Page 90 of The Russian's Revenge Bride

“Hi,” I said, suddenly awkward. What did you say to the father you’d never known you had?

He solved the problem by pulling me into a hug that smelled like paint and coffee and something indefinably safe.

“I’ve wanted to do that for twenty-one years,” he said quietly.

Dinner was strange in the best possible way. Mom looked younger, lighter, like someone had lifted a weight she’d been carrying for decades. Garrison asked about my work, about my designs, about everything William had never bothered to learn about me.

“You get that from me,” he said when I mentioned sketching. “The need to create something with your hands. Your mother told me you design everything in sketchbooks first.”

“It’s like therapy,” I admitted. “When everything feels chaotic, drawing helps me think.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” He disappeared for a moment, returning with a leather portfolio. “I kept these. Drew them after every conversation I had with your mother about you over the years.”

I opened the portfolio and felt my breath catch. Sketches of a little girl with my eyes and my smile. Imagined drawings of birthday parties and school plays and all the moments he’d missed. A father’s love preserved in graphite and charcoal.

“They’re beautiful,” I whispered.

“So are you.” He touched my cheek gently. “I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become, Eleanor. Despite everything, despite him, you became exactly who you were meant to be.”

I looked across the table at Maxim, who was watching this reunion with something soft in his storm-gray eyes. My mother was crying happy tears, and Garrison was showing me twenty-one years of drawings he’d made of a daughter he couldn’t claim.

This was what family was supposed to feel like.

Later that night, back in our bedroom, I sat curled on the windowsill with my sketchbook, trying to capture the feeling of the evening in lines and shadows. The stars were sharp against the dark sky, and I found myself drawing them, weaving them into patterns that looked like hope.

Maxim walked in, still wearing the dress shirt from dinner but with the sleeves rolled up and the top buttons undone. He moved with that predatory grace that had terrified me eight months ago and now made my pulse quicken for entirely different reasons.

He reached over and gently took the pencil from my hand, setting it aside before pulling me into his arms.

“You’ve been quiet,” he said, settling me against his chest.

I breathed in his scent, that combination of expensive cologne and something uniquely him that made me feel safe in a way I’d never known I needed.

“I was scared,” I admitted, the words muffled against his shoulder.

“Of what?”

“That killing him would change something between us.” I pulled back to look at his face. “That knowing you murdered my…that you killed William…would make me see you differently.”

Maxim’s jaw tightened. “And does it?”

I studied his face, this man who’d kidnapped me and claimed me and ultimately freed me from a life of quiet desperation. Who’d killed for me without hesitation and would do it again if I asked.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “It does.”

I felt him tense, saw something vulnerable flash across his features.

“It makes me see how far you’ll go to protect what’s yours,” I continued. “How you’d rather have blood on your hands than let anyone hurt me. It makes me see that you love me enough to become a monster if that’s what it takes to keep me safe.”

His expression shifted, relief mixing with something darker, hungrier.

“The only thing that’s changed,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from my cheek, “is how much more I’d kill to keep you safe.”

I looked into his eyes and knew, right then, that there was no safer place in the world for my heart than in the hands of this beautiful, brutal man who’d claimed me as his own.

I kissed him then, slow and deep, trying to pour eight months of love and trust and absolute certainty into the contact of our mouths. Trying to show him that I wasn’t afraid anymore. Not of him, not of what we’d built together, not of the blood it had taken to get here.

He responded like a man starving, his hands tangling in my hair as he deepened the kiss. When we broke apart, we were both breathing hard.