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I watched Olivia’s face carefully as I asked the question that had me tied up in knots. Was she tricked somehow, or had she gone willingly with Zoey?

Zoey, who was actually Daria Kuzmin, a girl I thought had died eight years ago in an explosion of my making. That was some long-buried baggage I hadn’t expected to get dug up and shoved in my face after trying all these years to make peace with the accident.

My brothers assured me that it wasn’t my fault; my intel that the building should have been empty was good. That collateral damage happened. But I thought I had been responsible for the deaths of two innocent kids, something that wasn’t normal even in my line of work. The fact that Daria was alive and Rurik had kept her hidden all this time didn’t make me feel any better. Her cousin had still been in that warehouse when it blew, and unlike Daria, he didn’t make it out.

Maybe Rurik did have every right to have beef with me, but not with Olivia. She had nothing to do with it and was off limits. I wasn’t going to go easy on him because of some leftover guilt. Even if I wanted to, Ivan was so pissed off at the betrayal that he wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. I had left their punishment up to him, so whatever he decided would be on him and not me.

Olivia was a different story. My feelings pinballed between anger and devastation. Part of me wanted to live in denial, but the questions just came out. She was still in my arms, holding onto me and resting her cheek against my shoulder, and it felt right even though her face was unreadable.

I kept her close, taking her to the living room where it would be more comfortable to have this conversation.

Would she lie to me? And would I even be able to recognize the truth from her at that point? Or how much of what she’d shared with me had been real. It had all been real for me since the moment I learned she was having trouble that I could help her out of. But she’d been fighting what we had ever since.

Some distant voice in my head was saying I should cut her loose, give her what she wanted, and ignore the pain that would inflict on me for the rest of my life. My heart railed against that, unsure if I’d ever get used to the fact I was going to die alone, because no woman would ever compare to Olivia. No one could ever replace her in my heart.

She was mine, but more importantly, I was hers. She just might not want me.

Maybe I really was the monster. Maybe I didn’t deserve her. But that didn’t mean I’d give her up.

Fuck. I had never had any problem like this before, and had never been faced with something that had me so divided. I just had to wait and hear something from her.

We crossed through the kitchen, and before I set her feet on the floor in the living area, I looked deep into her chocolate brown eyes, trying to see something there I could hold onto. I let go and turned her to face me, gripping her arms as she tipped up her chin to face me. All I wanted to do was kiss her and tell how damn brave she was, but not until I knew the truth.

And maybe after it would be too late.

“Tell me,” I said, sounding far gruffer than I meant to.

She sighed, and then took a deep breath to answer. Before any words came out, I heard a small click that set all my senses into high gear. I knew that sound like it was my own voice. There was a bomb in close proximity and we’d somehow just tripped it into activation.

I jerked my head left and right, scoping every inch of the room behind Olivia. Sure enough, the device was sitting right in plain sight on the coffee table five feet behind her. Forty-five seconds ticked down to forty-four, forty-three…

It was a big enough bomb to bring the roof down on us, but also childishly rudimentary. I could have the thing disarmed with time left on the counter, but first, I had to get Olivia to safety.

Noticing my intense concentration, she turned and saw it as I yanked her behind me and shoved her toward the door.

“Go,” I commanded, hurrying toward the bomb, assessing each wire as I got closer.

Before I could reach it to get started, she grabbed my arm, digging in her heels and tugging me away. “Dima, what the hell are you doing?” she yelled.

Thirty-seven, thirty-six…

“The whole house will be destroyed if I don’t dismantle that thing,” I told her. “Now get out, and don’t stop running until you get past the driveway.”

I thought I was being perfectly reasonable, but she still refused to go, grabbing onto me and yanking with all her might. “I don’t give a damn about the house,” she screamed in terror. “I’m not leaving without you.”

Well, fuck. I looked at the countdown. There wasn’t enough time to disarm the bomb now, and we were both about to be blown to smithereens. I swore again and picked her up, slinging her over my shoulder and hauling ass toward the front door.

I had a rough idea of the blast radius and kept going even as we cleared the door and made it to the front lawn. My mental countdown kept going with every step, and I flung myself to the ground, rolling so that Olivia landed on me. Then, I curled my body around hers as the house went up in a deafening roar.

Debris rained down all around us, and I shielded her as best I could, getting smacked with burning hot roof tiles and bits of wood. One of the brass bedroom door knobs landed a few feet from our heads, and the teapot dinged off my back and bounced away.

When it was all over, and smoke filled the air around us, I rolled away to make sure nothing had hit Olivia. My back and arms were in various degrees of pain from getting pummeled by bits of the house, but except for the injuries Kuzmin had inflicted, she seemed fine.

“It’s over,” I said, wiping away the tears that streaked down her face as she sobbed uncontrollably. “We’re fine.”

Pulling her to sit up, I tried to wrap my arms around her until her tears subsided, but she scooted back, wound up her arm, and slapped me hard enough to make my jaw rattle.

“The hell?”

“The hell, nothing,” she cried, looking so furious I braced for another smack. Then she threw her arms around me and held on tight. “Don’t you ever, ever risk your life like that again.”

I didn’t dare laugh, and just held her until she was slightly less hysterical. “What about you?” I asked a few moments later. “You risked your life running back in after me. Why would you do that?”

I took her face in my hands and swiped away her tears with my thumbs, taking in her beauty and searching her eyes for the truth. What I saw there was a reflection of everything I felt in my own heart. It had to be real. There was no way she could fake that, not after she ran straight toward a bomb for me.

She was still crying too hard to answer right away. I held onto her and held my breath, waiting for my fate to be sealed one way or another as the house burned behind us.