Chapter 4 #2
"You're right. I am an introvert." His voice holds a warmth I'm starting to recognize is just for me. "Didn't use to be this grumpy though. I used to be actually fun."
"Fun?" I can't hide my surprise, and it makes him chuckle, the sound rumbling through his chest where I'm pressed against him. "I would love to see that. What kind of fun guy were you?"
He places me in the Camaro with worship-gentle hands. Then he's leaning over me, all heat and masculine scent, and God help me, I want to pull him closer instead of pushing him away.
His gentleness is my downfall, making me forget he's the same hands that let me go.
"I was the kind of fun guy who planned elaborate surprise dates. Who left love notes to be found. Who could make a woman laugh until their sides hurt."
He pulls back to meet my eyes, and I see a glimpse of the man he used to be.
"The kind who believed in happily-ever-after and thought love could conquer anything." His voice drops lower, rougher. "I still believe it, but I also learned that it could be taken away at any moment. Without warning. Without mercy."
Anton closes my door and rounds the car to the driver's side. We exit the garage to a darkening Manhattan skyline beyond. As we pull out into the street, the city lights blur past my window like fallen stars.
The silence stretches between us, filled only by the purr of the engine and the distant sounds of evening traffic.
"Is this what you were going to tell me about?" I ask. "What happened?"
His knuckles tighten on the wheel. "Yes. I want you to know all of me, Fee. Life has surprised me in ways I never expected, some devastating, some..." His eyes flick to mine briefly. "Some completely unexpected in the best way."
We merge onto the highway heading north, leaving the glittering chaos of Manhattan behind. The landscape begins to shift from concrete and glass to rolling hills dotted with distant lights, like the world is giving us space for this conversation.
"I'm ready to hear it," I tell him, meaning every word.
Anton's chest rises and falls with a deep breath. "I was truly and completely in love. Married for four years. I thought I'd found my mate for life."
The headlights illuminate the darkening road ahead, and I notice how his voice changes when he talks about her, softer, reverent.
"But two and a half years ago, she passed away. I was home that night. We were getting ready to go out to dinner. I had the night off. She was in the bedroom, putting on earrings, and she just...fainted."
My chest tightens as I watch the pain flash across his features.
"I rushed her to the hospital. She died an hour after we arrived." His voice drops to barely above a whisper. "Brain aneurysm. A malformation she'd been born with, something no one knew about. One moment she was laughing at something I'd said, the next..."
"Anton." My hand finds his shoulder, feeling the tension coiled there like a spring. "I'm so sorry for your loss. I can't imagine the pain, the loneliness."
The trees along the highway create dark silhouettes against the star-scattered sky, and somehow the open road makes this conversation feel both intimate and infinite.
"It almost killed me, too," he admits. "Then you showed up and confused the hell out of me. You attracted me in a way that surprised me completely. I tried to fight it, tried to ignore it, but it was futile."
His free hand covers mine on his shoulder, warm and solid.
"So I took these six months to get myself together. Because a man needs to get all of himself together if he wants to pursue a woman properly. That's the type of man I am. Money isn't a problem, but my head, my heart, my attitude—all those things I had to take care of."
The highway curves gently through the darkness, and I can smell the change in the air as we leave the city behind completely.
"But there was one thing I underestimated." His thumb traces across my knuckles. "I don't know how you'll feel knowing that my late wife will always be part of my life. Not the same way as before, but I don't hate her; I didn't divorce her. I loved her until death did us part."
He touches the small teardrop tattoo beneath his left eye with his free hand.
"And this tattoo you looked at last night, it's a reminder of all the tears I shed for her, the loss of part of my soul."
The magnitude of that loss steals my breath. I can't wrap my head around such sudden, devastating grief, the loneliness, the love that will always be there.
He will always love his wife, and I don't even know what that would make me if we were to be in a relationship.
Would his heart always be split? Would I ever occupy enough of it to matter, or would I always be competing with a ghost I could never measure up to?
The road stretches ahead of us, and I choose my words carefully.
"I've never experienced that kind of love before, so I can't fully understand what losing it means." I squeeze his shoulder gently. "But if it were me who had passed, I think I'd want my husband to always carry me with him, and I'd also want him to find love again. The rest, I don't know."
Anton's hand tightens over mine, and in the darkness of the highway, something fragile and precious settles between us.
Anton's phone vibrates against the console, and he removes his hand from mine to reach for it. But before I can move my hand away from his shoulder, he catches my wrist gently.
His lips press against my knuckles, soft and reverent, sending heat racing up my arm. Then he guides my hand to rest on his thigh, just above his knee, his palm settling over mine.
The simple gesture steals my breath. His thigh is pure muscle beneath my palm, warm and solid through expensive fabric. God, he's built like a fantasy, broad shoulders, tall frame, all dangerous strength wrapped in perfect tailoring.
And that's exactly my problem. I'm completely gone for this impossible, complicated and contradictive man who could break me in half or break my heart, and I can't seem to care which.
"Yuri," he says, accepting the call through the car's speaker system. His voice shifts into business mode, but his hand never leaves mine.
"Anton." Yuri's accented voice fills the car, crisp through the speakers.
"Shane's awake, but he's still pretty drugged up.
What he told me though..." A pause. "Someone got into the tailor shop.
A contracted killer. Shane could barely focus, but he was clear about one thing—this guy moved like smoke. Professional work."
I feel Anton's leg tense beneath my palm.
Anton's thumb stills on my hand. "What did you find in the cameras? The systems?"
"Most of the security footage has been scrubbed clean. This guy knew exactly where every camera was, what angles to avoid." Yuri's frustration bleeds through the speaker. "Every camera within three blocks went dark for exactly forty-seven minutes. Not broken, just...offline."
The darkness outside suddenly feels suffocating. Anton's hand tightens over mine, and I can feel the deadly tension coiling through his entire body.
"Extraction route?"
"Ghost clean. No witnesses, no trace." Yuri's voice drops. "Anton, the precision here... it's your playbook, brother. We might not be looking at one person. This feels like a team that fights exactly like we do."
"Keep digging," Anton says. "I want to know everything, who they are, who's paying them, how they knew about the tailor shop."
"Already on it. I'll call you the moment I find anything else." The line goes dead, leaving us alone in the suffocating quiet of the car.
Silence. Heavy and loaded with implications that make my blood run cold.
"What is it that you're so good at?" I ask softly, needing to understand what Yuri means, what makes Anton so formidable that finding his equal is cause for alarm.
Anton's eyes flick to mine briefly before returning to the road.
"I can break any security system without being detected, get in like a ghost, eliminate targets, and get out without anyone knowing I was ever there.
" His thumb resumes its gentle circles on my hand, the tender gesture at odds with his clinical description of lethal skills.
"I'm invisible until I choose not to be. "
Anton's hand tightens over mine, and suddenly the darkened highway doesn't feel like an escape from danger.
It feels like we're driving deeper into it, with someone out there who might be every bit as lethal as the man sitting beside me.