Chapter Twenty-Five
Valentina
Returning to Las Vegas felt like stepping back into a world that had never once paused for us. It remained bright, loud, and entirely indifferent to everything we’d survived while we were away.
The city looked the same. Neon still burned against the desert dark, tourists still crowded the sidewalks in shorts and sunburn, and the endless hum of the Strip still carried on.
But I wasn’t the same person who’d left it.
Something inside me had shifted during our time away, in a subtle but permanent way.
It was a change I only noticed in fragments as we settled back into the penthouse.
I found myself noting security patterns I’d never consciously registered before, the rotation of the men stationed at every entrance, and the way Dmitri’s shoulders carried a sharper tension now, since our conversation in that quiet island kitchen about what finishing this properly meant.
The penthouse itself had been reinforced considerably in our absence, with new locks installed throughout and the safe room’s entire access system rebuilt from the ground up according to Nikolai’s specifications.
Roman walked us through the changes the first evening back, explaining new protocols in a low, careful voice.
I listened without fully absorbing half of it, some part of me still processing the feeling of returning to a place where a man had once stood calmly while discussing my value as leverage.
I went back to work at the club a few days after we returned, under the same arrangement of discreet security Dmitri insisted on, though something in me approached the floor differently than I had before the island.
Less anxious about being watched and more aware of everything happening beneath the surface of the ordinary shift—the coded glances between dealers, the attention security paid to certain tables, details I’d apparently absorbed without fully realizing it during months of living inside constant vigilance.
Camila’s eyes enlarged when she saw me. She abandoned her section to pull me into a hug tight enough to nearly knock me over. The familiarity of our little reunion felt both comforting and unsettling.
“You’re back. You’re actually back.” She held me at arm’s length, studying my face with an intensity that made me laugh despite everything. “Okay, something’s different. I don’t know what it is yet, but something is definitely different about you.”
“A lot happened while I was gone.”
“And while I was away, too. And you will sit down and tell me everything, woman.”
Before Dmitri and I went to the island, Camila had taken her leave from the underground poker lounge. So, we’d not seen each other for weeks.
“Hm-mm. We still have work to do, though.”
We found a quiet corner during our break, and I told her everything—or as close to everything as I could manage without violating the unspoken discretion Dmitri’s world required.
The attack on the reception. The safe room, and Vale walking through its locks like they were nothing. And then the island.
Camila listened with an expression that shifted rapidly between shock, disbelief, and something almost giddy with vicarious excitement, occasionally interrupting with questions I did my best to answer honestly.
“Wait, he actually shot Varley? In front of everyone? At our lounge?”
“In front of everyone. Right here.”
“And you… watched that happen.”
“I watched it happen. It’s still the hardest thing I’ve had to process out of everything.
Not because I think he was wrong to do it.
Because watching someone I care about end a life that quickly, that decisively, forced me to actually reckon with what his world requires of him in a way I’d managed to avoid fully confronting before that night. ”
“How did you get through it?”
“I’m still getting through it, honestly. Some days better than others.” I met her eyes, grateful for the ease of finally saying all of this to someone who wasn’t part of the danger itself. “He gave me space to process it without pushing. That helped more than I expected.”
“Did it scare you? Watching him do that?”
“Yes. Not because I thought he’d turn that on me, ever.
Because it made real something I’d known abstractly for months but hadn’t actually had to look at directly.
That the man I married is capable of ending a life in under two seconds, without his hand shaking afterward, and that this is simply part of who he is, not some aberration I can pretend doesn’t exist. I mean, all this started with him killing a man that would’ve killed me during that raid, didn’t it? ”
“That’s a lot to carry,” she said, understanding in her eyes as she sighed.
“What helped, honestly, was him not pretending otherwise either. He didn’t apologize for what he did to Varley. He apologized for me having to watch it. That distinction mattered more than I expected it to.”
“And the island?”
Something in my expression must have shifted, because Camila’s eyebrows rose immediately, already anticipating whatever came next.
“The island was different,” I said slowly.
“Quiet. Real, in a way nothing in our life together has really been up to that point. We talked. Actually talked, about things neither of us had said out loud before. What we wanted. What scared us. What we were actually building together, underneath all the strategy and danger that got us here in the first place.”
“Val.” Camila’s voice softened, something knowing creeping into her expression. “You look different when you talk about him. You know that, right?”
I considered denying it, but instead, I let myself actually think of her question.
“I think I love him,” I said quietly. “I haven’t said that out loud before.”
Saying it out loud to Camila made it real in a way that startled me, the weight of the admission settling into my chest with more permanence than it had carried privately in my head.
Camila looked at me with playful happiness clear in her expression. “I mean, I could have told you that weeks ago, but I’m glad you’re finally catching up.”
“You could have told me?” I repeated, half asking.
“Val, you talk about that man like he hung the moon, even when you’re complaining about him. I’ve watched you go from terrified hostess avoiding his flirting to a woman who lit up every time his name came up in conversation. It wasn’t exactly subtle.”
“I didn’t realize it was that obvious.”
“It was that obvious.” She squeezed my hand across the table. “For what it’s worth, given everything you’ve just told me, everything you’ve survived together, I think it’s allowed to be real. I think you’re allowed to actually have this, whatever complicated, dangerous form it takes.”
“Even knowing what his world actually looks like? What I’ve watched him do?” I asked, not because I was unsure but because I wanted to hear the consideration out loud.
“Especially knowing that, honestly. Because you went into this with your eyes open, Val. You’ve seen the absolute worst of what this life requires, and you’re still choosing to stay in it.
That’s not na?ve. That’s a decision, made with full information, which is more than most people ever get to say about who they love. ”
“I keep waiting for someone to tell me I’m making a mistake. That I should have run the first chance I got, back before any of this became permanent.”
“Do you want me to tell you that?”
“No,” I admitted, surprising myself with how quickly the answer came. “I don’t think I do.”
“Then I won’t. Not because I’m not worried about you, sometimes, in the middle of the night when I actually think about what your life looks like now.
But because I’ve watched you choose this, deliberately, even though the beginning wasn’t much of a choice.
That’s not the same thing as being trapped in it. ”
I smiled at hearing my complicated feelings reflected back at me with the clarity only a good friend like Camila could offer.
“How’s everything else been?” I asked, redirecting some of the attention away from myself. “The floor, the regulars, all of it. I feel like I’ve been gone longer than I actually was.”
“Mostly normal since I’ve been back, believe it or not.
Table six finally gave up asking about you once word got around that you were officially married.
” She grinned. “Varley’s absence got noticed, obviously, though management kept the official story vague enough that most people just assumed he retired suddenly.
I guess that was why I couldn’t imagine he was actually, you know, killed here. ”
“Do you think anyone actually suspects the truth?”
“A few of the older staff, probably. Nobody’s saying anything out loud, though.
I mean I didn’t know. This business runs on knowing which questions not to ask.
” She shrugged. “New management’s already been appointed for his old responsibilities.
Quiet guy, keeps to himself. I haven’t fully sized him up yet. ”
“What’s he like?”
“Careful. Formal, almost to a fault. Introduced himself to the whole floor staff individually on his first day, which nobody’s ever bothered doing before. Some of the girls think it’s charming. I think it’s a little unsettling, honestly, though I couldn’t tell you exactly why.”
“Maybe it’s just because we’re all still on edge after everything.”
“Probably. Or maybe I’ve just gotten permanently suspicious of anyone new who shows up around here asking a lot of careful, polite questions.
” She said it lightly, but something in her tone suggested she meant it more seriously than the joke implied.
“I’ll keep an eye on him for you, if it helps. Report back if anything feels off.”
“I’d appreciate that, actually.”
By the time my break ended and I headed back to the penthouse with the security men, I felt the relief of having said the truest, most vulnerable thing I’d been carrying out loud to someone who mattered.
Later, alone in the quiet of the penthouse, Dmitri still finishing a call with Roman somewhere down the hall, I found myself sitting by the window overlooking the Strip, reflecting on everything the last two months had actually put me through.
Fear, more than I’d ever experienced in my entire life before the raid changed everything.
Violence, witnessed up close in ways I’d never imagined I’d have to reckon with.
Uncertainty, the exhaustion of never quite knowing whether tomorrow would bring another threat or another quiet, ordinary morning.
And underneath all of it, transformation, which came slow and steady, reshaping me into someone I barely recognized when I compared her to the uninterested hostess who’d first caught Dmitri Golovin’s attention across a poker lounge floor.
Something clearer emerged from turning all of that over.
I was no longer simply reacting to Dmitri’s world, letting fear and circumstance dictate every choice I made inside it. I was choosing my place within it now, deliberately, with full knowledge of exactly what that choice required and exactly what it had already cost.
I thought about the woman I’d been months ago, without ever once imagining a life that included armed security, safe rooms, or a husband capable of ending a threat in the space of a single heartbeat.
That woman would have run from everything I’d survived since, would have called it insanity to stay, would have packed her things the moment danger first arrived at her door instead of learning to live beside or even inside it.
Something in me had changed enough since then that running no longer felt like the obvious answer, or even an appealing one.
I thought about Vale’s words in that safe room, about being the one thing Dmitri couldn’t afford to lose, about becoming, whether I wanted it or not, the center of someone else’s war against everything Dmitri had built.
The fear those words carried hadn’t fully faded.
I doubted it ever completely would, as long as Vale remained a threat circling somewhere beyond the edges of our life.
But underneath that fear, a steadier certainty and clarity had taken root.
I heard Dmitri’s footsteps approaching down the hallway, his call with Roman apparently finished. I turned toward the sound, feeling something settling and certain in my chest. Something I hadn’t fully expected to feel this soon after everything we’d survived to get here.
For the first time since any of this began, I considered the possibility that when I finally told him plainly, I wouldn’t be afraid of his answer at all.