though I want to.
“And then what? What happens after your Pakhan is dead?”
The question should be simple, but we both know it could never be with my last name.
I’ve spent enough nights thinking about the removal, the aftermath, and the power vacuum he would leave.
Viktor wouldn’t trust me, even though he’s supposed to be my blade.
I wouldn’t have a second, because no one would trust me.
“Then I’d figure out how to live.”
Something flickers in his eyes; something painful. “Would you know how?”
I look at him fully and say, “No.”
At least that makes him smile, albeit a small, unwilling thing. I hold his gaze and ask the question that’s been sitting on my tongue since he let me speak my future out loud.
“What about you, malysh? What would you do if you were free of him?”
I don’t say the bastard’s name, because he knows I’m talking about his father. His answer comes faster than I expect; maybe faster than he expects, too.
“Lucia,” he breathes.
Of course. The only true, uncomplicated love I’ve ever seen on him belongs to that girl. His voice changes when he says her name; it always does. It turns softer, which would be dangerous in front of anyone but me.
“She comes first,” he continues. “She won’t be married off or traded to some old man because it benefits my father.
She’ll paint if she wants to, dance if she wants to, and leave if she wants to.
She’ll marry whomever she wants, or no one at all.
She’ll be…” he trails off, and I see the ghost of pain in his eyes again. “Free. She’ll be free.”
Free—the word sits heavier on him than it does on me.
I watch him while he talks, because this is the version of Salvatore no one else gets. Not the heir, the cold son, or the man across conference tables cutting deals like he was born in a ledger.
This one—the brother. The one whose whole face changes around the thought of protecting that girl from the world he himself survives inside.
“And you?” I say quietly.
His gaze comes back to mine. “What about me?”
“What would you do for yourself, Salvatore?:
There’s a pause, and the answer—when it comes—is almost a shrug. “I don’t care much for myself, as long as the people I love are safe.”
It’s such a fucking terrible answer that for a second I don’t know whether to kiss him or shake him. Instead, I lean forward and stare at him. “That’s not an answer.”
He lifts his coffee cup again. “It’s the only one I have.”
“No,” I say, my voice slightly louder. “It’s the one you hide behind because it makes martyrdom sound noble.”
His eyes flash at that. “Fuck you. You don’t get to call me a martyr just because I know what matters.”
I shake my head. “What matters is that you say your sister’s name first then act like there’s nothing left under your skin worth saving.”
“That isn’t what—”
“That’s exactly what you said.”
He sets his cup down harder this time. “I said my priority is Lucia.”
“And I’m asking what happens when she’s safe. What the fuck happens then, Salvatore? What happens to you?”
He goes quiet, and that fury I love so much drains out of him.
I’ve seen him sit in silence with insults like knives cutting into his skin, but this is different.
This is him staring at a future where his father is dead, his sister is free, and realizing he’s never allowed himself to imagine beyond that point.
That realization hits him so slowly, I can see it. Finally, and more softly, he says, “I don’t know.”
That honesty drains the fight out of me.
We don’t speak of futures again and leave the terrace when we finish our coffees because staying in one place for too long makes both of us twitch.
Inside, the villa is cooler, and we move through rooms without hurry. I have him in every room, and he claims me back, whispering things in Italian he thinks I won’t understand while I respond in Russian.
The day drifts, full of fights, fucking, and me annoying him whenever I can. It’s only while I’m cooking dinner and he’s washing dishes in the sink that he speaks of this morning again.
“You’ve really been thinking about killing him?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer, and he searches my face for any lie in my treasonous thoughts.
“Would you tell me when you do it?”
Probably not, I think, because loving you doesn’t mean I trust fate enough not to use silence when it matters.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I cup the back of his neck and draw him close until his forehead rests against mine. “You already know more than you should, lyubimiy.”
Then I kiss him slowly and without thought, because he doesn’t understand why I started planning to kill my father in the first place.
He doesn’t realize it’s because of him.
Salvatore is dozing with his head in my lap while I read. I card my fingers through his hair because I can, and there’s no one here to see how disastrously gentle I become with him.
“I could get used to this,” he says without opening his eyes.
The words hit me somewhere stupid. “Dangerous thing to say.”
He hums. “A lot of things with you are dangerous, amore. And yet…”
“And yet,” I echo.
He finally opens his eyes and looks up at me. “If our worlds weren’t built the way they are,” he murmurs, “would you live here?”
“With you,” I say without hesitation, and we both look at each other. There’s heartbreak reflected in his eyes, heartbreak and hope, and fuck, I can’t look away. “Salv—”
The private line in my study rings—the one only Viktor knows about.
Every inch of softness dies in me at once. Salvatore feels it happen, and all that lazy warmth is gone from his face immediately. “Don’t answer it.”
I untangle myself from him and stand, then I look at him. Whatever he sees on my face must confirm something for him, because the set of his mouth changes and becomes more Vieri.
I leave the room and answer it on the fourth ring. There’s a crackle on the line when Viktor says, “Father wants you in the city before midnight.”
“I’m hours away,” I answer back in Russian.
“Midnight, Ruslan.”
I look toward the door and hear Salvatore in the kitchen. “What happened?”
“Not over the phone.”
That tells me everything and nothing. “This line is clean. I checked before coming.”
“Still.”
I breathe out a sigh. “Understood.”
The line goes dead, and I stand there, holding the receiver and listening to the empty hum before I hang it up slowly.
When I step back into the bedroom where Salvatore sits, he reads enough in my expression that he doesn’t ask the wrong question.
“You have to go.”
“Yes.”
He nod once, too calm. That worries me more than panic would. He crosses the room and stops in front of me. “I’ll leave in the morning.”
The thought of coming back to the villa devoid of him hits me with an absurd, immediate fury. As if absence itself would be an insult after this day.
“No.”
His eyes widen. “Ruslan—”
I grip the back of his neck, kiss his forehead once, then his mouth, and keep my voice as steady as I can when I say, “Wait for me.”
That line feels simple, but it’s too fucking loaded, and we both know it. Salvatore places his hand over my heart and feels how fast it’s beating.
“All right. I will wait for you.”
That is such a dangerous promise given the circumstances. I kiss him one last time before I get dressed. Then I open the front door, and the cold night air shatters our fantasy.
Our fathers are not asleep, and the world remembers exactly what it was built to do to men like us the second we start pretending otherwise.