Page 120 of Silent Schemes

This is something else.

A conversation in violence, the only language we both speak fluently.

Every move is a word, every block a sentence, every moment of contact a paragraph of things we can't say out loud.

He throws a punch that I duck under, using his momentum to try for a takedown.

He sprawls, prevents it, spins to face me again.

I aim a kick at his injured ribs, pulling it at the last second because even now, even after everything, I can't bear to cause him more pain.

He catches my leg anyway, uses it to pull me close, and suddenly we're grappling, each trying to gain position without actually winning.

It's a dance we've done before—in his gym, in his bedroom, in that warehouse when we first worked together.

But this time it's goodbye.

Each strike is a memory: that first night at the casino when he knew what I was and wanted me anyway; the morning in his kitchen when he stitched my wounds with hands that had killed dozens but touched me like I was precious; the afternoon in the gym when everything changed, when I chose him over everything I'd ever known.

Each block is an apology: for the betrayal he always saw coming; for the lies that were supposed to protect him; for the love that was never supposed to happen but crashed into us like a freight train anyway.

He pins me finally against the hood of the car, both of us breathing hard, bodies pressed together in a way that's more embrace than restraint.

His hands are on my wrists, but gently, like he's holding me together rather than holding me down.

My legs are around his waist, but not to fight, just to keep him close for these last moments.

"Is the child okay?" he asks.

"Still here. Still strong."

His eyes close briefly, and I see him calculating—the danger, the future, the impossibility of it all. "You'll raise it alone?"

"Yes."

"In Prague?"

I don't ask how he knows where we're going. "Yes."

"You'll tell it what? About me?"

I meet his eyes, see the pain there that he's trying to hide behind tactical assessment.

This is killing him as much as it's killing me. "That its father was a king. That he loved deeply and fought honorably. That he let us go to keep us safe."

"Lies," he says, but there's no heat in it.

"Necessary ones. The kind that lets children sleep at night."

His hand moves to my stomach, spreads flat against where our child grows.

For a moment, his control cracks completely, and I see everything—the grief for the family we'll never be, the rage at the situation that's torn us apart, the love that survives despite bullets and betrayal and blood.

The ugly truth is my family will kill me and my sister if I come back here.

I think Varrick will too, honestly.

His whole body trembles with the effort of not pulling me closer, not keeping me here.