Chapter 27
Elena
Matteo's hand had barely slipped inside his coat when Feodor's gun went off first.
The bullet slammed into his shoulder and threw him back into the van. Every muzzle in the warehouse flashed at once. Crates exploded. Glass rained down like hail.
I still had Isabella's wrist pinned.
She suddenly tucked a knee and drove it hard into my gut.
Instinct took over. I twisted, shielding my belly. That split second of loosened grip was all she needed. Isabella sprang up off the concrete, still freakishly fast.
She dove for the gun that had slid under the crates, got her fingers around the grip—
And turned.
The barrel pointed straight at me.
Kiryan saw it before I did.
"Elena!"
Isabella squeezed the trigger.
I only saw the muzzle flare white—then Kiryan crashed into my line of sight. He lunged from behind an overturned table, hooked an arm around my shoulders, and hauled me into him, crushing me to his chest.
The shot detonated beside my ear.
His body jolted.
Something warm splashed across the back of my hand.
He still held me.
After he got hit, the first thing he did wasn't reach for the wound. He shifted, turning his body until he'd put all of himself between me and her.
Another shot cracked. Isabella went down backward. The gun bounced off the concrete and someone rushing in kicked it away.
I couldn't see her anymore.
Kiryan's weight on me kept getting heavier.
"Kiryan?"
He didn't answer.
I braced his shoulder. His face was inches from mine, that faint scar along his jaw sharp under the ugly warehouse lighting. His lips had started to lose their color. His breaths came short, brushing my forehead.
"Look at me." My voice shook so hard it didn't sound like mine. "Kiryan. Look at me."
"Are you..." He forced his eyes open. "Are you hurt?"
"No."
His gaze dropped.
"The baby?"
"No. We're both fine."
It was like he finally let himself exhale. His lashes fell.
"Good."
"It's not good." I pressed my hand to the blood surging from behind his left shoulder. "You're bleeding."
It soaked through his shirt and suit fast. My palm turned sticky and burning hot. The harder I pressed, the more the blood shoved through my fingers like it was fighting me.
My lungs clenched like a fist had grabbed them. I couldn't pull in air.
The firefight hadn't stopped. Bullets tore into metal shelving, the shriek of impacts coming from every direction. Feodor's men closed around us, bodies and guns sealing off every angle.
Kiryan stayed curled over me like a shield—without even holding a weapon.
He'd lived longer than me. He'd seen enough betrayal and death to stay ice-calm in front of a gun. But the second Isabella aimed at me, he hadn't measured distance. He hadn't waited for a safer opening.
He'd just moved.
"Feodor!"
My throat nearly ripped.
Feodor dropped to his knees beside us and yanked Kiryan's coat open to check the wound.
"Stretcher!" he roared over his shoulder. "Get a doctor in here. Now!"
On the other side, Matteo fired toward the exit. He barely took two steps before the return fire drove him back. A few black-clad figures piled on him at once. A tight burst of gunfire went on for seconds—
Then everything went dead quiet.
That war was only a few yards away, and it still felt like it belonged to another world.
Mine had narrowed to the heat draining out beneath my palm.
Kiryan suddenly caught my wrist.
His grip was weak.
"Don't cry."
It wasn't until he said it that I realized tears had been dropping onto his face.
"Shut up." I bent over him, my forehead almost touching his. "Save your strength."
His mouth twitched, like he almost smiled.
Medics charged in with a stretcher and lifted him out of my arms. I clung to his hand, refusing to let go, until Feodor told me the doctors had to stop the bleeding. Only then did I stumble back.
His fingers slid out of my palm.
My body went hollow.
I ran after the stretcher. Shattered glass, blood, and fallen bodies blurred past on both sides. Matteo lay by the van. Isabella lay farther away, motionless.
The ambulance doors slammed shut in my face. Feodor grabbed my arm and shoved me toward the car beside it.
"Ma'am, you can't get in the ambulance."
"I'm going with him."
"The doctors need space." His voice stayed steady; only his clenched jaw gave him away. "Our car follows. You get to the OR faster this way."
I tried to argue, but I couldn't even stand straight.
Feodor draped his coat over my shoulders. The fabric brushed my hands, and I finally saw it—blood from my wrist to my fingertips.
Kiryan's blood.
My stomach seized. I doubled over, but my hands still wouldn't leave my belly.
"Breathe." Feodor held my shoulders. "For the baby."
In.
Out.
The car tore out of the warehouse. I stared at the flashing emergency lights ahead and prayed—first time in my life—to whatever god might be listening.
Don't take him.
I hadn't forgiven him yet.
I still had too much I hadn't said.
And worse—only when I might lose him did I finally admit it: even after he'd torn me apart, I'd never really stopped loving him.
The surgical light stayed on for six hours.
The doctor tried to examine me first. I refused twice. The third time, Olga cupped my face and forced me to look at her.
"You standing here doesn't help him on that table," she said, eyes red, voice hard as steel. "Make sure the baby is okay. That is the first thing Kiryan will ask when he wakes up."
She was right.
It made me want to cry even more.
The baby hadn't been hurt. My blood pressure ran high, so they wanted to monitor me. The second the doctor finished talking, I went straight back outside the OR.
Olga sat beside me, praying under her breath. Feodor stood at the end of the hall on the phone, blood smeared on his shirt cuff.
After midnight, he walked up to me.
"Matteo died. Isabella didn't make it either." He paused. "The warehouse got cleaned out. That agreement has no force. No one takes over Morozov's routes because of it."
I stared at my hands—washed over and over, but with pale red still trapped under my nails.
"Why did he go that far?"
Feodor went quiet for a beat.
"Routes can be taken back," he said. "But he knew there isn't another you."
My nose stung hard.
When the OR doors finally opened, I shot up from the chair.
The news came faster than I'd braced for.
"The bullet entered from the back of his left shoulder, broke a rib, and narrowly missed the lung. He lost a lot of blood. He got lucky—his heart and major vessels weren't hit. Surgery was successful, but the next twenty-four hours remain critical."
Lucky.
That word landed like a sick joke.
But Kiryan was alive.
Twenty-four hours turned into forty-eight.
Then the third day.
Kiryan still didn't wake up.
During the day, Olga practically force-fed me for the baby. At night, I stayed by his bed and listened to the monitor keep proving he was still here.
Without the suit and the orders, Kiryan didn't look so untouchable.
His face stayed bloodless and pale. Dark brown hair fell across his forehead, silver threaded at the temples.
The old scar on his jaw, the calluses on his hands, the ink peeking from his chest—everything about him screamed that he'd survived more violence than most men ever saw.
He understood betrayal better than I did.
And because of that, he wore suspicion like armor—so long it cut anyone who tried to love him.
I held his hand.
The tenderness hadn't been fake. The cruelty hadn't disappeared because of it, either.
Love didn't erase his sins.
But regret shouldn't get erased just because it showed up late.
Before dawn on the fourth day, rain started tapping the window.
"Wake up," I whispered to the man in the bed. "I don't want our kid growing up without his dad."
His finger moved.
I froze.
Then his thumb slowly brushed the side of my finger.
"Doctor!"
I jumped up so fast the chair flipped backward.
Kiryan frowned, like my voice had pissed him off. His lashes fluttered a few times, then he opened his eyes.
Those deep gray eyes looked dulled, not sharp the way they usually were—yet they still found me like a lock finding its key.
"Elena."
My throat clogged.
He stared at me for a few seconds, then his gaze dropped to my belly.
"The baby?"
"Fine. I'm fine too." I hit the call button, and tears spilled anyway.
His mouth curved, barely there.
The doctor and nurses rushed in. I stood off to the side while they checked his pupils, blood pressure, and the wound. Kiryan kept frowning, clearly hating not being in control, but he didn't try to force himself upright.
The life he'd lived made him good at swallowing pain. It also taught him when to listen.
When the room finally settled again, he held a hand out to me.
Not an order.
Just his palm up, waiting for me to choose.
I put my hand in his.
His fingers closed instantly, gentle, like he was afraid I'd change my mind.
"The warehouse?"
"It is over. Matteo and Isabella are both dead."
Something dark passed through his eyes, like he'd watched a door that had haunted us too long finally slam shut.
"You saw her shoot?" I asked.
"I saw it."
"So you ran in."
"I did."
"You could have died."
"I knew."
Heat flared in my chest all over again.
"You always do that. You decide, and everyone else just has to live with it."
He didn't argue.
"I'm sorry."
Hearing that from Kiryan hit me harder than any gunshot.
"I don't regret taking that bullet," he said, watching me. "But making you watch me fall—making you carry that fear—I made the choice for you again. I owe you an apology."
My breath stuttered.
That was the change.
Not kneeling. Not buying my paintings. Not throwing his whole organization onto a negotiation table.
He finally understood protection and control weren't the same thing.
"I love you," he said.
I shut my eyes for a second.
I'd waited too long for those words. But old wounds didn't vanish because someone said love. They stayed under my skin, reminding me how he'd doubted me, humiliated me, left me.
Kiryan seemed to read the silence.
"I'm not asking you to say it back. I'm not asking you to forgive me right now." His thumb stroked the back of my hand, slow. "I just owe you the truth."
"Then say it."
He went quiet, like he was lining up every charge in a confession he couldn't afford to skip.
"I thought I loved Isabella. More accurately, I loved what she showed me. She knew I was afraid of betrayal, so she built herself into someone I wouldn't question."
I didn't interrupt.
"Before my mother died, my father's mistress forced her out. My father stood there like my mother was the one who didn't belong." His jaw tightened. "Then you showed up in my room, Isabella left again, and I shoved you into that woman's place."
His fingers tightened in my palm.
"I decided you were guilty first. Because admitting I'd been wrong about Isabella meant admitting I'd been just as stupid as my father."
"So you punished me even though I hadn't done a damn thing."
"I did."
"Even when you started to know me."
His eyes darkened.
"Especially then. The way you looked when you painted.
The way you took care of Olga. The way you went out in the rain just to get your supplies back...
You were nothing like what she described.
The closer I got to you, the clearer it got that I was wrong—and the harder I hurt you.
Because admitting I cared about you was harder than hating you. "
The answer was brutal. It was also honest.
"The video was her setup. The signature on the divorce papers was forged. The medical report was real, but the baby wasn't mine." He paused. "After I confirmed it, I should have told you immediately. But I still tried to bring you back first."
The air in the room felt like it got yanked out.
"Then what do you want?"
"A chance to prove I can love you—not own you."
"And if I don't give it to you?"
His throat bobbed.
"I accept it."
The old Kiryan would've locked doors, grabbed my wrist, used husband and Pakhan like a badge that let him decide everything. Now he could barely lift his arm, and he still handed me the thing he feared losing most.
He finally carried what he'd done.
I stood and leaned over him.
Kiryan's breath caught.
"What are you doing?"
"Giving a stubborn patient an answer."
"The doctor said I can't handle stress."
"Then you'd better hold on."
I kissed him.
Soft. Quick. Barely there. But his hand slid to the back of my neck and held me. Not hard—just warm enough to make my spine light up.
He didn't deepen it.
He waited.
I closed my eyes and leaned in again, choosing it.
His breathing turned heavier. That familiar pressure woke up in him—but he kept it leashed, tight in his own hands. He brushed my lips slowly, like he was testing a boundary I'd finally allowed him to cross.
The monitor suddenly sped up.
I pulled back immediately.
Kiryan shut his eyes. "Fuck."
"The doctor warned you."
"Not my fault."
"Whose is it, then?"
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
"Yours."
My face went hot.
Great. Not even an hour awake and he'd already regained the ability to piss me off.
I tucked the blanket back up around him.
"That kiss doesn't erase what happened. Trust doesn't come back overnight."
"I know."
His eyes drifted shut, and his chest sank with a long exhale.
I squeezed his hand.
"But forgiveness isn't forgetting. We take it one step at a time."
"Okay."
He pulled my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles—careful, almost formal, like he didn't know how to do gentle without concentrating.
Outside, the rain eased.
We weren't going back.
Thank God.
The past version of us wasn't worth returning to.
If there was an after, it only started from the rubble.
Kiryan's thumb kept stroking the back of my hand, slow.
"Elena."
"What?"
"When I can stand again, I want to ask you something."
His tone was too calm. It made my skin prickle.
"You can't ask now?"
"If I ask now, you'll say I am milking the injury for sympathy."
"You are."
The corner of his mouth lifted.
That was the look Pakhan wore right before a negotiation.
"Then I wait until I can stand on my own."
His fingers tightened, not letting me pull away.
My heart slammed once, heavy.