Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kristen
The sheets are tangled around my legs, damp with sweat. My body still hums. Nico's chest rises and falls beneath my cheek, his heartbeat steady against my ear.
I just had the best sex of my life.
Twenty-six years old, and I didn't know it could feel like that. Didn't know my body could do those things, make those sounds, want so desperately that everything else disappeared.
Boring. You just lie there like a dead fish, Kristen.
My throat tightens. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to hold onto the warmth spreading through my limbs, but Jack's voice slithers in anyway. His face. His threats.
The custody papers.
I bolt upright so fast the room spins.
"What?" Nico's hand shoots to my hip, steadying me. His voice is rough, alert. Ready for a threat.
"I forgot to tell you." The words tumble out in a rush. "Jack filed for custody. sole custody of Lily. My lawyer called this morning and I just—with everything happening, I didn't—"
Nico sits up against the headboard, the sheet pooling at his waist. Moonlight cuts across his chest, highlighting the scars I traced with my tongue an hour ago. His expression doesn't change.
"When?"
"Yesterday. He's claiming I'm unstable." I laugh, but it sounds broken. "That I work for criminals."
Nico's jaw ticks. Just once. "He's not wrong about the second part."
"That's not funny."
"I'm not joking." He reaches for me, fingers wrapping around my wrist. His thumb finds my pulse point, presses gently. "Look at me."
I do. His dark eyes are calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that comes before violence, except this time it doesn't scare me.
"He won't win," Nico says.
"You don't know that. You don't know Jack. He's—" My voice cracks. "He's charming. Everyone loves him. My own mother thinks he hung the moon, and she's known me my whole life. A judge who's never met me? Jack will have them eating out of his hand in five minutes."
"Kristen." My name in his mouth stops my spiral. "He won't win."
"How can you possibly—"
"My family has connections." Nico's thumb keeps stroking my pulse. Slow. Steady. Grounding. "No judge in this city will rule against us. Jack Walker can file whatever he wants. It won't matter."
The words hang in the air between us. I search his face for any sign of doubt, any crack in that granite certainty.
Nothing.
"Is that true?" I whisper. "Or are you just saying what I need to hear?"
Nico's hand slides from my wrist to my jaw, tilting my face up. His eyes bore into mine with an intensity that should terrify me.
"I don't like lying," he says. "I prefer the truth, even when it's ugly."
Nico just admitted his family bribes judges. He told me the truth about the Bratva, about the danger I'm in, about who he really is. Every ugly, dangerous piece of it.
He could have lied. Made himself seem better. Safer.
He didn't.
"The truth is ugly a lot with you," I say.
"Yes." No apology. No softening. Just acknowledgment.
I lean into his palm, letting his warmth seep into my skin.
"What kind of connections?" I ask.
"The kind that make problems disappear."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting right now." His thumb traces my cheekbone. "You don't need to know how the sausage gets made. You just need to know that Lily stays with you. End of discussion."
End of discussion.
"He'll fight dirty," I warn. "He'll bring up every mistake I've ever made. Every job I lost. Every—"
"Let him." Nico's voice drops, dark and dangerous. "Let him bring whatever he wants. It won't change the outcome."
"You sound so sure."
"I am sure." He pulls me closer until our foreheads touch. "I told you I'd handle this. I meant it."
My eyes burn. I've spent so long fighting alone. Scraping by. Surviving on fumes and desperation and the knowledge that no one was coming to save me.
Now this man—this dangerous, complicated, infuriating man—is telling me I don't have to fight alone anymore.
"Why?" The question escapes before I can stop it. "Why do you care so much?"
Nico's jaw works. For a long moment, he doesn't answer.
Then: "I don't know."
Three words. Raw. Honest.
The ugliest truth of all.
Nico
She's halfway out of bed when I catch her wrist.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Kristen freezes, one leg already swung over the edge of the mattress. The sheet slips, revealing the curve of her hip, the soft indent of her waist. My fingers tighten before I can stop myself.
"Lily—"
"Is still sleeping." I tug gently, and she tumbles back against the pillows with a surprised exhale. "Stay."
It's not a request. I don't make requests.
Kristen props herself up on one elbow, grey-blue eyes searching my face. Her hair is a mess and there's a mark blooming on her collarbone where my mouth got greedy. Also my fault. I'm not sorry about either.
"Nico." She says my name like she's testing the weight of it. "What happens between us now?"
What I want to tell her is that I'd keep her in this bed for a week straight.
That I want to memorize every sound she makes, every way her body responds when I touch her.
That I've never wanted to worship someone before, never understood the word until her back arched and she gasped my name like a prayer.
But I don't say any of that.
"I want you here," I manage instead. Eloquent. Really fucking eloquent.
Kristen laughs. "I didn't mean that exactly." Her cheeks flush. "I mean... I work for you. For your family. There are complications."
Right. The job. The contract. The fact that she's technically an employee and I just spent the last several hours buried inside her.
"You don't."
Her brow furrows. "Don't what?"
"Work for us." I reach out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Not anymore."
The color drains from her face so fast I actually sit up. Her body goes rigid, pulling away from my touch like I've burned her.
"What?" The word comes out strangled. "You're—are you firing me?"
Fuck.
"No." I grab her arm before she can bolt. "Kristen. No. That's not—"
"Because if this is some kind of—if you think that just because we—" She's spiraling, I can see it happening in real time. The panic climbing up her throat, the way her breathing goes shallow. "I have a daughter. I have debt. I can't just—"
"Stop." I pull her against my chest, harder than I intend. She's shaking. "Stop. Listen to me."
She doesn't relax, but she stops trying to flee. Small victories.
"I'm not firing you." I force the words out slowly, clearly. "I'm saying you don't have to work anymore. You're with me now. That means you're taken care of. You and Lily."
Silence.
Then: "What does that even mean?"
It's a fair question. One I don't entirely have an answer to. In my world, when a man claims a woman, the implications are clear. She's protected. Provided for. Off-limits to anyone who might think about touching her. But Kristen isn't from my world. She doesn't know the rules.
I release her enough to look at her face. Her eyes are wide, suspicious. Scared. Not of me, I don't think. Of what I'm offering.
"It means," I say carefully, "that you don't owe anyone anything. Not the Bratva. Not my family. Not me. The debt is handled. You stay here because you want to, not because you have to."
"That's not—" She shakes her head. "I can't just not work. I've worked my whole life. I don't know how to be someone's... what? Kept woman?"
The phrase makes me flinch. "That's not what this is."
"Then explain it to me." She pulls back, crossing her arms over her bare chest. Defensive. Guarded. "Because from where I'm sitting, it sounds like you want to pay me to sleep with you."
My jaw clenches so hard I'm surprised my teeth don't crack.
"If that's what I wanted," I say, voice dropping low, "I would have offered you money, not myself."
"I don't know how to do this," she admits quietly. "I don't know how to be with someone who... who operates the way you do. Who lives in this world."
"You learn." I reach for her hand, turn it over in mine. Her fingers are calloused from work, nails bitten short from anxiety. I press my lips to her palm. "We figure it out together."
"And if I can't? If it's too much?"
The question cuts deeper than it should. Because the honest answer is that I don't know what I'd do. Let her go? Impossible. Keep her against her will? I'm not Jack fucking Walker.
"Then you tell me," I say finally. "And we deal with it. But you don't run. Not from me. Not without talking first."
Kristen stares at me for a long moment. I can see the calculations happening behind her eyes. The risk assessment. The weighing of options.
"Lily stays with me," she says. "Always. No matter what."
"Obviously."
"And I'm not... I'm not going to just sit around being decorative. I need something to do. Something that's mine."
"Then you keep managing the household," I say. "Until this thing with Jack is settled. After that, we figure out what you actually want to do."
Her shoulders relax slightly. Progress.
"But." I hold up a finger before she can respond. "You're not spending eight hours a day scrubbing floors and organizing closets. That's not happening."
"I don't scrub floors—"
"You know what I mean." I pull her closer, settling her against my chest. She fits there like she was designed for it. "A few hours in the morning. Then you're done."
Kristen makes a sound that's half-laugh, half-disbelief. "You're very bossy, you know that?"
"I'm aware."
She falls quiet, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my chest. I can feel her thinking. Processing. Trying to fit this new reality into the framework of her old life.
"Tell me about yourself," I say.
Her hand stills. "You already know everything about me. You had me investigated."
True. I know her social security number, her credit score, her medical history. I know she was born in Cook County Hospital, that her father's name isn't on the birth certificate, that she graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA despite working two jobs.
But files don't tell you how someone grew up. What shaped them. Why they became who they are.
"I know facts," I say. "I want to know you."
Kristen shifts, propping her chin on my chest to look at me. Her eyes search my face for something—mockery, maybe. An angle. She won't find one.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything." The word comes out rougher than I intend. "Start at the beginning."
She's quiet for a moment. Then she takes a breath.
"My mom raised me alone. South Side. We didn't have much, but she worked hard. Two jobs sometimes three." A small smile touches her lips. "She used to leave me notes in my lunchbox. Little drawings of suns and flowers because she couldn't afford real art supplies. I kept every single one."
An unknown feeling twists in my chest. I ignore it.
"I was a good kid. Quiet. Stayed out of trouble because trouble meant my mom had to leave work early, and leaving work early meant less money, and less money meant..." She shrugs. "You know how it goes."
I don't, actually. I grew up with more money than God and a father who used violence like punctuation. But I nod anyway.
"I wanted to be a doctor since I was seven," she continues.
"Our neighbor Mrs. Patterson had a heart attack right in front of me.
The paramedics came and they were so calm.
So in control. They saved her life like it was nothing.
I thought..." She laughs softly. "I thought that was the closest thing to magic I'd ever seen. "
The universe has a sick sense of humor. That's the only explanation.
Here I am—a man who has ended more lives than I can count, whose hands have done things that would make her run screaming—and she's telling me about wanting to save people. About believing in magic.
She's sunshine wrapped in struggle. An angel who somehow ended up in bed with the devil.
And instead of letting her go, instead of doing the decent thing and pushing her back toward the light, I want to keep her. Root her here in my darkness. Make her mine so completely that she forgets there was ever a before.
I want to be the reason she laughs.
Not just Lily. Me.
"What happened?" I ask, though I already know.
"I got pregnant." Her voice doesn't waver, but I feel her body tense. "I was twenty-one. Jack and I had been together for three years. He seemed... safe. Stable. My mom loved him." A bitter edge creeps into her tone. "Everyone loved him."
Everyone except me, I think. I'd like to kill him slowly.
"When I told him about Lily, he proposed the same day. I thought—" She stops. Swallows. "I thought I was lucky. Stupid, right? I actually believed I was one of the lucky ones."
"You're not stupid."
"I was blind." She says it like a confession. "He changed after we got married. Or maybe he was always that way and I just didn't see it. The comments about my weight. My clothes. My friends. How I laughed too loud or talked too much or wasn't grateful enough for everything he provided."
My jaw clenches. I force myself to stay still, to keep my breathing even. If I move right now, I'll put my fist through something.
"Then Lily got sick." Her voice cracks. Just slightly. "And nothing else mattered anymore. Not Jack's cruelty, not my dreams, not anything. Just keeping her alive."
She falls silent. I don't push.
After a moment, she looks up at me with those grey-blue eyes that see too much. "Your turn."
"My turn for what?"
"Tell me something real. Something that isn't in a file somewhere."
I should deflect. Change the subject. Keep my walls intact like I've done for thirty years.
Instead, I hear myself say: "I've never done this before."
"Done what?"
"This." I gesture vaguely at the space between us. "Wanting someone to stay."
Her breath catches.
"Everyone leaves eventually," I continue, the words coming from somewhere I didn't know existed. "Or they should. This life... it destroys soft things. I learned that young."
"I'm not soft."
"No." I trace my thumb across her cheekbone. "You're the strongest person I've ever met. And that terrifies me."