Chapter 48 Stefan
STEFAN
Devon’s in the basement now. Breathing. Talking. Spilling names and dates while Mikayla extracts every useful detail from his traitorous mouth.
I should be down there with her—probably extracting a few teeth to go along with those “useful details.”
But I’m not.
I’m standing in my own driveway, watching Taras’s taillights disappear into the night.
“She’s making you soft, bro.”
With a sigh, I turn and go inside. The front door feels heavier than usual. Or maybe that’s just the weight of what I didn’t do tonight. What I couldn’t do.
Haley Manizer’s face keeps floating behind my eyelids. The automatic reach for her husband’s hand.
Olivia reaching for me on the yacht.
I need a drink. Several drinks, probably. Enough to drown out this growing feeling that something fundamental has shifted.
The house is too quiet. Mikayla’s still in the basement. The security team patrols the grounds in their usual patterns. Everything exactly as it should be…
… except for the light bleeding from under my bedroom door.
I pause in the hallway. Olivia is supposed to be asleep. It’s past midnight.
But when I open the door, she’s there, awake. Curled in the center of my bed, medical journals spread around her. She’s wearing one of my shirts—the linen one she stole from the boat—and her hair falls in waves across the pillow.
She looks up when I enter. “You’re late.”
“Business.”
“The kind that leaves blood on your cuffs?”
I glance down. A spray of Devon’s blood decorates my sleeve from when Taras punched him. Sloppy. I’m getting sloppy.
“It’s handled.”
She unfolds from the bed and sits upright. The shirt barely covers her thighs.
“Stefan… What happened?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Everything about you concerns me now.” When I step closer to unclasp my watch and set it on the bedside table, I catch her scent—vanilla and those fucking orchids. “That’s what this arrangement means.”
“This arrangement means you carry my child,” I fire back automatically. “Nothing more.”
She flinches. Barely visible, but I catch it.
“Right. Of course.” She stands up and reaches for my jacket anyway. “At least let me—”
“Don’t.”
My hand catches her wrist. Too hard. She’ll have marks tomorrow.
“Stefan, you’re hurt—”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Her free hand touches my jaw, thumb grazing another spot where Devon’s blood splattered. “Talk to me.”
I close my eyes. I see those hands again. I see Haley Manizer standing between her husband and death.
“You want to help?” I say with a nasty edge. “Take off the shirt.”
She blinks. “What?”
“You heard me. You want to make me feel better? Strip.”
“That’s not what I—”
“No?” I release her wrist, step back. “Then what exactly are you offering, Dr. Aster? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re pimping yourself out for attention.”
The slap comes fast. My cheek stings after she hits me, but not as much as the look in her eyes.
“How dare you?” she spits.
“How dare I what? Call this what it is?” I gesture between us, filling every word I say with disdain. “You’re a glorified oven, Olivia. A convenient womb with good genetics. Don’t mistake proximity for intimacy.”
She goes perfectly still. Will she try to slap me again, I wonder? Will I let her if she does?
She doesn’t, though. All the emotion gets washed clean from her face as she says in a tight whisper, “You’re right. I forgot. That was my mistake.”
She gathers her journals and taps them into a neat stack.
The regret that surges through me is overwhelming. “Olivia, goddammit—”
“No.” She doesn’t look at me. “You’ve made yourself clear, Mr. Safonov. I’m an oven. A vessel. Nothing more. And as such, I should sleep in the guest room. Wouldn’t want to confuse proximity with intimacy.” She pauses at the door, journals clutched to her chest. “That’s what you want, right?”
Say no, motherfucker. Tell her to stay. Drag her to bed and worship her to show her you’re sorry.
Out loud, I say, “Yes.”
“Then we understand each other perfectly.”
The room still smells like her long after she’s gone. The scent has embedded itself in my sheets, my clothes, my fucking soul.
I strip off the bloodied shirt, but Devon’s blood isn’t what I’m trying to wash away.
“She’s making you soft.”
No. She’s making me something worse.
She’s making me feel.
The shower runs too hot, scalding my skin, but it doesn’t burn away the memory of her thumb on my jaw. The concern in her eyes. Let me help you—
I punch the tile. Pain shoots up my arm as my knuckles split against the marble. Blood swirls down the drain, and I watch it disappear.
This is what I am. Violence and blood and broken things. Olivia deserves better.
Which is why I had to push her away. Had to remind us both what this really is.
A transaction.
A contract.
Nothing more.
When I finally emerge, the bedroom feels cavernous. The bed is too big, the silence too complete.
Her journals are gone, but one page has fallen behind, caught under the nightstand. I pick it up, expecting medical jargon.
Instead, it’s a loose sheet of paper with a sketch on it. Rough, unpracticed. A baby’s face in profile.
Our child. She’s been drawing our child.
The paper crumples in my fist.
You’re a glorified oven. Christ, I can still see her face when I said that. Then the way she rebuilt herself in real time, brick by brick, until nothing vulnerable showed anymore.
I forgot. That was my mistake.
No, Olivia. The mistake was mine.
The mistake is always mine.