Page 17 of Crystal Veil (Rostov Bratva #2)

His gaze darkens like storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

When he speaks, his accent is thicker than usual, the way it gets when his emotions run too close to the surface.

“This is the only way to end it, Elena. The only way to stop looking over our shoulders every second of every day. The only way to keep you safe.”

“I don't need a martyr,” I fire back, my voice growing heated with desperation, anger, and love all tangled together until I can't separate one from the other.

“I don't need you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of my safety.

I need you. Whole and alive. Not buried under the rubble of vengeance and honor codes that don't mean anything if you're dead.”

His eyes flash with pain, raw and primal. “You think I want to die?”

The question hits me like a slap, and I realize how my words must sound to him.

“No,” I breathe, reaching out to touch his face. His skin is warm beneath my palm, stubbled with a day's growth of beard that scratches lightly against my fingers. “But I think you're not afraid of it. And that scares me more than anything else in this whole nightmare.”

He steps forward then, eliminating the last inch of space between us until his presence consumes everything else in my world. His scent surrounds me, his heat envelops me, and his intensity burns through me like fire through hell. When he speaks, his voice is rough and full of desperate conviction.

“Elena, I've lost too much already in this life.

My mother, my father, men I considered brothers, pieces of my soul I'll never get back.

But I am not losing you. I will not let Bennato draw another breath if it means risking you or our child.

Do you understand me? I will burn this entire city to ash before I let him touch what's mine.”

The possessiveness in his voice should probably offend me.

The feminist in me should bristle at being called his possession and being treated like something to be protected rather than someone capable of making her own choices.

But instead, it sends a thrill through me that I can't deny or explain.

Because I hear love beneath the possessiveness.

I hear the terror beneath the aggression.

“Then why won't you let someone else take the shot?” I demand, my hands fisting in the front of his shirt.

The fabric is soft and expensive, but I want to tear it and shake him until he sees reason.

“Why does it have to be you at the center of the trap? You have men who are loyal to you, men who would die for you without question. Send them. Let them handle Bennato while you stay safe.”

He cups my face in his hands, and the roughness of his palms grounds me in a way nothing else can. His thumbs trace the high curve of my cheekbones, wiping away tears I didn't realize had started falling.

“Because no one else can finish this like I can,” he murmurs. “No one else has the stakes I do. No one else loves you the way I do. Bennato made this personal when he threatened you and our future. And personal debts can only be paid in person.”

The logic is flawed, dangerous, and masculine in the most frustrating way possible. But it's also utterly, completely Renat. He's not just the head of a criminal organization. He's a man who believes in honor codes older than countries and in debts that can only be settled with blood.

I place my hands over his, feeling the calluses on his fingers and the strength in his grip. “Then promise me you'll come back,” I whisper, my voice breaking on the words. “Swear it to me, Renat. I need to hear it from you. I need your word that you'll do whatever it takes to come home to us.”

His eyes search mine with an intensity that feels like being dissected like he's trying to memorize every fleck of gold in my brown irises, every freckle scattered across my nose. As if he's carving this moment into his memory so deeply that nothing could ever erase it.

“I promise,” he finally whispers, and his voice holds the solemnity of sacred vows and blood oaths.

“I swear to you on my father's grave, on the life growing inside you, on everything I hold sacred in this world. I will come back to you. To our child. No matter what it takes, no matter what I have to do or sacrifice or become. I will survive this, and I will come home.”

A tear slips down my cheek, hot and heavy with all the emotion I can't contain.

He catches it with his thumb, his touch infinitely gentle despite the violence that lives in his hands.

We stand like that for a moment that feels like an eternity, suspended in the tension between truth and trust, fear and faith, love and the terrible knowledge that sometimes love isn't enough to keep the people we care about safe.

He leans in slowly, giving me time to pull away if I want to. But I don't want to. I never want to pull away from him, even when common sense screams that I should. His lips brush against my forehead in a kiss so gentle, so reverent, that it steals what's left of my breath.

“Go get some rest, dushenka ,” he murmurs against my skin, his breath warm and reassuring.

I step back slowly, reluctantly, each movement feeling like I'm tearing away a piece of myself.

My body aches to stay close to his, to absorb his strength and warmth and the illusion of safety his presence provides.

But I force myself to walk away, to give him the space he needs to prepare for what's coming.

The journey back to our bedroom feels longer than it should, the hallways stretching endlessly before me like something out of a nightmare. The artwork on the walls seems to watch me pass, their eyes following my movements with silent judgment.

Back in our room, I slip between sheets that smell like him and stare at the ceiling for what feels like hours.

The baby flutters inside me, responding to my elevated heart rate and the stress hormones flooding my system.

I place both hands over my belly, feeling the slight but definite swell where our child grows.

“Your daddy is going to come home to us,” I whisper into the darkness, my voice trembling above the sound of waves crashing against the shore outside our window. “He promised, and he never breaks his promises. Not to me. Not to us.”

I think about the email I sent earlier and the story that's now winging its way across the digital landscape to London.

My line in the sand, drawn in invisible ink but no less permanent for its transparency.

If something happens to Renat, if his carefully laid plans crumble like sandcastles in a hurricane, at least Bennato won't win completely.

At least there will be consequences for his actions and justice for his victims.

It's a cold comfort, but it's something. In a world where I have so little control, where I'm forced to watch the man I love walk into danger while I sit safely behind walls and guards, it's the one thing I could do. The one way I could fight back.

And now, Renat has drawn his line. One way or another, this war will come to an end.

I close my eyes and try to find sleep, but it eludes me like smoke in the wind. Instead, I lie awake counting down the hours until dawn brings either salvation or devastation.