Page 60 of Only for Him (Starkov Bratva #1)

GISELLE

The men who 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.

I sit in the shitty plastic chair beside his hospital bed, nails digging into the edge like I need the pain to keep me upright. Roman’s chest rises and falls beneath the bandages. I count each breath, terrified I’ll miss the one where it stops.

They say his chances are good.

But I don’t trust them.

I don’t trust hope.

The door creaks open, the sound ripping through my thoughts and rousing Roman from his shallow sleep. He refused morphine, wanted nothing to dull the edge, so he’s fully awake even as pain keeps him in a permanent wince.

I want to climb into the bed and take his place. Bleed for him. Break for him.

It would still never balance the scales.

Because he gave me more than revenge.

He gave me this: a world where the men who ruined my sister are dead, because the man I love refused to stop breathing until they were. A world where I can finally turn her picture around and bear to look into her eyes.

Tears prickle the corners of my eyes, even though I’ve cried enough tonight to last me a year at least. When I thought Roman was dead—oh, god. The way I screamed, like it was me dying from a knife wound to the gut.

Because I knew, with brutal certainty, that there would be no me without him.

He is the ground, the sky, everything in between. The gravity keeping all my cells together.

Afanasy steps inside, all quiet menace and disarming charm. He’s dressed in black, sharp and composed, blue eyes that sting like chlorine.

“Well, well, well,” he begins, as unbothered as if Pavel was a rabid dog that had to be put down, not his brother. “You two held up your end of the deal. Pavel’s dead, and the empire is cracked open.”

But the victory feels strained, like glass under pressure.

“What about the others?” Roman asks, and a low dread wisps through me. The other brothers.

Ilya and Vladimir, right?

Afanasy’s expression shifts slightly, a glimmer of something like regret. Or, dare I say it, humanity?

“My brothers are fighting over the scraps,” Afanasy says. “Back home in Russia. Once they settle the score with each other, the winner will come for me.”

“Desperate men can be dangerous.”

He shrugs, dismissive, but the words cast a shadow over the bright, sterile room.

“I’ll handle them,” he says. “It’s my family’s fallout, not yours. You two should savor your win while you can.”

“While we can?” I echo, my voice sharper than I mean it to be. I want to believe this is the end, but it doesn’t feel like one. “Isn’t Roman’s debt to you paid?”

Afanasy and Roman just stare at each other in silent conversation, cutting me out as much as if they were speaking Russian.

“He was never indebted to me,” Afanasy finally says, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s in on some private joke. “But life’s strange. You never know what’s coming.”

Then, like he’s changing the subject, “If you know a good lawyer, tell me. I don’t plan to die like Pasha did, messy and unprotected.”

“Maybe try Yelp,” I scoff. The next thing he says is a question to Roman.

I hear Romochka and lyubov , and I recognize that word. Love.

Roman’s ears turn red. He gives a quick shake of his head but doesn’t respond. Which, it seems, is its own response, because Afanasy laughs as he turns, leaving an icy chill in his wake.

The room sinks back into silence, the soft beeping of the monitors ticking time beside my pulse. I glance at Roman and wonder what he’s not telling me.

Well, I’m wondering that about a few different things, actually. All, now, have become equally life-threatening.

I want to force Roman to tell me what Afanasy meant, but I think I already know.

In Afanasy’s world, debts are rarely ever repaid in full—and grudges don’t die, they evolve.

I rise and move to the window, fingers brushing against the cold glass.

Outside, the world moves on, a blur of lives untouched by our decisions.

People returning to empty apartments, or picking up their kids from a slumber party, or hungover and going to get something with electrolytes from the bodega.

Meanwhile, I’m sinking.

What is victory, if all it buys you is a front-row seat to the next war?

“Giselle,” Roman murmurs. “Don’t let him get to you.”

I sigh and return to his side. He’s right. I need to count my blessings. We killed Pavel. Roman lived. I still get to hear him say my name.

“Is that an order?” I ask, brushing hair from his forehead. My fingers barely graze his skin, because any more and I’ll climb into that bed and show him just how fucking grateful I am that he’s still breathing. Something feral and dark sparks in his eyes.

But he needs to heal before I let myself need anything more than this.

“Do you want it to be?” Roman asks, eyes clear and piercing as ever. He grabs my hand, his warmth sending a jolt through me.

Because I’m still alive, too.

“Maybe,” I say. “Not letting things get to me isn’t exactly in my nature, if you haven’t figured that out yet.”

He’s figured out everything about you, Giselle. He’s figured out things about you that you still don’t know. That’s who he is. That’s why you love him.

Truth comes creeping back: the fear of loss, the jagged shards of affection threatening to slip through my fingers.

What if I’m different now, with Serena avenged? What if the things he admired about me are gone?

What if I become just an empty shell—one of those sidewalk people, rushing to go nowhere because they have nowhere to go?

Will Roman still feel how he feels about me if I can’t help him with the next body?

“What’s next?” I finally ask, my heart racing as the words form in the air.

“We take a breath, find out what’s left,” he replies. “Then we face whatever comes.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I say, my heart racing.

“I know, little viper,” he says.

Roman’s gaze locks with mine, pools of stormy blue. They hold a violence that I know won’t go away just because Pavel is dead. They also hold a longing I’ve come to know as well as my own fist.

I feel it right now, high in my chest, thick and aching. We’re suspended in something fragile, and if we breathe wrong, it might shatter.

“It feels like we’ve been fighting forever,” I confess, a bitter sweetness coating the words. Every ghost, good and bad, flickers through my mind: Serena’s laughter, Ivan’s hands, Dakota’s innocence, Russo’s slumped body.

Everything that has brought us to this room is dark and twisted, yet I don’t want to be anywhere else and I wouldn’t change anything about what I’ve found with Roman.

“It does,” he agrees, his voice low and worn. “But that’s not all we’ve been doing.”

“No,” I say with a shaky chuckle. “It’s not.”

I try to smile, but it falters. The air around us tightens, charged with something heavy and inevitable.

“Little viper,” he says, searching my face for an answer. “If your gun had misfired, if Pavel had gotten to you?—”

He trails off, clearly unable to picture what fate I might have met.

“You would never have been there if it weren’t for me. I’ve dragged you into my world, twisted and broken, and it might have killed you.”

“I’m not here because you forced me, Roman,” I interrupt, my voice stronger than I feel. “I chose this. I’m here because I chose you .”

I lean closer, until the heat of his breath mixes with mine. His eyes widen, catching the dim light in a way that makes my heart seize.

“I could keep pretending I don’t feel this,” I say. “But I don’t want to. I don’t fucking want to pretend anymore, Roman. I pretended all the time before I met you. It felt good when I stopped having to. You did that for me. And I?—”

But Roman cuts me off.

“I love you, little viper.”

My heart stammers, but I don’t break eye contact. I want to drown in the deep end of whatever this is and not come up for air.

“You’re the only thing that makes me want to be better,” he says.

“And the only thing that makes me worse. I don’t know how to protect you without breaking things.

Without breaking myself. But I’ll do it.

I’d bury myself alive if it kept you safe.

I’ll burn the world down before I let it touch you. ”

The words linger like smoke, thick and dangerous and holy. My heart stammers against my ribs, trying to climb out of my chest.

I want to stop him so I can remember every second of this moment and every word of his confession.

He loves me.

This brutal monster of a man loves me.

But he just keeps going, because of course he does. Because he only stops when he wants to.

“And I need you to love me back,” he says. “I love you so much it terrifies me. It makes me want to chain you up just so you can’t leave. So much I think if you ever did, I’d have to kill you just to keep you. That’s what you’ve done to me.”

“I do love you,” I whisper, voice trembling like it’s being pulled from the deepest part of me. “You told me, when this started, to find you. Well, I did. And now I can’t let you go. You’re in my bones now. You made me real.”

His lips part. For a second, he looks wrecked—like love might be the most dangerous thing either of us has faced.

“But I’m scared,” I say, chewing my lip. “What if the only thing we had was the man who took so much from us? What if you don’t want me anymore when I’m happier?”

“Being happy won’t change who you are,” he says with a smirk. “You didn’t flinch or cry when we made those men scream. You liked it. You needed it. Just like you need me. And I want you to be happy. The less pain you feel, the less pain I feel.”

I understand that perfectly well. But Roman’s not done.

“I’m scared of the same thing. I gave you the only thing you ever really wanted. Now what? What is left for me to give you?”

But I don’t need him to give me anything. Love like this is something you don’t come back from, even when there’s nothing left.

“I love you,” he says again, softer this time. “But I don’t want?—”

“What about what I want?” I say, feeling utterly flayed open. “I don’t want perfect or soft or cookie-cutter. Don’t pretend like you don’t know that.”

Roman’s hands come to my waist, hungry with intent. I reach for him, fingers brushing his jaw, his cheekbone, his neck. He’s burning beneath my touch.

“Giselle…” he murmurs, voice thinned out with emotion. He grabs my wrist, his wounds not holding him back from squeezing so hard it’ll bruise. “You need to understand, once I take you apart, there’s no putting you back together. You will belong to me, Giselle.”

“You think I don’t know that by now?” I manage, breathless and trembling. “I’ve been yours for so long that I wouldn’t know what to do with myself without you.”

I press my lips to his, every ounce of longing pouring into that single touch. It’s tentative at first, testing the fault lines of what we’ve become to each other

But then the dam breaks.

The kiss deepens, fingers tangling in hair, tongues sliding, trading breath between our mouths as my body comes alive. Everything else dissolves. The hospital, the future, the fear. There’s only this: his body against mine, the sound of our breathing, the heat that floods between us like a fever.

His lips move against mine, ravenous. I answer with everything I have left. His fingers curl around my neck, anchoring me as I surrender—not to him, but to us .

“Thank you” I murmur, words laced with a sweetness I didn’t think I could allow myself to feel. “Thank you for choosing me.”

He tilts his head, that small, rare smile breaking through the remnants of pain.

“I’m not sure I was ever the one doing the choosing,” he says. “I think it might have been you all along.”

With the world still pressing at the edges of this moment, I braid our fingers together. It’s the only truth I need, the dangerous whisper of love.

“I don’t remember asking anyone to bring me a whole bunch of goddamn roses when I didn’t even own a vase,” I say, crawling into the hospital bed beside him, careful not to jostle his wounds.

The contact isn’t enough, I need him inside me, but for now, it anchors us: a quiet act of defiance against everything that’s tried to tear us apart. A promise forged in scars and fire.

“I take it back, little viper,” he says, mouth moving gently against my hair, and I can feel his smile spreading. “I do have things left to give you.”

I believe him.