Chapter Twenty-Five - Felix #2
We spend another two hours mapping operational details—timelines for account freezes, coordination with port contacts for shipment interception, political pressure campaigns against Sartore-aligned senators.
The strategy is comprehensive, designed to hit Lorenzo from multiple directions simultaneously while maintaining plausible deniability for the most aggressive actions.
By the time Pavel leaves, it’s past midnight and exhaustion is setting in around the edges of focus I’ve maintained since Diana’s abduction.
I gather the files we generated and head back to the estate, aware that sleep won’t come easily despite the physical need for it.
The drive passes in a blur of streetlights and late-night traffic. My mind cycles through contingencies—Sartore responses to expect, council dynamics to manage, the expanding web of violence that Diana’s protection has triggered.
Worth it, I remind myself. Every frozen account, every intercepted shipment, every detained lieutenant—all justified by keeping her safe.
The conviction should feel more solid than it does.
***
The estate is quiet when I arrive, household staff retired for the night, security rotating on schedule. I head upstairs intending to check on Diana before retreating to my office for the work that’s piled up during the past twenty-four hours.
The bedroom is empty, sheets disturbed but no sign of her.
Concern spikes before rational thought catches up. She’s probably in the library or sitting room, somewhere she felt safe enough to move around rather than staying confined to bed.
I find her in my office, asleep at the desk with her head pillowed on her arms. Papers are spread around her—the files I gave her access to weeks ago, cross-referenced with notes in her handwriting that suggest she’s been working while I was at the assembly.
The sight stops me in the doorway.
Diana sits surrounded by evidence of Bratva operations, maps showing shipping routes and shell corporation structures, analysis that connects political donations to maritime logistics in ways Ethan started but never completed.
She’s not just reading these files—she’s actively contributing to the intelligence we’re using to dismantle Sartore operations.
My wife. My partner. The variable that’s transformed from liability to asset to something I don’t have clean terminology for.
I cross the office quietly and crouch beside the desk, studying her sleeping face in the lamplight. The forehead wound is healing cleanly, bruising already fading to yellow-green.
Tension lines her expression even in sleep, stress that won’t fully release despite being back in safe territory.
She’s been working instead of resting, processing trauma through analysis rather than allowing herself to feel it fully.
The impulse is familiar. I’ve done the same thing countless times—buried emotion in operational planning, transformed fear into strategic action, avoided processing until necessity forced it.
Recognizing the pattern in Diana makes me aware of how thoroughly she’s integrated into this world. She’s not the civilian who confronted donors at charity galas anymore. She’s someone who analyzes Bratva intelligence files and contributes insights that shape our tactical approach.
The transformation should feel like corruption—Diana losing innocence to survive proximity to violence and calculation. Instead, it feels like evolution. She’s becoming someone who can navigate this world with agency rather than just enduring it under protection.
Someone who chooses to stay not because she lacks alternatives, but because she’s decided this is where she belongs.
With me.
The thought settles with weight that’s simultaneously grounding and terrifying.
Diana could leave—could disappear into witness protection or relocation programs that would make finding her difficult even with Bratva resources.
She’d be less safe, certainly, but free from the violence and moral compromises that define my existence.
She’s choosing to stay. Choosing partnership over escape. Choosing me despite understanding exactly what that choice entails.
I reach out and brush hair back from her face gently, careful not to wake her. She shifts slightly, murmuring something I don’t catch, then settles again into deeper sleep.
How easily I could lose her. The thought surfaces unbidden, unwelcome. Lorenzo took her once already, proved that no security measures are foolproof when someone’s determined enough.
If he escalates, if he decides killing her is worth the consequences, if any of a dozen scenarios I’m constantly calculating come to fruition—
I could lose her.
The possibility feels impossible to accept despite being statistically inevitable in this world.
People I care about don’t last long when enemies understand their value.
My father taught me that lesson when I was twelve and watching his funeral, understanding that attachment is vulnerability that gets exploited.
I’ve spent decades avoiding that vulnerability through emotional distance and strategic detachment.
Diana obliterated both within weeks of colliding into me in that hallway.
Now everything moves because of her and for her. The war with Sartore, the council maneuvering, the tactical decisions that shape organizational direction—all of it traces back to my refusal to let her become collateral in conflicts that predate her involvement.
The rational part of my brain recognizes this is operationally dangerous. Prioritizing one person’s safety above organizational stability creates exactly the kind of weakness enemies exploit.
The rest of me—the part that watched her sleep in this same position after our wedding night, that mounted a tactical assault to extract her from Sartore custody, that’s currently planning systematic destruction of a rival syndicate because they dared take what’s mine—that part doesn’t care about operational risk.
Diana is worth the vulnerability. Worth the complications. Worth starting wars and alienating allies and making decisions that would have seemed impossible before I decided she was mine to protect.
The conviction settles with finality I can’t question anymore.
I gather the papers spread across the desk carefully, organizing them into stacks she can resume tomorrow. Then I lift Diana from the chair with movements designed not to wake her, carrying her back to the bedroom where exhaustion and safety might let her sleep without nightmares.
She stirs when I settle her onto the mattress, eyes opening briefly.
“Felix?”
“Sleep,” I tell her quietly, pulling the blankets up. “I’m here.”
She reaches for my hand, fingers curling around mine with surprising strength. “The files. I was mapping connections between—”
“Tomorrow.” I brush a kiss across her forehead. “Rest now. We’ll work on it together tomorrow.”
She nods sleepily, already drifting back under. But her grip on my hand doesn’t loosen, anchoring me there beside the bed even after her breathing evens out into proper sleep.
I remain there longer than operational efficiency would justify, watching her rest, aware that everything I’ve built and everything I’m planning to destroy all center round keeping this woman safe.
The war with Sartore is no longer defensive.
It’s methodical dismantling of everyone and everything that threatens what’s mine.
I’ll see it through to whatever end that requires. Even if it costs me everything else.