Chapter Twenty-Seven
Valentina
I spent the entire evening preparing something I’d never actually done before.
It was not an event, not a work shift, and certainly not anything structured or professional in the way most of my life had been organized around for years. This was something personal and deliberate. Something built entirely around the two of us rather than around danger or strategy.
I arranged a quiet dinner on one of the penthouse terraces, the lights dimmed low and soft against the glittering skyline, candles instead of the usual bright, functional lighting Dmitri’s staff kept throughout the rest of the apartment.
I sent security further back than usual, close enough to respond if anything actually required it but far enough that the terrace felt like it belonged entirely to the two of us rather than to the watchful presence that usually surrounded us.
I’d asked Nadia for help with the food when she arrived earlier today, something simple rather than elaborate, and she’d smiled at me in a way that suggested she understood exactly what I was actually trying to build tonight.
“He works too hard to notice these small things most nights,” Nadia said, helping me arrange the candles along the terrace railing. “It’s good what you’re doing. He needs a reason to look up from all of it every once in a while.”
“I hope it comes across the way I mean it to.”
“It will. Men like Dmitri notice effort, even when they don’t always know how to ask for it directly.” She squeezed my arm gently before retreating inside, leaving me alone with the quiet hum of the city and the nervous energy still building in my chest.
When Dmitri arrived, still dressed from whatever final preparations had occupied his afternoon, he paused at the terrace entrance for a long moment, something shifting behind his expression as he took in the candlelight.
“This is different,” he said, something careful in his voice.
“It is.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No.” I managed a small laugh despite the nervous flutter sitting low in my stomach. “Just sit down. Please.”
He crossed the terrace slowly, coming to place a kiss on my temple before settling into the chair across from me. He studied my face with obvious attentiveness, like he was searching for what was beneath the surface of the whole arrangement.
We ate for a while in easy, gentle conversation, drifting through small, ordinary things.
He told me a story about Alexei’s disastrous attempt at cooking during their younger years, mentioning something about their mother’s garden that he mentioned almost accidentally before catching himself and moving past it quickly.
He seemed more relaxed than I’d seen him in weeks, the weight of tomorrow’s plan against Vale—which I was intentionally holding back from discussing now—not yet fully settled over his shoulders the way I suspected it would be by morning.
“Tell me more about your mother,” I said, catching the thread he’d nearly let slip past. “You rarely mention her.”
“She died when I was fourteen. Cancer, slow and drawn out in a way that gave everyone plenty of time to prepare and none of us actually did. She kept a garden behind the old estate, roses mostly, though she tried everything at some point. It was the one part of that house that never felt like it belonged to my father’s business. ”
“Do you still visit it?”
“The garden’s gone now, replaced by something more practical years ago. I think about it sometimes anyway. She was the only person in that house who ever treated gentleness like it wasn’t a weakness.”
“I’m sorry. About your mother.”
“It was a long time ago.” He said it plainly, without inviting further sympathy, though something in his expression suggested the loss still carried weight even decades later. “I don’t talk about her often. I’m not entirely sure why I brought her up tonight, of all nights.”
“Maybe because tonight feels different. Safer, somehow, to say things you don’t usually let yourself say.”
“Maybe.” He studied me a long moment, something warm in his tired eyes. “You have a way of making that true, actually. More often than you probably realize.”
I let myself enjoy the easy rhythm of ordinary conversation between two people who genuinely liked spending time together.
But underneath the easy conversation, I knew exactly why I’d arranged tonight this way.
I’d been carrying the words since I’d said them out loud to Camila, and that had made it something real that I could no longer pretend was simply a private, manageable feeling. Tonight, I understood I couldn’t wait any longer to say them plainly.
Eventually, I stopped avoiding it.
“I love you,” I said quietly, setting down my fork, meeting his eyes directly.
The words came out steady, with no hesitation left trailing behind them the way there might have been a month earlier. It was a simple truth.
Dmitri went completely still.
For a long moment, he simply looked at me. I felt my pulse climb despite every effort to stay composed, a familiar fear that saying something this true out loud might somehow make it fragile creeping up on me.
“I love you too.”
The simplicity of it landed harder than anything more elaborate could have managed.
I exhaled slowly, like I was finally taking a breath I didn’t realize I was unsure of.
“I’ve wanted to say that properly for weeks,” I admitted. “Not in the middle of a crisis, not right before something terrible happened. Just say it, plainly, and actually let it exist without immediate danger interrupting the moment.”
“I understand exactly what you mean.” He reached across the table, taking my hand, his thumb tracing slow, absent patterns against my knuckles.
“For what it’s worth, I’ve felt it for longer than I said it out loud the first time.
I just didn’t trust myself to say something that significant without the world immediately testing whether I meant it. ”
“And now?”
“Now I’ve said it.” He studied me with an intensity that made my breath catch slightly. “I love you, Val. Completely, and considerably more than I ever expected to feel for anyone, given everything I assumed about myself before you walked into my life.”
I brought his hand to my lips and kissed it, my eyes on his.
“I need to ask you something,” I said, my voice dropping lower.
“Anything.”
“Don’t die.”
The words came out raw, not as a demand but as an unfiltered fear I could no longer keep contained beneath layers of careful composure and forced steadiness. His expression.
He reached for my hand again, holding it firmly, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I will come back to you.”
He didn’t hesitate. He simply said it. And for the first time, I believed the promise wasn’t simply reassurance offered to settle my nerves.
It was intent. A decision he’d already made, regardless of whatever the planned attack actually demanded of him.
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because I have too much waiting for me here to accept any other outcome.” He brought my hand to his lips, pressing a slow kiss against my knuckles, giving me what I just gave him.
“I’ve spent my entire life treating danger as something to survive one encounter at a time.
That changed the moment you became part of my life.
I have a reason now to come back that goes beyond simple survival instinct. I intend to use it.”
“I believe you,” I said quietly. “I don’t know if I’ve ever actually believed a promise like that before, not fully, not without some part of me bracing for it to break. But I believe this one.”
“Good. Hold onto that, regardless of whatever news reaches you before I’m actually home to confirm it myself.”
“Don’t jinx it. That’s not comforting.”
“No,” he admitted, something wry in his voice despite the gravity of the conversation. “It probably isn’t.”
We stayed there together long after the food had gone cold and mostly untouched, neither of us particularly hungry anymore, simply holding onto the moment the way people hold onto something they suspect might be finite.
“Tell me something else,” I said eventually, needing to fill the silence with something. “Something good. Something that has nothing to do with your operation or Vale.”
He considered the request seriously.
“When this is over, properly over, I want to take you somewhere that isn’t connected to any of this.
Somewhere with no history attached to my family’s name, no reason for either of us to look over our shoulder.
Somewhere entirely new, that we get to build memories in together without any of this shadow following us. ”
“Where?”
“Wherever you want. You mentioned wanting to travel somewhere without needing an exit strategy, back on the island. I intend to actually give you that, once Vale’s no longer an issue.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“It will be. I intend to make certain of it.” He squeezed my hand gently. “And the dog. I haven’t forgotten about the dog.”
That startled a genuine laugh out of me, cutting through some of the heaviness that had settled over the evening. “You remembered that.”
“I remember everything you tell me, Val. Especially the parts where you finally let yourself want something small and ordinary for once, instead of talking yourself out of it.”
“I might not want the dog, I told you. But I’m going to hold you to all of it. The travel, all of it.”
“I’m counting on that.”
We sat together a while longer as the candles burned low, the city’s endless glow the only witness to everything we’d finally said plainly to each other after months of circling it through the chaos of surviving impossible things side by side.
Whatever came next, whatever cost the operation against Vale ultimately extracted, I understood, sitting there with his hand wrapped securely around mine, that tonight had given both of us something worth carrying forward regardless of how the rest of this played out.
Love, spoken plainly, without crisis forcing it out of either of us.
A promise, given with genuine intent rather than simple reassurance.
And underneath both of those things, a quiet, steady hope that this would actually end with both of us still standing on the other side of it, finally free to build whatever life we’d started imagining together.
Eventually, we moved inside together, leaving the cold, untouched food behind on the terrace, neither of us willing to let the evening end with anything except each other.
At the doorway, Dmitri paused, glancing back once at the candles still burning low against the darkened skyline, something almost reluctant in the way he lingered there a moment longer than necessary.
“Thank you for tonight,” he said quietly. “For all of it. I don’t think I’ve ever had an evening quite like this one, not once in my entire life.”
“Neither have I, honestly.” I reached for his hand, lacing our fingers together as we stepped back inside. “I wanted us to have this, before whatever you and your brother have planned. Something entirely ours, that whatever happens next can’t take away from us.”
“It can’t,” he said, certainty settling into his voice. “Whatever the operation brings, tonight already happened. Nothing changes that.”
I held onto that thought as we made our way through the quiet penthouse, his arms coming around my shoulders.