14. Ana
ANA
Present time
Night at the safehouse kitchen
“Marry me,” Dominik says. The words land hard and pull me back to the night everything split and never settled right again.
Since Vadim Markov died, I haven’t owned my future. I ran. I crossed into another region, kept my head down, and tried to build something for Mila and me that wouldn’t draw attention. That choice cost me.
I cut myself out of Dominik’s life. I started over in a town where I knew no one and no one cared about lineage or last names.
I built something small and stubborn. Mila learned to walk on cracked pavement.
She laughed in grocery store aisles. I worked.
I kept a schedule. I stayed forgettable on purpose.
It held because I made it hold.
Then I stepped back into the system.
I didn’t go back for longing. I went back because survival doesn’t end just because you hide.
I went to collect what was mine on paper. Something plain. Something owed to my daughter. A pension. Money already accounted for.
The machine woke up the second I touched it. Now I’m back under the same rules, watched by the same system that keeps records longer than it keeps grudges.
I didn’t return to the past. The past reached for me because it never stopped keeping score.
Men still sit in rooms and speak about me like I'm an asset left in a file cabinet. They weigh value. They discuss alliances. They talk about placement and timing and who benefits most.
They never say resale.
They don't have to.
The rules are clear. A widow gets reassigned. That’s what they call mercy.
“You don’t get to decide my life for me,” I say, keeping my voice steady because I have to.
Mila is asleep in the next room, her breathing finally settling into that deep, even rhythm that means she won’t wake unless there’s a sudden sound sharp enough to break it or a nightmare that pulls her under.
If she wakes and finds me shouting, she’ll panic.
She’ll cry and cling and refuse to let go, afraid that if she does, I’ll disappear the way her father did long before she was born.
That’s the story I gave her, because children ask about fathers even when they don’t have one, and they deserve an answer they can live with.
It’s the only reason I keep my voice measured when I turn back to Dominik, the only thing anchoring me to restraint when everything in me wants to shout.
“You don’t get to find me, kill men in front of my child, and then tell me to marry you like it’s paperwork,” I say.
He doesn’t sit. He doesn’t lean. He stands the way he always does when he’s holding the line inside himself, shoulders squared, weight balanced on his feet, eyes fixed on me like I’m a problem he intends to solve without compromise.
“I didn’t decide your life,” he says. “I kept it from ending in a parking garage. And Mila’s.”
“You bring her into it,” I say, my hand tightening around the edge of the counter. “She heard the shots. She saw the blood on my hands. And yours. And we followed you into the car.”
“She’s alive,” he says. “You were thirty seconds from losing her. From being pushed back into the system you were running from. Worse.”
The words land harder than anything else he’s said. I hate the part of me that believes him without question. I hate that another part of me already knew.
“You still don’t own me,” I say.
His face loosens. “I never said I did.”
“You act as if you do.”
He takes a step closer, slow enough that I could stop him if I wanted to. I don’t, and that feels like the first betrayal of the night.
“You walked into a bank tied to Markov’s name,” he says, voice steady and unyielding. “You triggered a system you know better than anyone. You didn’t call me. You didn’t warn me. Don’t stand there and pretend you don’t understand what that means.”
“I didn’t know you built a trigger into it,” I say, the edge in my voice harsher than I intend. “But I should have.”
His brow tightens. “What are you talking about?” He bends toward me, close enough that the space between us disappears, close enough that I can smell him.
“You scattered searches everywhere,” I say. “You think I wouldn’t recognize the pattern?”
His mouth tightens once before he straightens, putting distance back where it belongs. His hands drop to his sides, palms open, shoulders lowering like he’s forcing control into his body.
“I didn’t vanish on anyone,” he says, voice flat. “You did.”
“Disappearing was the only way to keep you alive.”
“That was never your call.”
“And dragging us back into this was yours?”
“Yes,” he says without hesitation. “Because you don’t get to die quietly so I can pretend I’m safer without you.”
The space between us disappears before I consciously register that I’ve moved. Or maybe he has. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how close he is now, how aware I am of the heat of his body, the familiar weight of him pressing against mine, in a room too small to step away.
“You’re angry,” he says. “So am I.”
I look up at him and see the restraint in his posture, the way his hands stay open at his sides like he’s holding himself back by force alone. It hits me how close this is to becoming something else, how thin the line has always been between us. My breath catches, and I hate myself for it.
“This is a mistake,” I say.
“You said that before,” he replies. “And you didn’t mean it then, either.”
I shove at his chest, not hard, just enough to make a point. He doesn’t move. The solid reality of him under my hands pulls something loose in me that I’ve kept locked down for years.
“Stop,” I tell him, because if I don’t say it out loud, I won’t even pretend I’m trying.
He doesn’t touch me. That’s worse.
“Tell me to leave,” he says. “And I will. Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll walk out and take the next threat with me.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
What I want is tangled up with everything I’ve lost and everything I’m still fighting to keep. I want him because he’s dangerous and familiar and because some part of me never stopped measuring the world by the distance between us.
“I hate that you found me,” I say.
“I know.”
“I hate that I feel safer with you here.”
“I know that too.”
My hands are still on his chest. I can feel his heartbeat under my palms, steady and controlled.
“You don’t get to fix this with sex,” I say, because someone has to.
“I’m not trying to fix anything,” he answers. “I’m standing where I always have.”
The honesty in that cracks the last of my control. I step into him instead of away, my forehead pressing briefly to his chest like I need the contact to stay upright. His breath shifts, the first real sign that he’s affected too.
“This doesn’t mean I agree,” I say.
“It means you’re choosing,” he replies.
That’s the difference, and we both know it.
He touches me with restraint, one hand at my waist, fingers spreading like he’s anchoring me there instead of taking anything. I let myself feel it.
I lift my head and meet his eyes. There’s no softness there. No apology.
I close the distance myself and kiss him because I need to know it’s still real. It is. The spark is immediate and unforgiving, burning through anger and fear and every careful plan I’ve made since the night I ran.
I pull back just enough to breathe. “This doesn’t make us safe.”
“No,” he says. “But it makes us honest.”
I take his hand and lead him out of the kitchen, past the room where my daughter sleeps, toward a door I haven’t opened in years, knowing what I’m choosing and choosing it anyway.