Page 67 of Ruined Vows (Borrelli Mafia #5)

VUKAN

WITH MY HANDS…

T hey never learn.

There’s always one more man who thinks he can play king. Always another name clawing for relevance, desperate to wear a crown he didn’t earn.

This one’s Milan. My uncle in blood only. A man who clung to Radovan’s coat like a parasite, and thinks that makes him a threat.

It doesn’t.

He wanted attention. He got it.

He bombed a parking lot at midday, a stone’s throw from the children’s shelter. No deaths, but the message was clear: You’re not safe. Even here.

No matter how bleak or scary the day looks, she doesn’t flinch. I love that about her. She’s a warrior, but I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to her, especially now. It’s not just her, but the innocent life inside her.

Besides, she’s mine to protect.

So I told her, “No.” No, she can’t join my men. She hates it, but this is bigger than us. So she watched me load up communications and weapons, and I headed out with my men. We’ll hunt him until there’s nowhere for him to hide .

We tracked him for two days. David finds the first trail—one of Milan’s errand boys caught on grainy CCTV leaving a drop point in Novo Sarajevo.

Dragan intercepts the comms chatter. Luka pulls a name from a warehouse ledger that shouldn’t exist. It leads us to a farmhouse off a dead road, tucked between crumbling pine and silence.

He’s hiding like a rat.

We’re already inside the walls before he realizes the game’s over.

This isn’t war.

This is justice with a pulse. We move without words. We’ve done this too many times before.

Dragan breaches the main entrance—fast, clean. David and Luka sweep the perimeter, dealing with the guards like it's nothing. One cries out, and Luka silences him before the echo even finishes—a sharp crack. Bone and breath gone in the exact second.

I came for blood. I don't need a gun. By the time I hit the stairs, my heart isn’t racing. My hunt for justice is cold, hard, and calculated.

This isn’t adrenaline; it’s fury that I control like a scalpel, it’s precise.

I find Milan alone in the cellar. He’s pacing in the dark, surrounded by crates and his rotting legacy.

When I enter, his eyes widen—just a flicker of recognition, and then his arrogance bubbles up.

“Vukan, I figured you’d come. We can talk….”

I cut him off with a slam of the door behind me. I’ve also cut off his exit. I move in silence, circling him like a boxer.

“I didn’t mean for the girl—” he starts.

Wrong fucking words. I strike him, one punch—center mass. Ribs crack beneath my knuckles. He stumbles back, choking. “We’re family?—”

I slam him against the wall.

“You sent a bomb to a children’s shelter,” I yell .

“She didn’t even?—”

I grab his throat. “She’s pregnant.” My voice is raspy.

His face goes pale.

“You didn’t know?” I snarl. “That’s the problem. You don’t think. You don’t see. You strike and hope you survive what follows. But this time, there is no surviving.”

He claws at my grip, but he’s weak. He’s the one who’s soft, not me. He’s filled his stomach with meat and ale and let his men do all the work. He’s suckled off the teat of others’ hard work for decades, and now it comes home.

“I begged Milo? to cut you loose years ago,” he wheezes. “You were always too feral?—”

I slam my fist into his face until I hear the bone crack beneath my hand. Blood decorates the concrete wall like a Pollock painting.

“I should kill you with my gun,” I say, breathing hard. “But you don’t deserve the distance.”

He tries to crawl away, but I drag him back by the collar, and I end it with my hands.

My knuckles are bruised, and some skin is split. I might be bleeding, but my rage has simmered. It felt great to hit him, to kill him, and when he stops moving, I don’t even look at the body.

David steps into the cellar doorway. He doesn’t flinch. He waits like a good soldier.

“You good?” he asks.

I wipe my bloody hands on Milan’s jacket, lying on the floor.

“I am now.” I give him a wry smile.

Dragan and Luka rejoin us as we leave. No one speaks because there’s nothing to say.

We leave Milan’s corpse behind—unmarked, broken, and nameless—a lesson for the others who might have followed Milan—a message to others of how traitors die .

Bianca’s waiting. I have a mansion that has become a home because of the woman inside it.

And this time, I have no intention of making her wait.

Bianca

I know the sound of the engine before I see the car.

It’s past midnight. The estate is quiet. Most of the staff are asleep, and the guards are ghosts in the halls.

I’m pacing the front corridor barefoot because I couldn’t stay still. Not while I knew he was out there.

Not while I didn’t know if he was coming back.

The tires crunch over gravel, steady and slow. The Hummer pulls up to the gate and rolls through without pause.

No alarms. No sirens.

Just him.

I reach the front steps just as the door opens. Luka steps out first, then Dragan, then David—silent, efficient, all of them fading into the shadows like the ghosts they are.

And then he’s there.

Vukan.

Walking toward me like nothing matters but this. His shirt’s bloodstained. His knuckles are raw. A bruise darkens his jaw, and a tear in the fabric at his shoulder. But his eyes are locked on me.

Like I’m gravity.

Like I’m home.

I don’t run to him. I don’t cry. I don’t scream at him for making me wait, for making me wonder if he’d be another ghost I’d have to bury.

I just stand still. And he comes to me.

“Is it done?” I ask.

He nods once. “Yes.”

“How bad?” I asked upon seeing blood on his shirt.

He shrugs. “Not mine. ”

I don’t know if I want to kiss him or hit him.

But when he steps close, when his hands find my face—rough, trembling, still stained with what he left behind—I let myself breathe.

“You came back,” I whisper.

“I told you I would.”

I look down because he’s pressing his hand over my stomach.

“Still ours?” he asks, voice rough.

“Still ours,” I whisper.

He exhales—shaky, broken, real.

And then he pulls me in.

I bury my face in his neck and let his arms close around me. His body still carries the cold of the night, the scent of smoke, sweat, and blood.

But under it?

I feel his heartbeat.

I feel him .

And for the first time in days, I believe in a future.

He came home.

We get tomorrow.

I keep my voice even. “Milan’s gone.”

She stares at me. Searching for doubt. For hesitation. There’s none.

“I saw you with ashes on your clothes,” I say quietly. “And all I could think was—how much I want to give you a world that doesn’t keep taking.”

She turns then. Face flushed, eyes bright.

“That was too close,” she murmurs.

“I know.”

She exhales. And maybe now we can put the past behind us.

There’s silence. Not heavy—just real. I pull her into my arms, and her arms wrap around my neck.

I want her. I always want her.

“I love you,” I say.

She doesn’t say another word. But I watch something shift in her posture. Something small. Something fierce, and I know she believes in us .

“I love you, too, Wolfie.”

We’re not just surviving anymore. We’re planning our future.

And I’ll kill the next man who tries to take that from me.