Chapter 38 Nikolaj
Nikolaj
I wake to silence and the warmth of a now too familiar body, one that’s too dangerous to admit I need. His arm’s thrown across my stomach, heavy and claiming. His leg is tangled with mine like he’s trying to keep me there. Like I’d run.
He knows I wouldn’t. Not anymore.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and I freeze. I already know who it is. I don’t need to look. That sound? That specific vibration pattern? That’s him. That’s my father. And he’s never called this early unless there’s blood involved.
I move to sit up, but Vincenzo tightens his arm around my waist, anchoring me there. His face is buried against my neck, breath warm and lazy like he has no plans of waking up anytime soon. I elbow him lightly, enough to make him grunt.
I curse under my breath, dragging my phone into my hand. Vincenzo shifts beside me, not moving far, but the tension rolls off him in waves.
I swipe to answer, dragging the phone to my ear. “Da.”
The voice on the other end is sharper than the Moscow air in winter. “You missed your check-in.”
I keep my face neutral, tone flat. “I was busy.”
“Too busy to serve your Bratva?”
Behind me, Vincenzo moves again. I feel his body shift closer, his breath against my shoulder now. I try to ignore him. My focus has to be on the man currently weighing my worth. “I’ve been handling things at Vintermoor.”
“You were sent to complete one task,” he spits. “I begin to wonder if you’ve gone soft.”
I clench my teeth, tightening my grip on the phone. “I haven’t gone soft,” I say, forcing my voice to stay even. “I’m gathering intel. Timing is everything.”
“You have one month, Nikolaj. One month, or I send Arseniy back to finish the job you’ve clearly abandoned.”
I nod even though he can’t see me. “Understood.”
My father pauses. And I already know what’s coming next. “Don’t forget why you’re there. Don’t forget your loyalty.”
I close my eyes, breathing hard through my nose. “I won’t,” I force out, voice strained. “You raised me better than that.”
A grunt of approval, and then the line goes dead. I toss the phone onto the nightstand, barely managing to keep from flinging it across the room. And then I drag my hand down my face, trying to remember how to fucking breathe.
I don’t say anything as I lie back and he curls around me. He’s probably trying to figure out when exactly I stopped being his enemy and became his worst mistake.
Because that’s what I am—his mistake, his undoing.
And he’s mine.
His hand slips off my chest, down across my ribs, trailing light over my stomach as he shifts to sit up.
I follow him with my eyes, watch as he stretches, muscles catching in the low light, golden skin marred by bite marks and bruises I left on purpose.
My marks. My claims. He doesn’t try to hide them, and it doesn’t seem like he wants to.
“Where are your cigarettes?” he asks as he reaches for the drawer.
The nightstand is nothing special, just an old oak thing I took from another room and never bothered to replace. I keep almost nothing in it. A pack of cigarettes I don’t smoke anymore, a switchblade, a few painkillers.
And the bullet.
The second he lifts it, I feel like I’ve been punched in the chest. He turns it over slowly in his hand, the light catching the engraved letters in the faint glow from the window.
His voice is quiet when he finally breaks the silence. “You carved my name into this?”
I nod once, throat tight. “Yeah.”
He turns to look at me. Really look at me. “When?”
I sit up slowly, the sheet falling from my hips, baring me to the cold air that I barely register. I feel exposed in a different way now, raw and peeled back, like there’s nowhere left to hide. “The night I carved your door.”
He watches me, waiting, letting me get there on my own.
I run a hand through my hair and exhale hard.
“I got drunk,” I continue. “Which, you know, I never do. But that night… I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
Couldn’t stop seeing you in every hallway, in every breath.
I thought, maybe, if I reminded myself what this was supposed to be—what I was supposed to do—it would make it easier.
It wasn’t meant to be fired. That bullet’s not for you. It never was.”
He stares at me, mouth hard and lips in a thin line. “It has my name on it, Nikolaj.”
I huff out a breath and rub a hand over my face. “But it wasn’t for you to die by. I carved your name into it because if anyone could kill me, it’d be you.”
I see when that statement lands. The flicker in his expression. The way the line between his brows deepens. His fingers close around the bullet like he’s trying to crush it. Or maybe keep his hand from shaking.
“I was sent here to kill you and earn my stars. But from the second I met you, I knew I couldn’t.
You got under my skin faster than I thought anyone could.
Every time I tried to twist the knife, you grabbed it with your fucking teeth and smiled like you liked the taste.
You pushed back and you burned me, and somewhere between trying to ruin you and trying to own you…
” I pause, exhaling hard. “Vincenzo, falling in love with you already doomed me.”
His breath catches, lips parting in disbelief. “Say that again.”
I glance up at him, and shake my head. “I said it once, don’t make me bleed it too.”
His jaw tightens. He turns the bullet over again, and again, like he’s trying to understand how something so small can carry so much weight. His throat works, but no words come out. Then his hand shakes—just once, barely there—but I see it.
He lets out a humorless laugh. “Nikolaj, you haunt me. You’ve been haunting me since the first night you snuck into my room and kissed me like you wanted to set me on fire.
You think I didn’t know it would kill us both?
” He stands abruptly, pacing across the room, hand clenched tight around the bullet.
“I just didn’t think you’d fucking admit it. ”
I rise too, the distance between us unbearable. “And now that I have?”
He spins to face me, eyes wild, lips parted, his hair falling into his face. “Now I don’t know if I want to kiss you or put this bullet where it belongs.”
The silence after that stretches long and thin, pulling tight around us until it hurts.
My heart’s pounding like it wants to claw its way out of my chest. I step closer until I’m right in front of him.
My hand covers his, closing over the bullet.
Our fingers press so tight around it that the metal bites into our skin.
“Then do it,” I whisper. “Either way, it ends with you.”
His breath stutters, breaking in his throat. His free hand snaps up, gripping the back of my neck and his forehead presses to mine, rough, desperate. Then his voice comes out low, shaking with rage and grief all at once.
“You’re my goddamn ruin,” he says. “And I can’t stop wanting you.”
“Stop fighting it,” I growl back, shoving the bullet down on the dresser. Then I pull him against me until there’s no space left to breathe. “Stop pretending this is strategy or control. It’s neither. It’s war—it’s always been war.”
He doesn’t resist. His mouth crashes into mine, brutal and claiming, all teeth and fury and hunger that tastes like blood. The bullet rolls off the dresser and hits the floor with a hollow clink, forgotten for now.
I know this can’t last; we both do. There’s a clock ticking somewhere, even if we pretend not to hear it.
But he’s not thinking about that right now.
I can tell by the way his hands move, slow and worshipful and hungry all at once, like he’s trying to commit every inch of me to memory.
His fingers trace the line of my jaw, skim down the side of my neck, pause over my collarbone where a bruise is just beginning to darken—his bruise. His mark.
He breaks off the kiss and holds me there, forehead pressed to mine, breathing shallow. “You told me you loved me like it was a death sentence,” he whispers.
“It was,” I breathe. “It still is.”
He lets out a breath that sounds more like defeat than relief, and then suddenly, he’s pushing me back onto the mattress and straddling me again. His hands braced on either side of my head, muscles tense, heart racing. His eyes burn into mine, and I let him look. I let him see.
Because if this is a war, then he’s the only one I ever wanted to surrender to.
“I could live in you,” he says against my lips, voice hoarse. “I could bury myself in you and forget the whole fucking world.”
I whisper, still trembling, “Make me forget, too.”
He kisses me again, then reaches for the lube in the drawer. I watch him slick his fingers, watch the way his eyes darken as he settles between my legs before pressing the first digit inside me—slowly, carefully, so different from the last time.
He works me open patiently, curling his fingers, whispering soft nothings against my jaw until I’m panting, until I’m begging. Until the need eclipses everything else.
When he pushes into me, it’s not with violence, it’s with reverence. A slow, thick slide that knocks the breath out of me and fills me at the same time.
He groans low in his throat and grips my hips, burying himself deep and staying there, forehead pressed to mine, breath tangled with mine. I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him closer.
“Move,” I whisper, voice cracking. “Please.”
I lose track of time. Of breath. Of reason.
When I come, it’s silent. Violent. Shattering.
He follows seconds later, whispering my name like it’s the only truth he’s ever known.
We collapse together, sticky and trembling and completely unraveled.
He doesn’t pull out, buried to the hilt, his head resting in the crook of my neck, his breath slowing.
“Don’t make me choose,” he whispers, “between loving you and surviving you.”
I say nothing because that choice has already been made, and we both know who loses. Still, we stay like that, tangled together, our bodies too tired to move, our hearts beating out the same broken rhythm.
“I wish you’d been born somewhere else,” he whispers. “Somewhere we didn’t have to wear someone else’s war like armor.”
I nod, because I can’t speak.
“I wish we were just boys,” he says. “I wish we met at school. Or a train station. Or in line for fucking coffee.”
I kiss his temple. “I’d still fall in love with you.”
He breaks on a quiet sound—half-sob, half-laugh—and holds me tighter. “I’d ruin the world to keep you,” he says, and his voice breaks this time. “But you’re already gone, aren’t you?”
And maybe I am. Maybe I already died the moment I let myself love him.
But I don’t answer.
If I speak now, I’ll say it.
I’ll say yes.
I’ll say I love you.
I’ll say goodbye.
But I don’t want the last thing he hears from me to be a promise I can’t keep, so I hold him instead. And I let myself pretend that this, right here, in the quiet after our bodies stopped moving, with his hands still gripping me and my heart buried somewhere in his chest—that this is our ending.
Because if it has to end, let it end like this—with him saying my name and me not correcting him when he calls it home.
I lie back, let my eyes close… and wait for the sound of a bullet being chambered.