Page 87

Suicide or assassination, Bransford is gone, and that vengeful part of me—the part I wanted to pretend wasn’t there—is happy. No, more than happy. It’s downright ecstatic.

Whether at Nikolai’s hand or his own, Tom Bransford got exactly what he deserved.

I stand by the bed for a minute longer, absorbing the sheer relief of that knowledge, the lifting of the weight I hadn’t realized still sat across my shoulders. I let that sensation filter through as I think about the lethal beauty of my husband’s face and the terrible darkness in his soul—a darkness I now realize exists in me as well.

Then, carefully, so as not to interrupt his much-needed rest, I lie down next to him and drape my arm across his chest. His eyes don’t open and his breathing doesn’t alter, but he turns and gathers me against him, his powerful body curving around me, warming me, shielding me from the world.

My chest expands, my heart so full it feels on the verge of bursting. Just a couple of months ago, I was an orphan on the run from her mother’s killers, a woman all alone in the world with a life expectancy measured in days. Now I have my husband and my son, and a future full of possibilities.

Maybe we’ll stay here for the next few years, and I’ll get a teaching job at a local school—a school that Slava will attend as well. Or maybe we’ll go to Moscow, and Nikolai will take up the reins of his family organization again, with all that it entails. Or maybe it’ll be something else entirely, a path I can’t even imagine at the moment.

Whatever that path is, wherever we go from here, doesn’t matter.

As long as I have my dark protector, I fear nothing.

Together, Nikolai and I can take on the whole world.