Page 37 of Only for Him (Starkov Bratva #1)

“You keep giving these back to me,” she breathes. Her voice is paper-thin, and the look on her face… Christ. I can see how badly she wants to wear them. I can see the torn place on her earlobe where they used to hang. “Why?”

Because I know what it’s like to grab at razor wire when the pain is better than a freefall.

A long beat stretches between us.

“Because I think they have something to do with the vengeance you seek.”

She hesitates. When she speaks, I feel it not just in the air between us, but in my ribs and spine.

“Yes. They do.”

“Who is it you want vengeance for?”

“For my sister.” She blinks, closes a fist around the earrings. “Serena.”

The name pierces through the haze of tension, wrapping around my mind like a noose.

Giselle’s chin lifts as she pushes through her grief.

“She went missing. It was my fault, I ratted her out for seeing a boy she wasn’t supposed to.” Her voice quivers. “My parents never recovered. We fell apart. When I joined the NYPD, I learned... more. About what happened to her.”

I can guess at what she means.

I’ve seen enough girls like Serena. Seen the rooms they vanish into. Seen the numbers they get assigned instead of names before they get that name back on the auction block. Fifteen years of it. Fifteen years of the worst humanity has to offer.

The slideshow plays behind my eyes: lot numbers, auction blocks, bruises that don’t fade.

But I wait for her to tell me, because I want to hear how she says it. I need to know what it’s done to her, so I know how much blood to spill on her behalf.

“She was trafficked,” Giselle says. “Then murdered.”

Rage licks at my ribcage. I’m always angry, but this is bordering on sacrilege.

This is all. Fucking. Mine.

Watching my little viper replay the horror of it makes me want to snort the ashes of every man who put her on this path. I’d gouge out eyes for less. Break noses for an errant glance.

These people? The ones who carved grief into her marrow?

Death is mercy they don’t deserve.

“I didn’t…” she starts, and my stomach knots.

Her voice shakes but she keeps going. “I didn’t see all the connections until you.

You starting giving me those bodies, all connected.

This huge web… I don’t know. I didn’t know.

I still don’t. Not the details, not anything concrete.

But I know she was… she must have been…”

“Like Dakota,” I say. My voice is ice. It’s the only thing keeping me from shaking.

She nods. That one tiny motion shatters something in me.

And with every word, every breath she takes, the ache for her becomes unbearable. It coils tight in my chest, like I was built to carry this for her. My hand finds the edge of my glass, then shifts closer, always closer. I reach out, brushing away the single tear that slips free from her eye.

That tear kills me.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I swear, channeling the conviction she needs to believe it. “None of it was your fault.”

She looks into my eyes, and I swear, I see her entire past swirling there, waiting for release.

Revenge.

“Thank you for telling me,” I add, but it feels small. Useless. Petty.

What she deserves is carnage. And I’m the only one who can give it to her.

What no man ever has.

“We will avenge her,” I vow, locking my gaze on her. “We’ll make sure every man who had a hand in her death pay. I promise.”

The weight of my words hangs between us, charged and heavy. She searches my eyes for sincerity, and in that fleeting moment, our shared anger and sorrow becomes an unbreakable bond.

Our pain is the same now.

And so is our purpose.

It isn’t only sexual, this thing we’re doing.

It never was, but I liked pretending, for my own fucked-up sake.

It isn’t just about control. Or conquest. Or the exquisite way she trembles when I pin her beneath me.

I don’t just want to feel her surrender.

I want to watch her rise, healed and whole. For me. Because of me.

“I need to know if you’re serious,” she says. “Everything you’ve done so far… it would be nothing compared to you lying about this.”

I close the distance between us, slow and deliberate.

“I swear, Giselle,” I say.

She blinks away her emotions, a shimmer of hope pooling in those deep brown doe eyes.

She leans in. Our breath twines. Her cheeks are red, her lips dewy and pink, heat rolling off her in waves.

When we kiss, it’s not like before.

My blood rushes and my cock hardens, but it’s not really a physical act at all.

It’s a reckoning.

Something spills open between us: vengeance braided with devotion. Pain layered over desire. Her mouth tastes like fury and faith, and I take all of it.

I want to keep this version of her in my bones.

When we finally part, the world has shifted slightly, bowing under the gravity of an unyielding promise.

“I’ve already taken care of the paperwork,” I tell her, voice steady as I draw back just enough to look into her face. “You’re on extended leave from the NYPD. Effective immediately.”

She blinks. Her brows draw tight. “You what ?”

I don’t react, even though she’s so fucking cute when she’s frustrated. At least, it helps sober me up from the heady effect of her lips on mine.

Doesn’t help the painful stiffness in my cock, though. That’s here to stay.

I won’t use it yet. As much as I want to show her that everything so far was just a hint of the pleasures to come, I’ll wait.

I need her to need it as badly as I do.

And so far, I think she just wants it.

I’m sure she thinks she needs it, but I haven’t taught her what it is to truly fucking need .

“The department approved it. No questions asked, given the killer’s taunts. Now we can focus on what actually matters.”

“You had no right?—”

“I had every right. Your safety matters more than that badge ever did. More than the law. You’re mine now. And the rules don’t apply to us.”

I watch her try to fight it. Try to hold onto the system that’s failed her again and again.

But then it hits: that flicker of fire.

She wants to burn everything down, too.

I’ll light the match.

Let it all crumble. Let them scream.

I will go to war for her until there’s nothing left but blood and her name in my mouth.