Page 28 of Crystal Veil

“You're alive,” she whispers, pressing her forehead to mine.

Her breath is warm against my skin, sweet and clean, standing apart from the destruction around us. Her touch is gentle but urgent. I want to comfort her, to promise that everything will be fine, but the words stick in my throat.

I wrap my arms around her, holding her tighter than the pain should allow. My ribs protest, my spine screams, but none of that matters. Her heartbeat thunders against my chest, rapid and strong, grounding me in the present moment. The scent of her skin, a blend of jasmine and vanilla, fills my nostrils, washing away the stench of explosives and death.

For a moment, I don't care about Bennato. Or Sergey. Or the blood crusted to my skin. I care only about her, the life growing inside her, and the fragile happiness I'd allowed myself to imagine.

But then reality shatters the moment like glass breaking in silence. I pull back, just enough to look into her brown eyes.They're wide with relief and lingering terror, her pupils dilated with shock.

“This isn't over,” I rasp, my voice rough with dust and emotion.

She stiffens in my arms, and I see understanding dawn in her expression as the relief begins to fade. I know the fear she's trying to hide.

“He got away,” I continue, my jaw tightening until the muscles ache. “Bennato slipped through the cracks while we bled. Bianca's dead. Sergey lives. And that bastard still walks free.”

The words taste bitter, like failure and unfinished business. Somewhere in this city, Francesco Bennato is probably celebrating his partial victory. He hurt me, but he failed to finish the job, and that failure will cost him everything.

Her fingers curl into my shirt, gripping the torn fabric like an anchor. “Renat...” Her voice breaks on my name. “You almost died. What if next time?—”

“Then next time I take him with me.”

The words leave no room for debate. I don't raise my voice. I don't need to. My resolve is carved into stone, as immutable as granite. This is now bigger than personal preference. It's about survival, about the future of everything I've built.

Her gaze drops to my chest, where she rests her hand over my heart. Her palm is warm through the ruined shirt, and I can feel my pulse hammering against her touch.

“I can feel it,” she whispers. “It's still beating. But it feels... different.”

She's not wrong. There's something darker in me now. Colder. The light I allowed myself when she came into my life has been dimmed by blood and betrayal. The gentle man who made love to her in the darkness of my bedroom, who whispered promises against her skin, is still here. But he's been tempered by fire and hardened by necessity. I'm not sure that light will ever burn as brightly again.

“He made this personal,” I say, my voice dropping to a whisper. But she hears every word. “He tried to kill you. Our child. And me. He played with fire, and now I'm going to burn down his entire fucking world.”

Around us, the cleanup crew works quickly, clearing bodies and spent shells, leaving behind nothing but rubble. The site may be remote, but it won’t be much longer before the authorities arrive.

At last, she gives a slow nod, her voice barely more than a breath. “Then finish it. Send him to hell where he belongs and come back to me. To us.”

Her hand moves to her stomach, to the small baby bump carrying the promise of our future. The gesture is protective and maternal, and it hits me harder than the explosion did. She's not just asking me to survive. She's asking me to be the man our child will need. The father who protects them at all costs and then comes home. The husband who chooses love over vengeance.

I lean in and kiss her, fierce and broken. The taste of her tears is salt and steel, familiar and strange all at once. Her lips are soft beneath mine, warm and alive and everything worth fighting for. When we break apart, her breath mingles with mine in the narrow space between us.

The city stretches out before us, full of shadows and secrets. Somewhere in those shadows, Francesco Bennato thinks he's won. He's about to learn how wrong he is.

13

ELENA

The walls of the estate are too thick. They trap the silence like a tomb, suffocating me with their heaviness. Every footstep I take echoes through the corridors, bouncing off marble and mahogany until the sound becomes a reckoning in the wake of what almost happened.

Renat moves through these halls like a specter now, his presence both everywhere and nowhere at once. The man who once filled rooms with his commanding energy has become a shadow of himself. His hazel eyes, once warm with flecks of gold that caught the Miami sunlight, have turned cold and flat. The light has been swallowed whole by darkness, consumed by whatever demon feeds on his rage.

He barely speaks anymore. Words come in clipped sentences when they come at all. Instructions to Artur. Commands to his men. Nothing soft. Nothing for me. When I try to reach him, when I stretch my hand across the chasm that has opened between us, he's already gone. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Somewhere, I am unable to follow. Somewhere, I'm not sure I want to go.

The silence in our bedroom is the worst. It presses against my eardrums until I want to scream just to break it. Instead, I sit on the edge of the massive bed, the silk sheets cool beneath my palms, and place my hand over the swell of my belly. Our baby. Our child, growing inside me, even as the man I love plots another execution. Another bloodbath. Another step deeper into the abyss that seems determined to claim him.

The baby kicks a soft flutter. Or maybe it’s just my imagination, my desperate need to feel something pure in this house of shadows. Either way, the flutter beneath my ribs brings tears to my eyes. This child will know peace, I promise silently. This child will know safety. This child will know love without conditions, without blood and vengeance. But first, I have to save myself.

The thought arrives with perfect clarity, cutting through the fog of fear and uncertainty that has clouded my judgment for days. It comes with a sob that lodges in my throat, refusing to surface. I choke it down, swallow it like bitter medicine, necessary and harsh.

Renat saved me from Bennato's men. He protected me when bullets shattered our world. He has loved me in the only way he knows how, fiercely, possessively, and completely. But this version of him, this hollow-eyed stranger who speaks only of war and retribution, this isn't love anymore. This is vengeance wearing love's face. And I cannot let our baby grow up in the blast zone of his war.