Chapter 14
Fourteen
Kon
I've been shot, stabbed, beaten, and left for dead in a Moscow gutter with snow filling my mouth and blood freezing in my hair.
None of it hurt as much as the sound of her crying through a door I wasn't allowed to open.
I sat outside her room all night. My back against the wood, the concrete cold beneath me, the hallway dark except for the thin line of light seeping under her door.
I listened to her sob until the sobs became hiccups, until the hiccups became silence, until the silence became the worst sound of all because at least crying meant she was still feeling. Silence meant she was going numb.
And then, just as dawn moved in, two words came through the wood. A whisper so quiet I almost missed it. "Thank you, Kon." I pressed my palm flat against the door and held on to those words the way a drowning man holds on to driftwood.
“You’re never alone, little flame. Never.”
I knew this was coming. From the moment I decided to keep her, the truth was a timer I couldn't see but always heard ticking. I told myself I'd find the right moment. The right words. The right way to hand her the worst truths of her life without shattering the fragile thing growing between us.
The right moment never came. And now the timer has hit zero.
Morning light spills through the hallway windows, casting long rectangles of gold across the concrete.
My legs are stiff from sitting all night.
My back aches where the door frame pressed into my spine.
I haven't slept. Haven't moved. Fuck, I haven't done anything except breathe and wait and hate myself with a thoroughness that borders on art.
Her door opens. Fuck me. She looks gutted.
Hollowed out. The blue eyes that usually blaze with challenge and curiosity are swollen, red-rimmed, flat with the particular exhaustion of a woman who has cried herself empty.
Her skin is pale beneath the freckles. Her dark hair tangles around her shoulders, uncombed, unwashed.
She's still wearing my t-shirt, the collar stretched and damp from tears.
The folder is clutched against her chest. Her knuckles are white around the edges.
She finds me standing in the hallway, my back against the wall beside her door, arms crossed, jaw tight with a night's worth of silence and regret. My hair hangs loose around my face. Haven't moved further than arm's reach from her door since she locked it.
Our eyes meet. Hers swollen and raw. Mine burning from hours of staring at nothing.
She walks past me toward the kitchen without a word. The sleeve of my t-shirt brushes my arm as she passes, and the brief contact sends something sharp through my ribs.
I quietly follow, giving her space. I observe the rigid line of her spine, the careful way she places each foot, the controlled movements of a woman holding herself together through sheer force of will.
She pours coffee. My gaze drops to her steady hands. That scares me more than tears would. Steady hands on a shattered woman mean the grief has calcified into a decision, and I don't yet know what she's decided.
She sits at the kitchen table. Sets the folder in front of her. Wraps both hands around the mug and stares at me across the surface where we've shared meals and arguments and laughter and one memorable afternoon where I took her against the edge while she was mid-sentence about shipping routes.
"We need to talk." Her voice is flat. Professional. The journalist, not the woman. The armor is back, thicker than it's ever been, and every word comes out polished and cold.
"Da, malyshka."
"Tell me everything." She lifts the mug, takes a slow sip, sets it down with careful precision.
"And start from the beginning. No more holding back.
Not ever again. Since you know everything there is about me, I think it is fair I know everything about you.
But tell me first about how you got a hold of all this. " She taps the folder.
“I agree.”
"Luca's network has been tracking the Malone operation for months.
After Enzo Marchetti was taken down, Seamus saw a vacuum and started pushing into our territory.
We've been building a case against him ever since.
Shipping routes, shell companies, trafficking connections.
Every family member mapped and profiled.
" I keep my voice level, my hands flat on the table, giving her the respect of steady eye contact even when her gaze cuts through me. "Including you."
"So you knew about me before the auction."
"I knew Declan Malone had a daughter. A journalist. I knew your name and your face.
" I hold her gaze. "What I didn't know was that you were investigating your own family from the inside.
Or that Seamus was planning to sell you.
That didn't come to light until the night you walked into Scarlet Thorn and your friend ended up bleeding in our alley. "
"And then you found my wish."
"And then I found your wish. And everything changed.
" I don't soften what comes next. She deserves honesty, especially when it's ugly.
"Your wish confirmed you wanted out. You were willing to trade secrets for freedom.
Seamus had already arranged the auction through Society 69.
By the time we traced your location, you were already there. "
"So you bought me." Her voice doesn't waver. Her eyes don't blink.
"It was the only way." My fingers press harder against the table. "I told myself it was strategy. Intel extraction. Protection of a valuable asset."
"Was it?"
She asks the question with her chin lifted, her blue eyes pinned on mine, but the muscle in her jaw twitches and her fingers tighten around the coffee mug hard enough to whiten her knuckles. She wants the truth and she's bracing for it to hurt.
The question fills the space between us. The kitchen is quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic beyond the walls. Morning light catches the steam rising from her coffee, curling between us in thin wisps.
"At first." I hold her gaze. I don't look away. "That first night, in the car. You looked at me with those blue eyes and I could read exactly what you were thinking: here's another man trying to own me. And I thought, you're right. That's exactly what I'm doing."
"What changed?"
"You opened your mouth and didn't stop talking."
A ghost of an expression flickers across her face. The faintest ripple in the ice.
"You asked questions no one asks me. You pushed buttons no one pushes. You looked at my garden and went quiet for three seconds and then started demanding to know about the roses. It didn’t take me long to realize you asked questions because you cared.
" I shake my head, the memory settling warm in my chest despite everything.
"I've terrified men who run empires and you made fun of my cooking. "
"It wasn't an insult. The eggs were actually good."
"I know. That's why it worked." I pause.
Gather myself. The next words are harder, pulled from a place I've kept locked for decades.
"You stopped being an asset somewhere around the second day.
You became someone I wanted to know. And simply wanted.
But not for information or some strategy. Just wanted."
I watch her absorb this information. Her fingers tighten and loosen on the mug.
"And my mother?" Her voice cracks wide open on the word. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn’t realize you didn't know, little flame." My gut churns and knots until I feel sick to my stomach. "About your mother or your grandmother, I assume. Believe me when I say I had no idea you didn’t know."
"No one ever told me." Her jaw trembles, the muscles fighting to hold steady and losing.
"Not my father. Not my uncle. Not a single person cared enough to answer my questions.
I had to piece everything together on my own and well, I was dead wrong about everything.
" Her eyes hold mine and the devastation in them guts me.
"I thought you knew. At least some of it." My voice is raw. Honest. No defense behind it. "You investigated your family and you told me your mother was killed by trusting the wrong man. I assumed you understood what that meant."
"I thought it meant she died of a broken heart because my father didn't love her enough and put the family needs before her." The tears fall now, cutting clean tracks down her cheeks. "I didn't know Seamus systematically destroyed her. I didn't know my father sanctioned it."
She pauses and inhales slowly, her chest shaking. It breaks my fucking heart in two not to be able to reach out and hold her, but I know she needs her space.
For now.
"I kept reading after you sat down outside my door." She wipes her cheek with the back of her hand, the gesture rough, impatient with her own tears.
"The autopsy report says natural causes. Cardiac event in her sleep." Her jaw sets, the journalist surfacing through the grief. "But the toxicology panel Luca dug up tells a different story. Sleeping pills. Enough to stop her heart. The same medication Seamus had been controlling for months."
Her voice drops to a whisper.
"Did he give her enough to kill her, or did she take them herself because he made living unbearable? Either way, my uncle murdered my mother. And my father signed off on covering it up."
The words hang in the kitchen between us. The coffee grows cold. The morning light feels obscene, too bright, too warm for the truth filling this room.
"I should have given you that file the second you walked through my door."
The words taste like sand over my tongue. "And I was selfish enough to want more time before it destroyed what we were building."
"That wasn't your choice to make."
"No. It wasn't." I hold her gaze without flinching. "I'm sorry, Onyx."