Page 25 of Crystal Veil (Rostov Bratva #2)

The invitation feels like forgiveness, though I know I haven't earned it.

I step through the doorway and cross the threshold into her world.

The smell of her floods my senses, familiar, intoxicating, and sharp enough to steal my breath.

Not perfume or soap. Just her. Warm, clean, and soft like morning coffee and vanilla candles with the faint trace of the coconut shampoo she uses.

It's a scent that evokes the normalcy of everyday lives and women who don't have to look over their shoulders.

Women who don't date men with blood on their hands.

The apartment is simple, smaller than my walk-in closet, but it feels more like home than anywhere I've ever lived.

A blanket is thrown over the back of the couch, its soft, blue fabric appearing to be hand-knit.

There is a mug still half-full on the coffee table, the ceramic painted with tiny flowers that make me think of the gardens back in Russia.

Books are stacked on every available surface, their spines cracked from being read and reread.

Her laptop is open on the kitchen counter, the cursor blinking in the middle of a sentence I can't read from here.

Her life is here, complete and separate from me. That realization cuts deeper than the betrayal and near-death experience. She's made something real while I was playing games with men who see violence as the only language worth speaking.

She gestures to the couch, and I sit heavily, my body groaning in protest. My ribs still ache where the steel beam caught me, and there's a persistent pain in my left shoulder that the doctor told me would fade with time.

But it's not just physical discomfort. It's the burden of everything I've done and every choice I've made that led us to this moment.

The couch cushions are soft and comfortable in a way that my expensive furniture never manages to be, and I realize this is what normal people come home to.

Not marble and gold leaf and furniture that costs more than cars, but simple comfort that doesn't need to impress anyone.

She kneels in front of me. The gesture is so unexpected, so tender, that I nearly flinch away. Elena Martinez, the woman who built her career on asking hard questions and refusing to be intimidated, kneels on her hardwood floor to get closer to me.

Her hand cups my cheek, and something inside me cracks.

Not from pain or rage. Not from the fury that's been my constant companion for so many years that I forgot what it felt like to exist without it burning in my veins.

This is different. This is the sound of walls coming down, of defenses I've spent decades building crumbling at the touch of someone who sees past the monster to whatever humanity might still be hiding underneath.

From being seen.

“You're still the man who saved me from Bennato's claws,” she whispers, and her breath is warm against my skin.

Her thumb traces the scar above my eyebrow, the one I got in a fight when I was sixteen and thought I was invincible.

“The one who held me in that hospital bed when I was more afraid than I'd ever been in my life. You loved me before you knew what that meant. Before either of us had words for it.”

The memory flashes in my mind. Elena in the hospital bed, her face pale against the white pillows, her eyes wide with the kind of terror that comes from realizing how close you came to losing everything.

I'd sat beside her for hours, holding her hand and talking about nothing important because the silence felt too much like death.

I'd never done that before, never stayed at someone's bedside just because they needed me there.

But with her, it felt as natural as breathing.

I close my eyes and let her words wash over me.

She's right. I loved her before I understood what love meant, before I realized it was something more than possession or control, or the need to protect what's mine.

I loved her when she was just a journalist asking questions I didn't want to answer.

I loved her when she challenged me and refused to be impressed by my money or intimidated by my reputation.

I loved her when she looked at me and saw a man instead of a title, and when she made me remember what it felt like to be human.

“If you go after Bennato,” she murmurs, and I feel the sting of inevitability in her words. She knows me well enough to understand that this isn't over, that men like Francesco Bennato don't stop until they're stopped permanently. “Do it as that man. From strength. Not from despair.”

Her other hand rests over my heart, and I swear she can feel it hammering against my ribs like a caged bird trying to escape. Her palm is warm through my shirt, and I wonder if she can feel how fast I'm breathing, and how her touch affects me even now when everything else feels broken.

Everything in me stills. The darkness that's been eating at me for days eases back like fog lifting at sunrise.

The ghosts fade, Bianca's smile and Sergey's dead eyes and the sound of falling steel all retreating to whatever corner of my mind they'll live in forever.

And all I feel is her hand. Her voice. The quiet thunder of her belief in me, steady and unwavering even after everything I've done, and everything I've failed to do.

“I lost so many pieces of myself over the years,” I murmur, and the words feel like confessing to a priest. Like laying my sins bare and hoping for absolution, I know I don't deserve.

“I thought they were gone for good. Cut away like infected tissue, necessary sacrifices to become the man I needed to be. The man who could lead, who could make the hard choices, who could kill when killing was required. But you...”

I trail off, looking at her face in the afternoon light filtering through her windows.

She's beautiful, but it's not the polished beauty of the women I used to date.

The ones who saw me as a prize to be won or a stepping stone to something better.

Elena's beauty is real, lived-in, earned through struggles and small victories and the simple act of refusing to let the world break her spirit.

She nods, understanding what I can't find words to express. “I see them.”

Three words. Simple and true. And they undo me completely.

I lower my head and let her hold me. Let her fingers thread through my hair while I rest my forehead against her shoulder.

She smells like home, like the life I never thought I could have, like mornings without violence and nights without nightmares.

No one's ever done that. Not like this. Not without wanting something in return.

Not without conditions or calculations or the constant awareness that I'm dangerous, that caring for me comes with a price most people aren't willing to pay.

I release a shuddering breath that feels like it's been trapped in my chest for years.

Something inside me releases, some tension I've carried so long I forgot it wasn't supposed to be there.

Elena holds all of it, embraces the depth of my brokenness without flinching, without pulling away, without reminding me of all the reasons she should.

When I finally speak again, my voice is raw, scraped clean of pretense and power and all the masks I wear to survive in a world that rewards cruelty.

“Come back with me.”

She hesitates, and I feel her body tense slightly. Her eyes drop to her lap, to her hands that are still gentle against my skin but suddenly careful, like she's choosing every word carefully before they leave her mouth.

“Not because it's safe,” I continue quickly, needing her to understand that this isn't about protection or possession or any of the twisted reasons men like me usually want to keep women close. “Not because I'm begging, though God knows I would if I thought it would work. But because I need you.”

The admission tastes like surrender, like laying down weapons I've carried my entire life.

But looking at her, seeing the way she's holding pieces of me I thought were lost forever, I realize that maybe surrender isn't the same thing as defeat.

Maybe sometimes it's just the beginning of something better.

Her eyes lift to mine, and I see the war playing out in their depths.

The part of her that wants to run, to return to her normal life, where the biggest danger is a difficult interview or a story that hits too close to home.

And the part that still believes in us, in whatever this is between us that's stronger than common sense or self-preservation.

“Not the estate. Not the guards. Not the protection or the luxury or any of the things that come with being in my world.” I lean forward, close enough that I can see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, close enough that my words are just for her.

“Just you. I need to know you believe in me.

Because I can't do what's next if I don't have that.”

The silence settles between us, charged with possibility, fear, and the echo of choices that can't be reversed. I watch her face, memorizing every detail in case this is the last time I see her like this, soft and open and still willing to touch me like I'm worth saving.

Then she nods. “I'm coming back. Not because I'm afraid, though your world terrifies me in ways I'm still learning to understand. But because I believe in who you're trying to be.”

My breath leaves my lungs like a prayer finally answered, like the first clean air after being buried alive.

Relief floods through me so suddenly and completely that I have to grip the edge of the couch to keep from falling.

She's coming back. Not because she has to, not because I've forced her hand or manipulated her emotions, but because she chooses to.

Because she sees something in me worth fighting for, worth risking everything for.

And for the first time in days, for the first time since I watched Bianca die and realized how quickly everything I've built can crumble, I feel like I can breathe.