Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Aric
Ayanna is curled on her side near the very edge of the bed, as though even in sleep she’s careful not to cross the invisible line we drew last night.
One arm tucked beneath the pillow, breathing slow and even.
There’s something almost instinctive in the distance she keeps—like some quiet part of her mind still doesn’t trust me enough to relax fully.
Can’t blame her.
Truth is, I barely slept either.
Every shift of her body, every brush of fabric, every quiet breath she took kept pulling my attention back to the same dangerous thought… how close she was. Close enough that if I’d reached out, my hand would’ve found her waist. Her shoulder. The soft line of her jaw.
And the worst part?
I wanted to. Still do.
I exhale sharply, dragging a hand down my face as if I can physically wipe the thoughts away.
Focus.
I slip out of bed carefully, making sure the mattress barely shifts. She doesn’t stir. Good.
After I take a quick cold shower and pull on training clothes, my head is clear again. Controlled again.
This is why I train early.
Pain. Discipline. Exhaustion. They quiet things that shouldn’t be loud.
And lately, Ayanna Almaviri has been very loud in my head.
The gym burns the noise out of my system. The controlled pain feels predictable unlike everything else in my life lately.
By the time I finish, shower again, change into a formal black shirt and pants, and go through a stack of overnight reports in my office, the clock on my desk ticks toward eight, which means my father’s ritual of pretending we’re a normal family instead of a dynasty built on blood and leverage.
Ridiculous.
But until Vidar Vold stops breathing—and given his stubbornness, that might take longer than medical science expects—his rules stand.
I head downstairs. Eero is already there, sprawled in his chair like he owns the place, leather jacket still on despite Ingrid’s constant complaints about table manners.
He gives me a quick nod, something between brotherly and conspiratorial.
Vidar sits at the head of the table in his gray cardigan.
The big clock on the wall ticks loud enough to feel intentional.
We eat in silence for a few minutes before Vidar clears his throat.
His gaze lifts to the clock. Eight ten.
“And where,” he looks at me, “is your wife?” There’s emphasis on the last word. A test more than a question.
“I’m sure she’s coming,” I answer calmly. Because she usually is punctual. More than punctual.
Vidar snorts softly. “You must teach your wife obedience, Aric. She cannot act as she pleases. She’s your wife now.” He taps his cane loudly. “When your mother wouldn’t comply with me in the past, I—”
“And where is she now?” The question cuts across his sentence. “She left,” I hiss, meeting his gaze without blinking. “So don’t instruct me on how to treat my wife. I’m not you.” I stand. “Excuse me.”
Eero’s mouth twitches like he’s trying not to grin. Vidar says nothing, but I feel his eyes on my back as I head for the stairs.
I stop outside the bedroom door, hoping she just overslept.
I push the door open, and see Ayanna sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, knees drawn slightly inward, hands limp in her lap.
Her hair is styled in thick waves, not the natural curls she wakes up with, but carefully done.
Makeup applied… and ruined. Mascara streaked down her cheeks like something inside her broke mid-preparation.
She was getting ready for breakfast. Something happened.
Alarm isn’t an emotion I indulge in often, but seeing her like this makes every instinct in me be on high alert.
“What happened?” I walk toward her. “Are you okay?”
Her head lifts slowly, and the look she gives me stops me mid-step.
Hatred. Pure. Undiluted. Directed straight at me.
I’ve seen her looking at me with fear, anger, resentment. I expect those. But this is different.
She stands, but her voice fractures before the words fully form. “I’m not okay,” she breathes shakily. “My mother called. She told me what you did to Luca.” Her eyes blaze with wrath. “I can’t believe the barbarism of you!”
“I promised you he’d walk away alive, but not without a punishment,” I say calmly. I expected her accusations after she’d found out the punishment.
“He killed himself.”
The words stop everything. For a moment, the room falls silent, broken only by Ayanna’s uneven breaths.
I study her face. Her red, swollen eyes. The way they seem… damaged. And the sight of her coming apart… I hate that sight.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ayanna.” The words feel foreign in my mouth.
She laughs, sharp and bitter. “Don’t give me that crap. You would’ve killed him anyway, wouldn’t you?” She cries as she steps closer. “Even if he hadn’t… done this himself. You wouldn’t have spared him after he tried to shoot you. You don’t care about other people’s lives.”
Her hands slam into my chest before I answer.
“I hate this world!” she chokes out. “I hate what you people do!”
I don’t move. Don’t grab her wrists. Don’t stop her. I just let her unload this pain on me, because she needs somewhere to put that grief, and right now I’m the safest target she has.
I’ve stood exactly like this before. Days ago. Chiara’s fists against this same chest, her grief bleeding through my shirt because of a choice I made. Now Ayanna.
Two women, two lives I helped ruin, both of them breaking against me like I’m the wall the world ended on.
Maybe that’s all a man like me ever becomes. The thing people put their fists into when there’s nothing left to hit.
“Ayanna—”
“No,” she snaps, voice breaking completely now. “Don’t. It’s your fault.”
Her fists keep hitting my chest, but slower and weaker. Tears falling freely.
“You’re right,” I admit. “I don’t care about most people. I never have. I’m not a good man, Ayanna. I’ve never claimed to be.”
Her hands linger against my chest, fists uncurling, palms flattening—like the fight bled out of her through her fingertips. She doesn’t step back. Neither do I.
“But I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my family,” I add. “To protect you.”
“I don’t care about this family.” She shrieks it. “And I don’t care about you. I would never have married you if I had a choice.”
That cuts deeper than any punch. The blows I can take all night—skin, bone, bruise, they heal, and I hardly feel them. Her words don’t bruise. They slip past every wall I’ve built and lodge somewhere I’d forgotten was soft. But I show her none of it.
“Please… Just leave. I don’t want to talk to you.” She turns away, still sobbing, and sinks onto the edge of the bed. “We’re only married because we had no other option. Neither of us wanted this.”
True.
Then why do her words hurt in ways broken bones never have?
“You know where to find me if you need anything.”
I leave before she can see the part of me that hates walking away from her like this.
The door closes behind me with a quiet click. Her voice still rings in my ears as I walk down the corridor. Not the accusations—those I expected. Luca’s blood is on my hands whether I want it or not.
It’s the pain. That raw, unfiltered sound she made when she said his name.
I push open the office door and step inside, shutting it behind me without looking back. I lift the decanter, pour a glass of scotch, roll the amber slowly, and watch it climb the crystal.
The funny thing about control is you spend your whole life forging it, tempering it, sharpening it into the one weapon that never fails you—and then one woman falls apart on your bedroom floor, and you understand it was never armor. It was only ever a story you told yourself between bullets.
I don’t regret the decision. Letting Luca walk out alive was already more mercy than he’d earned.
A man who orders a bullet with my name on it, drags my wife into the crosshairs, and turns against The Gods signs his own ending.
But I didn’t end him. Death is a door that closes.
Clean and quick and forgettable. I convinced Nikos to see it the same way.
So I spared Luca’s life for her. But there was always going to be a price.
Kirill had brought me the slug he’d dug out of my shoulder days before—the bullet Luca paid good money to put in me. I set it on the steel tray in front of him and let him look at it a long moment.
The last thing I ever let him look at, because then I took his eyes slow enough that he understood it was a sentence.
He screamed so loud that some of my men flinched.
And before Kirill closed him up, I pressed that bullet into the meat beneath his collarbone.
The mirror of mine, same place, same depth.
And had it stitched beneath the skin. A parting gift before I sent him home to Monsera blind, marked but breathing.
A living reminder. A ruined man walking back through his own gates says more than a corpse ever could.
Still. I didn’t account for this ending.
I set the glass down. The sound cracks through the quiet office. Then silence settles again.
I lean back in the chair, thumb rubbing absently over the ring with the Vold crest.
What bothers me isn’t Luca. It’s the way Ayanna looked at me.
Like I crossed from necessary evil into something she might never forgive, which shouldn’t matter since this is just an arrangement.
Political alliance. Mutual obligation. Except it stopped feeling simple somewhere between taking that bullet for her and watching her cry like she’d lost the air to breathe.
And that irritates me more than anything else, because attachment is a liability. My father drilled that into me early. Love makes men sloppy. Sloppy men die. Or worse—they get someone else killed.
I drag a hand over my face.
She said she hates me.
Good. I’d rather have her hate me and pour herself into that than grieve a man she should’ve long since forgotten.
And I’ll do what I’ve always done. Protect what’s mine. Even if she still insists she isn’t.