I wake up in our marital bed with my husband’s scent still clinging to the sheets like a curse.
I spent three days running from him, and where did it get me? Right back in his fortress, breathing his carefully regulated oxygen, trapped between Vince’s FBI nightmare and his empty promises to change. A promise I’ve heard so many times I could recite it in my sleep.
Men like him don’t change.
They just find better excuses for their monstrosity.
I stare at the ceiling. The unbearable weight of our broken marriage presses down on my chest. The rage I felt discovering Vince’s plans to murder my father hasn’t disappeared—it’s just been pushed aside by the more immediate threat of federal prison.
Always another fucking crisis to navigate. Always another reason to put off addressing the rot at the core of us.
God, this life is wearing on me in ways I never thought I could handle. I feel myself coming apart at the seams. The only question that remains is whether the pieces of me that are fraying into nothingness are essential or not. Is there a soul beneath all this shit? Does Vince have one?
Or am I a broken, empty shell, just like him?
Downstairs, I find Vince in his study, freshly showered, hand bandaged, dark circles forming crescent moons beneath his eyes. No trace of the raw, bleeding creature from last night. He’s put his armor back on.
“Good morning,” he says, voice careful, neutral. “Coffee?”
“I’m not here to pretend everything is hunky-fucking-dory, Vince.” I remain standing in the doorway, unwilling to enter his domain. “I’m here because federal prison is worse for Sofiya than a father who plots murders behind her mother’s back.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t take the bait. “Carver will be expecting my answer by this afternoon. We need a plan.”
“And what exactly do you propose? Turning rat against my father?” I fold my arms and lean against the wall. “Or spending the next thirty years in prison while I explain to our daughter why Daddy can only see her through bulletproof glass?”
“I thought you’d have an opinion beyond sarcasm,” he says, eyes like blue fire. “Since you were so fucking eager to work with Carver before.”
The air between us vibrates with resentment. We’re poison to each other now, but still breathing the same toxic air.
“Fine,” I say, crossing my arms. “Let’s talk strategy.”
We spend the morning in cold dissection of our options, two surgeons operating on the corpse of our lives. Vince paces while I sit rigid in a chair, neither too close nor too far.
“What if we give Carver something else?” I suggest. “Information on the Solovyovs that’s better than what they already have. Something that makes turning you seem unnecessary.”
“They want me in their pocket. A Bratva pakhan as their personal lapdog.” He stops, running a hand through his hair. “Even if we redirected them now, they’d just come back later with something worse.”
“Then we need leverage. Something on Carver himself.”
Vince’s eyes meet mine, a glint of reluctant admiration cutting through the frost. “Now, you’re thinking like an Akopov.”
“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t fucking romanticize what you’ve turned me into.”
The strategy session continues, one hour bleeding into the next. We dance around each other in this choreography of caution, never getting too close, never touching. The walls of his office seem to shrink. I’m finding it harder and harder to breathe.
By evening, we’ve formed a tentative plan—a dangerous game of partial cooperation and misdirection. Give Carver enough to satisfy him without compromising everything. Without betraying my father.
“It could work,” Vince says uncertainly. It’s the first note of hope in his voice since I returned.
“Or it could get you killed.”
The possibility slices through me with unexpected sharpness. Despite everything, the thought of Vince dead makes me physically ill.
I stand abruptly. “I need space. We’ll finish this later.”
He simply nods.
We retreat to opposite ends of the house. I spend time with Sofiya, desperate for her innocent warmth after a day that left me feeling like I need to scrub myself raw in a hellfire-hot shower. Vince works the phones, doing fuck knows what.
We eat dinner separately. We exist in parallel, two phantoms haunting the same house.
Night falls. I put Sofiya to bed, singing her the usual lullabies even though my voice is tear-stained and ready to falter. She falls asleep clutching a stuffed animal, one that Vince gave her. I want to take it away because it has his fingerprints all over it.
But even in my anger, I can’t bear to separate her from that small piece of him.
I rise and exit. I’m halfway to my—our—bedroom when the piercing wail of Sofiya’s cry slices through the silence. I turn back around instantly, maternal instinct overriding everything else, and run to her.
I round the corner…
… and collide hard with Vince in the hallway.
His body feels like a wall of warm granite against mine. My hands instinctively brace against his chest, feeling his heart thundering beneath my fingertips. He grips my upper arms to steady me, and the sudden, electric contact after days of nothing makes my breath catch painfully.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
He doesn’t let go.
I should push away. I should step back. I should remember every betrayal, every lie, every moment he chose control over honesty.
But his hands are burning through the thin fabric of my shirt, and my treacherous body remembers every single place those hands have touched, every single way they’ve ever made me come apart.
His eyes are blue in the dark. They don’t blink or waver. They just watch. They just wait.
Sofiya’s cries grow more insistent, breaking the spell. We both move toward her door, still too close, still brushing against each other in the narrow hallway.
“Mama!” Sofiya sobs when we enter, her little face red and tear-streaked. “Papa!”
Vince reaches her first, lifting her from the crib with such naked tenderness that I have to look away. It hurts too much to see him be kind.
“Nightmare, solnishka?” he murmurs, pressing his lips to her forehead and humming under his breath.
I stand frozen. Hating him. Wanting him. Hating myself for wanting him.
“Here,” I say at last, reaching for her. “I’ll take her.”
But she just clings that much harder to her father.
The rejection stings. Jealousy coils in my stomach, sharp and petty and deeply unfair. For three days, I’ve been her entire world. Now, Vince is back, and I’m secondary again.
“She missed me,” Vince says by way of explanation. He’s not gloating, just stating a fact that cuts me open anyway.
“Of course she did,” I say. “You’re her father.”
We both work to settle her, moving in the familiar choreography of parents soothing a frightened child. I get her water while Vince rocks her. He holds her while I check for fever. We’re a team again, just for these few minutes, united in purpose if nothing else.
When Sofiya finally quiets, her eyes growing heavy, Vince lowers her back into the crib. We stand side by side, watching her drift into sleep, close enough that I can feel the heat pouring from his body.
“I thought about you every second,” he says suddenly, voice so low it’s barely audible. He doesn’t look at me. “When you were gone. It was like someone had cut off my oxygen.”
I don’t look at him, either. Can’t. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” His fingers brush mine in the darkness, a touch so light it could be accidental. But nothing between us is ever accidental. “Making it harder?”
The double meaning isn’t lost on me. Neither is the charge that rushes through my body at his touch—a violent reminder that, despite whatever is broken between us, the physical connection remains brutally intact.
“You know what would make this easier?” I turn to face him, anger flaring hot again. “If you’d ever once put me first. If you’d ever trusted me with the truth instead of making unilateral decisions about our lives.”
“You want the truth?” His eyes are bright in the shadows. “The truth is I’m fucking terrified, Rowan. I’m terrified of prison. I’m terrified of dying with a fed’s wire wrapped around my throat like a noose. I’m terrified of losing you and Sofiya.” His hand comes up to my face, not quite touching, just hovering a millimeter away. “But what terrifies me most is that even after everything, even after you took my daughter and ran, I still want you so badly I can taste it.”
His speech sizzles between us in the darkened nursery. My body betrays me, leaning infinitesimally closer to his, craving the contact my mind rejects.
“Wanting isn’t enough,” I whisper, even as heat pools low in my belly. “It never has been.”
“Then tell me what is.” His eyes bore into mine, desperate and demanding. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll give it to you. Whatever it is. Whatever it costs.”
“I need a husband who sees me as a partner, not a possession. I need a father for my daughter who solves problems with his mind, not his trigger finger.” I step away from him, the distance necessary for survival. “Mostly, I need to know that, if I stay, I’m not just enabling the man who will eventually destroy us all.”
His face hardens. “And how will you know that, Rowan? What fucking proof would be enough?”
Behind us, Sofiya stirs in her sleep. We both freeze, waiting until her breathing evens out again.
“I don’t know,” I admit as the fight drains out of me. “I just know I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep loving you and fearing you in equal measure.”
Vince catches the contradictions there, of course. “You still love me.”
“That’s the tragedy, isn’t it?” I float backward toward the door, needing escape before I do something stupid, like forgive him. Like reach for him. Like fall back into the beautiful destruction that is loving Vincent Akopov. “Love was never our problem.”
I’m almost to the threshold when his voice stops me.
“If I survive tomorrow—if we survive the FBI—will you give me another chance?”
I don’t turn around. If I see his face, I might crumble. “I don’t know, Vince. I don’t know if I have any chances left to give.”
