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I stroke the hair back from her face, grinning despite myself. Oddly, given all that is happening and everything I’ve just said, I feel lighter than I have in years.

“Unfortunately,” I add, “we’ve also got a few unpleasant characters who currently appear pretty keen to kill us both. So as much as I don’t want to pressure you, Skip, we’re probably going to need to make some of those choices soonish.”

21

Dimitry

Despite my momentary lightness of being, when Abby doesn’t immediately respond, it’s hard to remain relaxed.

She’s still lying atop me, but her breathing is shallow, and I can feel her heart tripping nervously. I’m unwilling to break the mood. And even though we do need to start making some hard choices, I don’t want her to feel pressured.

“I’m hungry.” I swing my legs out of bed. “Why don’t you take a minute, and I’ll go and see if it’s not too late for our landlady to rustle something up?”

I take a quick shower, more to wake up than anything else. When I leave the room, Abby gives me a small smile, but doesn’t say anything.

I move through the still tropical night, my eyes peeled for any sign of disturbance. It’s true that I need to eat, but I also want to make sure nobody has been poking around looking for us. I spend a good ten minutes making a circuit of the property, but I can’t find any trace of watching eyes. When I speak to the landlady, her only concern is whether or not we need the fridge restocked—a resoundingyesafter I made shortwork of the beer in there on our arrival—and what we might like to eat. I leave the latter up to her and return to the bungalow with an armful of bottles, an illicit packet of cigarettes because I have a feeling I might need one, and a promise that food will be with us soon.

Abby is showered and clad in the same sarong as earlier. She’s cross-tied it in a halter neck to make a dress which, though covering the breasts that haunt my dreams, still exposes a delicious length of thigh. I can’t help but notice again how much weight she’s lost. Her body, always lean and slender, has been honed to a hard, athletic fitness that is no less sexy but which I find, for some reason, slightly disturbing.

The bruises and burn marks, on the other hand, I can’t get used to. Even in the soft glow of the bulbs strung across the veranda, they’re devastatingly vivid.

And make me ache to get my hands on the fucker who gave them to her.

But I swallow my anger. That’s the thing about having suffered at the hands of angry men myself. I know exactly how that anger fills a room, sends a message long before the first fist hits. It doesn’t matter whether the anger is directed at you or not.

You feel it, just the same.

And it’s terrifying.

It was a lot of years before I built myself up through training to a point where I could be in a room with anger without taking it personally. And even more years after that before I learned how to channel my own anger, to work through it and ensure that it never, ever impacted those around me.

Let’s face it, Roman gave me a lot of practice over the years. Whether meeting his constant, low-level rage in the training ring or tempering his worst excesses when an enemygot too close, I had an up-close and personal experience of learning anger management.

So I smile easily at Abby and wave the bottles at her. “Drink?”

“Sure.” She returns my smile, finishing off a large bottle of water. “I better warn you,” she says, matching my easy tone. “After several months of enforced sobriety, I’ve probably lost my famous Australian-level alcohol tolerance, so I’d better stick to beer instead of wine.”

It’s the first hint of discussion about where she’s been, one I’m not about to take advantage of. I pop the tops off two bottles and hand her one. We clink the necks, and I sit in the lounger beside hers.

“It’s beautiful here.” She stares out to where moonbeams spill across the water, sipping her beer. “I wish we could stay.”

“Me, too.” I smile at her. “I could become a fisherman, I guess. But you’d have to learn to cook, which might be a challenge.”

Abby’s mouth twists wryly. “Well, that would be one way to kill us both before anyone else gets the chance.” She glances at me, and her smile fades. “I want to tell you what happened to me, Dimitry.” Her voice is low and quiet. “I know I owe you that. But even though I have no right to ask anything of you, there’s something I need to know before I do.”

She waits until I nod before she continues speaking.

“I need to be sure you won’t try to make my war your own.” Her voice rasps on the words, but her eyes hold mine without moving. “Part of my mess there’s a way out of. That’s the part you found me in, and the part you can help with, if you’re willing to. But the other part...”

Her voice drifts off, and she looks away from me, shaking her head. The beer bottle twists uneasily in her hand.

“The other part is bigger than anything you can possibly imagine,” she says quietly. “Bigger even than Roman and hisempire. Not to mention much, much darker. That part I need you to promise me you’ll stay out of.”

She turns back to look at me. “I need you to make me that promise before I tell you the story. And not only because of your own safety. Because of Darya and her baby and, yes, even Roman too, the stubborn prick.”

She smiles sadly. “You said it was your choice to be here, Dimitry, and I respect that. But I need you to respect my wishes, too. And to know that no matter what you and I end up dealing with, the people we love won’t get caught in the crosshairs.”

“You have my word that I will keep this strictly between us, for as long as you need me too.” I give her my answer without hesitation, and the surprise in her eyes is a painful reminder of how bad I’ve been at really having her back before now. “And while I can’t promise to stay out of it, I can promise to respect your wishes—unless your life is in danger. Because at that point, Abby, I’m going to kill anyone who comes at us, whether you want me to or not.”