Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Ayanna
Aric is behind the desk when I come into his office after breakfast, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a white dressing stark against the forearm where the bullet grazed him last night.
The man who stood at our bedroom window in the early hours with every scar laid bare has vanished.
The mask is back in place. The Viking sits behind the desk instead—the man the world fears, and the one I now know is only half the truth.
“Vidar brought an important topic up during breakfast,” I hesitate, “What are you going to do about Farida?”
He doesn’t look up from the papers in front of him right away. When he does, his face has already arranged itself into the expression I’ve spent weeks learning to read—the flat, patient blankness that means he’s decided something and considers the matter closed.
“She helped lure me into a trap to kill me. She held a knife to your throat.” He sets the pen down. “I’d have thought the answer was obvious.”
“She’s a grieving mother.”
“She’s a threat.”
“She’s broken, Aric.” I step closer to the desk. “She lost her son. Her only child. And yes, what she did was wrong. Terrifying and wrong. But she is not some criminal mastermind sitting at the center of a web. She’s a woman drowning in grief who made a terrible choice.”
“Her grief is not my concern.”
“I know it isn’t.” I match him look for look. “It’s mine.”
“Ayanna—”
“I’ve known her my whole life.” I cut in. “Long before Luca and I were anything, she and my mother were friends. She used to feed me at her table and call me her own. And I keep thinking—if Luca and I had never—”
“Stop.” He shakes his head slightly. “Luca made his own choices. He came to my wedding. He got himself onto my property. He put his hand in with Domenico.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “Whatever happened to him, it was the sum of things he chose.”
I inhale a quiet breath.
“What are you asking me, Ayanna?” He leans back. “Specifically. Say it plainly.”
My eyes flick between his for a moment as though I’m steadying myself.
“I’m asking you not to kill her.”
“She held a blade to your throat.”
“I know.”
“And you want me to let her live.”
“I want you to let me decide what happens to her.”
He studies me like he’s already three moves past whatever I’ll say next and is only waiting to see if I’ll surprise him.
“Hand her to Monserian authorities,” I suggest. “The crown. She attempted the life of a married member of the royal house. There are laws for that. Real ones. She’ll be tried, and she’ll be punished, and she’ll spend what’s left of her life paying for it inside walls instead of bleeding out on your floor.
Justice without you having to be the one who—” I stop for a moment, contemplating my choice of words. “Without more blood on this.”
His eyes dart back and forth between mine for a long moment. “And if I say no?”
A heaved breath escapes me. “Then you say no.”
His brow moves, fractional.
“You hold every card in this house, Aric. We both know it. I can ask, but I can’t make you do anything.
If you decide she dies, she dies, and I’ll live with it.
That’s part of what it means to be married to you.
I knew that when I stopped pretending I wanted out.
I’m not threatening to leave over it. I’m not going to make this a test you pass or fail.
” I catch myself involuntarily moving the ring on my finger, and I stop in an instant.
Take a breath, straighten up. “I’m just asking as your wife.
Hoping you can let me live with something other than another death I might have stopped.
I can’t let her die knowing I could have stopped it and didn’t.
I’d have to carry that, too. And I’m already carrying Luca. ”
For the span of a breath, he says nothing, just watches me as though weighing my words. Then a slow exhale leaves him, and his hand drags wearily down his jaw.
“And if I hand her over, and someone pulls strings in Monsera, and she walks out with no consequences?”
I nod, my lips pressing into a thin line before I speak. “Then I won’t ask you for anything again. I’ll let you do what you decide, and I won’t say a word to stop you.”
He rises, comes around the desk, and stops close enough that his presence eclipses everything else in the room.
“You’re going to be a problem for me,” he mumbles, almost to himself. “You already are.”
“Is that a yes?”
Another exhale, this time sharp. “If she helps me reach the man who reached her, she goes to Monsera when I’m done with her. Tried. Sentenced. Under your laws.” His gaze turns glacial. “If she lies, or refuses, or wastes my time, the deal is off. After that, her fate belongs to me. Are we clear?”
Relief washes over me with such force it almost hurts. “She’ll talk. She wants whoever did this caught more than anyone. She just doesn’t know yet that it isn’t you.”
“Then we’ll find out together how much she actually knows.” He reaches for his phone, then stops, and looks at me with something that isn’t quite exasperation and isn’t quite fondness and lives somewhere in the impossible space between. “The things you talk me into.”
“You talked yourself into it. I just stood here.”
“Mm.” He doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t argue. “Tassilo will arrange the transfer once she’s given me something worth the trade.”
“Thank you.” I mean it with my whole chest. “Aric, truly. Thank you.”
“Don’t.” The business is gone from his face now.
What’s left is harder and more honest. “I’m doing this because she’s a grieving woman who was used, and not the architect of anything.
Not because mercy is something I believe in.
It don’t. I’ve watched mercy get better men than me killed.
This is the last time I extend it, Ayanna. Do you understand?”
I nod. And despite the cold in his voice, it doesn’t frighten me anymore.
I’ve finally understood that the man who walked into that café for me and the one the world fears have always been the same man.
Somewhere between last night and this morning, I’ve stopped wishing for only the parts of him that were easy to love.
I want all of him now. Even the darkness that comes with him.
“I won’t ask again,” I promise. “You have my word.”
He lifts a hand, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and lets his thumb linger against my jaw for a heartbeat.
“Go,” he mutters. “Before I remember I’m supposed to be running an empire and not negotiating with my own wife.”
I can’t help smiling, because for a man who swore he wasn’t capable of love, he’s doing a remarkably poor job of proving it.