Page 189 of Only for Him

Pavel spins, shock fading into amusement. “Ah! The little detective finally shows her teeth.”

I want to scream at her to run, forget me, forget everything and run. But I can only watch as she smiles like lady death herself.

“Not teeth,” she says. “Fangs.”

The gunshot shatters time and reverberates in the room. Pavel’s head snaps back in a brilliant burst of pink mist and he crumples to the floor, lifeless.

Bitter relief crashes over me, heavy and unyielding. She broke her promise. Stepped between me and the fire.

My little viper betrayed me one last time.

Thank God for that.

Blood pools warm around me, soaking through fabric, skin, memory. My life spills out in waves I can’t stop.

I think somewhere, someone is playing a piano.

I’m slipping. Fading fast.

But I don’t want to go.

Giselle rushes to my side, her hands pressing against my wound, her eyes wide with fear and frantic resolve.

“Stay with me,” she pleads, voice cracking. “Goddammit, Roman, don’t you dare die. Don’t you dare leave me here alone. I need you.”

Her words slice through the fog. I cling to them. To her. To the sound of her voice and the shape of her hands and the impossible idea that I might still deserve her.

I want to say I’m sorry. That I never meant to become another weight around her neck. That even now, my only fear isn’t death.

It’s her grief.

I want to tell her I love her.

I want her to hear it in my voice.

But there’s no voice left.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispers, one final echo before the darkness settles in and takes me away.

48

GISELLE

The menwho killed Serena are dead.

The words echo in my skull like the aftershock of a bomb—loud, hollow, disbelieving.

I should feel relief, or closure.

Instead, I feel like I’ve been flayed open.

Serena has been gone so long. Her killers lived freely in the meantime, walking around like nothing was broken. Like they didn’t leave her body cold and empty.

But not anymore.

Now they’re the ones rotting.

The man who killed those men might die.