Page 184 of Bratva Jewels Box Set

He doesn’t answer me.

“Tell me, dammit,” I scream, thumping his chest.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t fucking know? You’re just going to say goodbye to me and that’s it? You’re ripping my heart out, Maxim, and I don’t even get a say in it.”

“I can’t ask you to choose me, Grace. Not against your family.”

“I would though,” I say sadly, letting my hands fall.

Maxim shakes his head. “I’m not worthy of that decision.”

He is to me. Maxim’s the only one I feel that’s ever understood me. How can I go back to a life that I don’t remember? I’ve changed. I’m not the same Grace I was when I left all those months ago.

“I don’t want to let you go.”

“Baby, you must. Please, I need to know you’re safe, otherwise I can’t do my job.”

His job? “You’re going to kill Dmitri?”

“I will, but not yet. I need to find out what he knows about my sister and Anna. And I need to help find the other jewels.”

“You’re not going to send them back to the Bratva, are you?”

Maxim shakes his head. “Not after what you’ve told us. I was thinking of sending them back to your family. Helping their fight to find them.”

My eyes widen at his words. “You would do that?”

“I’d do anything to make things right for you, Grace. If I could turn back time and change the night you and your sister met those two I would.”

“Then I wouldn’t have met you.”

“I would have found you,” he says, giving me a wink.

“I may not have been so accepting of your job if I hadn’t gone through what I had.”

“This is true. I would have brought you around with my tongue.”

My face drops. No more magic tongue. I wrap my arms around Maxim again and squeeze him tightly.

“This isn’t goodbye, Wildcat, I promise you that. I’ll come find you when the time is right. Please trust me when I say I’m coming back for you,” he tries to reassure me, and I believe him. I squeeze him even tighter, not wanting to let him go, but I know now it’s inevitable.

“Ready to go home?” Sergei asks, giving me a warm smile as he fiddles with the helicopter’s controls.

Looking back up at the villa, I see Maxim’s shadow in his bedroom window. I wipe the tears from my eyes as I say goodbye to this man. A man I fell in love with in the strangest of situations. I trust that I’ll see him again; however long it takes for Dmitri to be brought to justice, I’ll wait for him. The helicopter starts, and we move away from the ground, my eyes never leaving the dark figure in the window until I can’t see him anymore. I’m going home, but I left my heart with him.

Sergei flies the helicopter to an airport where he lands it and exchanges one aircraft for another as we step aboard a private plane. He walks me to my seat, and I take it, sinking into the buttery soft leather before curling up into a ball.

“He’s probably drinking himself into a stupor as we speak,” Sergei states as the flight crew close the aircraft and we begin to taxi. “I’ve known that boy since he was seventeen years old, he’s like a son to me, and I’ve never seen him fall for anyone like he has you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better,” I tell Sergei as my lip trembles and I try to hold in my emotions.

“Oh, sweetheart, I don’t want to see you cry. I told you this because I need you to believe he’s not giving up on you. That he will be back, I can promise you that,” the old man reassures me.

“You don’t think he’s going to forget me?”

Sergei chuckles. “Never.”