Page 140 of Devil's Vows

I got a second chance at life. A life I get to spend with him.

I’m in love with you, Ivan…

I thought I was dying, and then his declaration came, that he loved me already, which was one step ahead of being in love, and of course I had to live—who gives up on that?

My husband loves me,and we have time.

All I want is to be in his arms, and I can’t wait to go home. I squeeze his fingers, and soft lips laced with the gentle scrub of scruff press against my knuckles.

“Ivan?” I murmur, finally able to speak now they removed the ventilator.

“Here,moya ptichka.The girls are at Matteo’s apartment with Rosalia and Tasha. Everybody is safe.”

This is the first thing he tells me every time I wake up, and then he always leans in and kisses me softly on the forehead.

And there it is, my husband’s good morning kiss. I open my eyes and reach up with my hand and touch his face. God knows what I’d give to kiss him on the lips, but I still have tubes stuck to my face and body and a drip for pain medication, and even though I’m healing, I’m not out of intensive care yet.

Ivan’s stark blue gaze is right there, taking stock of how I look this morning.

He brushes my jaw with his thumb, always so gentle. “Color is coming back to your cheeks,moya ptichka.”

“Good.” I love him calling me his little bird, and all I want is to curl into his chest and be held and hold him in turn. It might be that my husband sprouted a few grey hairs at his temples the past few days, and somehow, he’s even sexier than before.

The nurse scuttles in and does her routine checks. She is quiet, bar a few questions, and very efficient. We don’t talk around the staff, and while she’s busy, I rummage through my disordered thoughts.

More memories are coming back. Mara and the shooting and how she shouted into the void thatChertnikov’s girl is here.I finally have a name for the monster. My decrepit Russian.

As safe as I’d like to think I am, none of us is safe. We haven’t spoken about anything yet, but the weight of knowledge that’s been pressing down on my chest is becoming too much. I need to know what happened with The Mole and with Mara.

I need to ask about Chiara.

“Are my brothers coming today?” I ask as the nurse leaves us. By the light falling through the shutters, it’s early, but none of these men sleep very well. They tend to walk in at all hours.

“You bet they are.”

“We need to talk.”

“I know.”

Right on cue, there comes a knock, and Matteo and Luca walk into the room, carrying the scent of coffee with them.

“Oof,” I huff with a weak smile and a nod to the takeout coffee Matteo hands over to Ivan as they greet each other. “What must I do to get one of those?”

“Get a whole lot better,” Luca says with a kind smile, but there is a new strain to his face and dark shadows under his eyes. My brother has had a sleepless night. “Soon,cara.”

“Where’s Milana?” I ask, because she always comes with him, dragging the somewhat murderous tension between them into the room. Things are probably not going as well as she bargained on. I bet she’d hoped to be in Russia by now. Our gazes connect, and in me, a dread trickles down my spine.

“I let her sleep in today,” he says, reaching for my hand where it’s resting on the bed and giving me a soft, if desperate, squeeze.

Something’s shifted, and then it hits me: he knows.Luca has guessed Milana’s secret, or she has told him. It doesn’t matter how he found out: he knows.

By the look on his face, I get his conundrum. He can’t deny her, irrespective of the promise Matteo made to Ivan. And that means…Russia.

He gives me the slightest shrug, acknowledging to me that we are now three in the family who need to guard a secret for life. From what I’ve seen of the Scaleras, Luca will figure out a way to take Milana to Russia…but nobody can ever know.

I brush my thumb over his with quiet understanding, then pull away from his hand before Matteo and Ivan can catch on to our secret communication.

“Nobody has told me what happened with Mara, or The Mole, and I need to know. Now.” I turn my gaze on Matteo. Suddenly, it’s become all-consuming. If Luca does take Milana to Russia, this whole tangled web of secrets could topple two families into the hands of our mutual enemy: Chertnikov.