Chapter 20 – Roman
We come back from the terrace like we stole the night.
God, the way she moves—how she takes me—still hums through my bones.
I hold her until the ache eases, then take her into the suite and into the rest of the night.
We make love until the world outside fades to nothing but the sound of our bodies and the slow, hot surrender of two people who should not fit together and yet do.
Her voice repeats in my head, soft and dangerous: “Roman, I don’t care about the rules of the Bratva world anymore. I only care that you keep me safe.”
It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. It tastes like victory and threat all at once.
Now she sleeps beneath my hand, hair spilled across the pillow, lashes flat on cheeks that still flutter from the last of our heat. The trust in that sentence—a surrender she never meant to give—settles over me like armor. It demands something of me I can’t refuse.
Outside, the night is quiet; inside, my mind isn’t.
David Chang’s men are regrouping. We’ve hit them a few times since they attacked my estate, and now he’s getting desperate and restless, while his buyers circle like vultures.
Waiting is a luxury I don’t have. If I let him breathe, he’ll come at her again—at us—and I won’t forgive that.
I press a kiss to her forehead, slow and deliberate, tasting the salt of sleep on her skin. “I’ll protect you,” I tell her, and the words aren’t a promise so much as a verdict.
I reach for my phone on the bedside table and call the one person I know who has the flexibility for this kind of hunt: Dimitri. The rest of the brothers have families, schedules, kids, small lives to break for an impromptu strike. Dimitri moves like water—unpredictable, fast, and useful.
He picks up on the fourth ring. A low moan and the faint rustle of sheets leak through the line, then a woman’s soft laugh. “Roman. What’s—” he says, half amusement, half apology.
“What are you doing?” I cut straight to it.
“What do you think?” he answers, voice still groggy with sleep and distraction.
“David Chang’s men are active in New York. I have a lead from my man, Oleg. They’ve moved operations to Texas. I leave in twenty-four hours. I’m shutting him down.” My tone leaves no room for debate.
There’s a beat of silence, then his voice sharpens. “Say that again.”
I repeat it, slower. He swears softly. “Damn. Do you have enough time to plan this?”
“I’ve been planning this forever, honestly. I’m ready. I don’t want to wait around anymore.”
He chuckles. “I’m in. Fuck. Not like I have anything else to do. Have you told the boys?”
“No.”
“You gotta tell them.”
“I will.”
“Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t call me back—I’m having fun.” The line clicks.
I drop the phone on the nightstand and glance at Elara.
She’s still asleep, her face soft, peaceful.
For a moment, the noise in my head quiets.
I should be in my office with Luka right now—mapping routes, checking logistics, ensuring our men are armed and ready to move in twenty-four hours.
But I can’t bring myself to leave her. Not tonight.
She stirs, turning toward me, murmuring something incoherent before pressing her cheek against my chest. The faint scent of her shampoo lingers in the air—sweet, grounding. My arm tightens around her automatically.
“Roman?” she whispers after a few seconds, voice heavy with sleep.
“Hmm?” I kiss her forehead, and her lashes flutter open.
“You’re still awake?”
“Yeah.”
“Is everything okay?”
“When you’re with me, yes.”
Her lips curve into a lazy smile. “You always say that.”
“Because it’s true.”
She yawns softly, tracing circles on my skin with her fingers. “I want to protect you too, you know,” she says, groggy but sincere. “You act like I’m fragile, but maybe I’m stronger than you think.”
I laugh quietly. “Protect me, huh? From what exactly?”
“From yourself.” Her voice is fading, but the words linger, brushing against something deep in me.
I stare down at her, silent. The woman has no idea what she does to me—how her tenderness makes all my walls crumble. I press a kiss to her hair and whisper, “Sleep, Elara.”
She tilts her head up to look at me, her voice barely above a whisper. “Are you going to be here when I wake up?”
I hesitate. It’s a fraction of a second—barely noticeable—but she catches it. Her eyes dim, and she forces a small smile. “Never mind,” she murmurs, turning her face into the pillow.
I don’t answer. The words stick in my throat, heavy and cruel. I stay silent, tracing the curve of her back with my hand until her breathing evens out and she drifts back to sleep.
I stare at her for a long time, memorizing the way the moonlight touches her face, the soft rise and fall of her chest. My jaw tightens. “After the war is over,” I whisper, my voice breaking the stillness, “you’ll always see me when you wake up, Elara. Forgive me for now.”
An hour later, I slip out of bed. The room feels colder without her in my arms. I dress quietly, holstering my weapon, and leave the suite without looking back.
From midnight until morning, I work without pause.
While Luka handles preparations for the trip—coordinating the men, securing transport, and confirming the flight to Texas—I focus on locking down the estate.
Every gate, every guard rotation, every surveillance feed.
If I’m leaving Elara behind, there can’t be a single weakness. Not one.
I move from the security room to the armory, checking ammunition counts, assigning watch shifts, testing communication lines. My body runs on adrenaline and habit; exhaustion doesn’t touch me. Not today.
Every time her name crosses my mind, my resolve sharpens. I hardly catch a minute to sit, but I don’t care. Elara is my priority. Keeping her safe is the only thing that matters.
I eventually tell the boys about my plans to go to Texas and ambush David, but they’re not having it. Especially Adrian and Lukin. They call me on video, faces tight.
Adrian’s the first to lean forward, jaw tight.
“Roman, you don’t just walk into another country and start a war,” he says.
His voice is low and steady—exactly the calm that makes the blow hit harder.
“That’s an international mess. You pull a stunt like that, and we become headline fodder. We can’t afford the attention.”
Lukin doesn’t even bother hiding his impatience. He snaps, “You want to rush in because you’re angry. That’s not strategy, that’s theater. We need time, intel, clean windows. We wait. We pick the moment.”
I let their words hang in the air long enough to polish them into my answer. “Waiting is a recipe for a body count,” I say. “You want me to hold while men knock through my gates and take what’s mine? You want me to wait while they parade a girl—my girl—at an auction and laugh about it? No.”
Adrian shakes his head. “You’re asking us to risk our people, Roman. For vendetta. For pride.”
“For her,” I correct, flat. “Not pride.”
“We get it—David’s rotten, and you’re right to want him found. But Roman, you can’t just bring Dimitri and a handful of shooters across a border. There’s law, there’s fallout. People will die for that headline.”
“People die anyway.” The words come out harder than I meant.
“If we let Chang operate, if we let his brokers keep buying and selling—if we let him think he can sell a woman to settle a debt—then more people die than if I strike him cold and fast. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for another outrage. ”
Lukin’s face goes stony. “You think you’re the only one who feels that? We all feel it. But we live by rules. The Rusnaks have always moved under the radar—kept our shadows thin. You pulling a cross-border war puts the whole family on notice.”
“Then we keep it surgical.” I lay the plan out in the barest terms—no flourishes, no heroics: a small strike team, targeted nodes in Chang’s network, bankers and brokers who move the money, trusted pilots, satellite eyes, off-grid safe houses, extraction windows.
“We hit resources, not people in the street. We burn his ability to pay mercs and brokers. We don’t give the press a scene. ”
Lukin exhales, the fight draining out of him in a grudging way. “You’re a stubborn son of a—” He stops, then nods. “Fine. You get your window. But I want absolute control of the extraction plan. If anything goes sideways, we pull everything and disappear.”
“Agreed.”
With the Pakhan’s go-ahead, the rest of the planning slides into place. Dimitri shows up that evening—hair perfect, grin in place—even though we’re about to drag him into a firefight. Luka has already packed my bag, and it’s in the car trunk. All that’s left is to tell Elara.
She’s in the chair by the suite window, book open on her knee, when I push the door. The second she sees me, she’s up—hands warm as she wraps me in a hug so fierce I almost drop to my knees. She’s never acted this way with me before. Ever!
“I haven’t seen you all day!” she breathes into my chest.
I let her hold me for a beat longer than I should. “I’m sorry, it’s been a very long day,” I say, threading my fingers through her hair. “What are you reading?”
She snorts and pulls back enough to blink at me. “Some silly French novel Vivian insisted I try. It’s boring, but the language is pretty. What about you? Did you eat anything today or just stare at logistics all afternoon?”
“Logistics have their own appetite,” I say, sliding onto the edge of the bed. “I had a sandwich shoved at me earlier. Luka calls it food.” I tilt my head at her. It’s a mundane, silly conversation, but I love it. Her presence softens the day in ways I can’t explain.
She smiles, setting her book aside. “That sounds like something Luka would do. You’ve been working nonstop.”
“It’s part of the job.” I shrug, though my shoulders ache and my mind’s been running battle routes since dawn.
“Why do you look so worried?” she asks, her tone careful but full of concern. She’s too perceptive for her own good.
I hold her gaze for a moment before deciding against lying. “I’m going to Texas.”
Her face tightens. “For what?”
“We got intel that your father’s men are hiding somewhere there.” I exhale. “We’re going to check it out.”
She shoots to her feet so fast the book falls to the floor. “You’re walking into a war?”
“Elara,” I say, forcing my voice steady, “you promised to trust me to handle this. This is me handling it—my way.”
She laughs, brittle and sharp. “Your way gets people killed.”
“Sometimes,” I admit. “But it also ends things.”
“So you’re just going to leave me here alone?”
“Don’t worry,” I say softly. “You’ll be well protected.”
She gasps and strikes my chest. “You think this is about me? It’s about you! I can’t bear the thought of you walking into a war—”
Her voice cracks. For a moment, the anger in her eyes gives way to something raw, terrified.
And that’s when it hits me—she’s not angry because she feels abandoned. She’s angry because she’s scared. For me. Not her safety, not the house, not the guards—me.
Before she can say another word, I catch her face in my hands and kiss her.
It’s not gentle. It’s desperate. An unspoken plea, a promise, a curse. She gasps against my mouth, but she doesn’t pull away. Her fingers clutch the front of my shirt like she’s anchoring herself there, afraid that if she lets go, I’ll disappear.
When I finally pull back, her breath trembles against my lips. “Roman—”
“I’m fighting for you,” I tell her quietly, my thumb brushing her cheek. “Every single thing I do…it’s for you. And I will come back to you, Elara.”
Before she can respond, there’s a knock on the door.
“Roman,” Luka’s voice cuts through. “We have to leave.”
The sound snaps the fragile calm between us. I press one last kiss to her lips—slow, lingering, memorizing her taste like it’s the last thing I’ll ever have of her—then pull away before I change my mind.
She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me, eyes wide and wet, as if trying to brand my face into memory.
All the way down the hall, I battle myself with every step. My mind tells me to move, but my heart screams to turn back. God, it’s so hard to leave her.
By the time I reach the foyer, Dimitri’s buzzing with anticipation.
“I hate to get blood on my coat,” he says with that maddening grin, “but I’m kind of excited about this fight.”
We start toward the front door, but something makes me glance back—like a pull in my chest I can’t ignore.
And there she is.
Elara stands on the step, the soft hallway light catching her hair, her eyes sad and shining. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to. Her silence says everything.
Something inside me snaps. I can’t walk away like this.
I march back to her, closing the distance in three long strides. My hands find her face—warm, trembling beneath my palms—and before I can stop myself, the words tear out of me.
“I love you so much, Elara.”
For a split second, she stares at me, eyes wide. Then she exhales, almost as if it’s a confession she’s been holding forever. “I love you too.”
It hits me like a punch. It’s raw, dizzying, perfect.
I kiss her again, not with desperation this time, but with the kind of certainty that could burn through a war.
When I finally pull back, I rest my forehead against hers. “Wait for me,” I whisper.
Then, because if I stay another second, I won’t be able to leave at all, I turn and walk away.