Chapter 24 — I Choose You, No Contract Required
POV: Gabriel
Three months ago, I believed I had lost everything.
I looked at the rubble of Moretti & Hale, the frozen accounts, my family name being dragged through the mud on national news, and I saw the end. I saw the death of my ego, my identity, and my usefulness.
I was wrong.
I wasn’t seeing the end. I was seeing the foundation being cleared so something far more dangerous could be built in its place.
I adjusted my shirt cuff—not white, but black, custom-made in Milan—and watched the woman seated at the head of the solid oak table in our new office.
We were no longer at Sterling Plaza. That glass building was an aquarium for fish that wanted to be seen.
Our new space was in a discreet red-brick townhouse in Ashford’s historic district.
No sign on the door. No receptionist in the lobby.
Just a military-grade security system and a client list that paid in cryptocurrency and state secrets.
Elena was speaking.
She alternated between fluent Russian and cutting English, dismantling the arguments of the man across from her with the precision of a surgeon removing a tumor without anesthesia.
The man was Alexei Volkov, an energy-sector oligarch who had “lost” three hundred million dollars in a botched deal with Mexican cartels. He came to us because the police weren’t an option and the banks wouldn’t touch him.
He came to ask for help. But in the last twenty minutes, Elena had made him understand he wasn’t here to hire a service. He was here to beg for salvation.
“Nyet,” Elena said, her voice soft but with that steel edge I had learned to adore and fear. “You haven’t understood our fee structure, Mr. Volkov. We don’t want a percentage of what we recover. We want thirty percent upfront on the total asset value.”
Volkov laughed nervously. He was a big man, used to intimidating others, but he was shrinking in his chair.
“That’s extortion, Miss Walsh.”
“No,” she corrected, leaning forward. The light from the crystal chandelier reflected off the black diamond ring I had placed on her finger last week.
It wasn’t an engagement ring. It was a collar.
And she wore it like brass knuckles. “Extortion is what your Mexican ‘partners’ will do to your family if we don’t intervene in the next twelve hours.
What we’re offering is risk management. And my price reflects the fact that I’m the only person in this room who knows how to talk to them without starting a war. ”
Volkov looked at me, seeking a male ally, seeking the “boss.”
“Mr. Moretti... your associate is being unreasonable.”
I didn’t move from my position, leaning against the bookshelf at the back of the room, in the shadows.
“She’s not my associate, Alexei,” I replied, my voice low and disinterested. “She’s the majority partner. If she says thirty percent, it’s thirty percent. Or you can try negotiating with the cartel yourself. I hear they use pliers instead of contracts.”
Volkov paled. He looked back at Elena. At the brown eyes that had already seen things worse than his greed.
“Fine,” he whispered. “Thirty percent.”
Elena didn’t smile. She just pushed the tablet toward him.
“The transfer must be made now. When the blockchain confirms, I’ll make the call.”
Volkov typed the password with trembling fingers.
A minute later, the tablet beeped.
Elena checked the screen. Satisfied, she stood up.
“It was a pleasure doing business, Mr. Volkov. The exit is the same as the entrance.”
The man left the room as if fleeing a fire.
The heavy door closed with a silent click.
We were alone.
The office smelled of old leather, digital money, and her perfume—lavender, but now with a darker, muskier base note. The scent of authority.
Elena exhaled and spun her chair to face me.
“He was sweating so much I think he stained the leather,” she commented, spinning the pen between her fingers.
I walked toward her.
“He was afraid.”
“He should be.”
I stopped beside her chair and looked down at her. She wore a structured black dress that left her neck exposed. The old mark had completely disappeared, but I knew exactly where it had been. And I knew that tonight, I would make another one in the same place.
“You were ruthless,” I murmured, touching her chin, tilting her face up.
“I learned from the best.” She smiled, and that smile was the most dangerous thing I owned.
“No,” I corrected. “You surpassed the master. I would have accepted twenty-five percent.”
She laughed, standing up and wrapping her arms around my neck. Her body pressed against mine—familiar, warm, essential.
“That’s why I handle the negotiations now, Gabriel. You’ve gone soft.”
“Soft?” I arched an eyebrow, sliding my hands to her waist and squeezing possessively. “You want to test that theory? Here? Now?”
Her eyes darkened. Her pupils dilated, swallowing the iris. The immediate response I provoked in her—and she in me—hadn’t diminished with time. If anything, it had become a Pavlovian reflex.
“We have a meeting with the contact in Zurich in an hour,” she reminded me, her voice growing husky. “About transferring my mother to the new wing.”
“Zurich can wait.”
“Gabriel...”
I kissed her, cutting off any protest.
It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It never was. Our kisses still carried the taste of that first confrontation, that first violence. They were the kisses of survivors who needed constant reminders that they were alive.
I lifted her and set her on the oak desk, pushing the three-thousand-dollar tablet aside like it was trash.
I stood between her legs, my hands sliding up her thighs, pushing her dress higher.
“Do you remember the contract?” I asked against her mouth. “That first ridiculous contract I made you sign?”
“I remember,” she gasped, her hands going to my belt. “Clause 4. Absolute confidentiality.”
“I tore up that contract.”
“I know.”
“But there’s a new one.” I stopped her hands, holding her wrists, pinning them against her chest. “One that isn’t written on paper.”
Elena looked at me. Defiance and submission danced in her eyes, perfectly balanced.
“And what are the terms, Dr. Moretti?”
“The terms are simple.” I kissed her wrist, feeling her racing pulse. “You don’t run. You don’t hide. You accept that your place is here, in the dark, with me. And in return...”
“In return?”
“In return, I burn the whole world down if anyone tries to touch you. Including myself.”
She let out a shaky breath.
“That’s not a contract, Gabriel. That’s a sentence.”
“Do you accept?”
She freed herself from my grip, but not to push me away. She held my face with both hands, looking deep into my soul, seeing all the flaws, all the crimes, all the rot I carried.
And she didn’t blink.
“I don’t need a contract to stay with you,” she whispered. “I choose you. I choose your sickness. I choose your chaos. Every day.”
Her declaration was more powerful than any legal document I’d ever drafted.
I pulled her to me, burying my face in her neck, biting the soft skin, marking her again, claiming her again.
We weren’t heroes. There was no redemption for us. The money flowing into our account came from dark places. The people we helped were criminals. The life we led was an affront to public morality.
But as I entered her there, on the desk of the office we’d built on the ashes of my past and her trauma, I knew I wouldn’t trade this for anything.
Richard Hale was rotting in a cell, blind in one eye and mute with fear. Thomas was living a gray life in the desert. The world out there kept spinning in its hypocrisy.
But in here... in here, we had the truth.
We were two monsters who had learned to love each other’s darkness.
And that, in the end, was the only freedom that mattered.
“Mine,” I growled in her ear, feeling her come undone in my arms.
“Yours,” she answered, her voice broken with pleasure and certainty. “Always.”
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t need to check the door lock.
Because I knew that, this time, chaos didn’t want in.
Chaos was already home.