Page 55 of The Russian's Revenge Bride

“Then we’ll face it together.”

“Eleanor—”

“Together, Maxim. Whatever comes next, we face it as a team. No more protecting me from the truth. No more trying to shield me from your world. I’m in this now, completely and permanently.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“I’m asking to be your wife. Your real wife, not just the woman you married for revenge. I’m asking to be your partner in everything, not just the parts you think I can handle.”

He turned to face me fully, his expression serious. “If we do this, if we really do this, there’s no going back. No safe word, no escape clause. You’ll be part of this world in ways that might destroy the person you used to be.”

“Good. I wasn’t particularly fond of the person I used to be anyway.”

Something that might have been a smile flickered across his lips. “She was pretty fucking amazing.”

“She was scared. Naive. Living half a life because she was too afraid to reach for what she really wanted.” I met his eyes, letting him see the truth in mine. “I’m not afraid anymore. Not of you, not of your world, not of what we could become together.”

“And what’s that?”

“Unstoppable.”

This time, he did smile, and it transformed his entire face. Not the careful, controlled expression he showed the world, but something real and warm and utterly devastating.

“Unstoppable,” he repeated, like he was testing the word on his tongue.

“Unstoppable,” I confirmed, sealing the promise with a kiss that tasted like forever and felt like coming home.

The war was still out there, waiting. Enemies still circled like sharks scenting blood in the water. Tomorrow would bring new threats, new challenges, new tests of everything we’d just promised each other.

But today, in this moment, we were enough. Love was enough. And for the first time since this all began, I felt like we might actually have a chance at something that looked like happiness.

Even if we had to fight for it with bullets and blood and the kind of ruthless determination that could reshape the world.

Especially then.

I settled against Maxim’s chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, and smiled. Let the enemies come. Let the war rage. Let the whole fucking world try to tear us apart.

They’d find out what happened when you threatened something a Bratva wife had decided to keep.

They’d learn what unstoppable really meant.

Chapter 16 – Maxim

Eleanor’s fingers traced lazy patterns across my chest, her touch light as butterfly wings but burning like brands against my skin. The afternoon had dissolved into early evening while we’d lost ourselves in each other, and now we lay in the aftermath of promises made flesh, of walls torn down and rebuilt into something stronger.

“How did you know?” she asked, her voice still husky from sleep and everything that had come before it.

“Know what?”

“How to find me. How you arrived at exactly the right moment to save my life.”

I felt my jaw tighten at the memory of that phone call, the moment when my carefully constructed world had tilted on its axis and nearly sent everything I cared about spiraling into darkness.

“Rafael called me,” I said, running my hand through her hair. “He’d been tracking your movements through the city, noticed when your car deviated from its expected route back to the house.”

“Rafael was tracking me?”

“Everyone gets tracked, Eleanor. Every car, every phone, every person who matters to this organization. It’s not personal; it’s survival.”