Page 24 of His Traded Bride

"Custom," he says. "I had it commissioned four months ago."

My eyes burn and my throat tightens and I grip the dagger and feel it fit against my palm like a key sliding into a lock.

"Happy anniversary," he says.

I lean across the console and kiss him. The dagger is still in my hand and his fingers come up to cup my jaw as the kiss deepens.It tastes like a year of mornings in our kitchen and nights in our bed and every moment in between where I looked at this man and thought, how did I get this lucky?

When I pull back, he's watching me with that expression. The one I saw at the altar. The one that says I see you.

"There's one more thing," he says.

He reaches for the collar of his shirt and pulls it down.

Over his heart, where the ink from his existing tattoo spreads across his chest, there's a new addition. Fresh. The skin around it is still slightly red. A dagger. Small, precise, rendered in clean black lines. The blade curves the same way the one in my hand curves. The handle has the same textured grip. It's an exact replica, inked permanently into his skin, positioned directly over his heart.

I touch it the skin around it gently, because it's fresh. I feel his heart thudding beneath it, strong and steady and mine.

"When did you get this done?" I whisper.

"Yesterday. While you were training with Jess."

"You tattooed my weapon over your heart."

"I tattooed my wife over my heart." He covers my hand with his, pressing my palm flat against the ink, against the warmth of him. "You're the sharpest thing I've ever held, Stefania. And you're the only thing that's ever made me feel alive. I wanted you on my skin permanently. So that every time I look in the mirror, I see you with me."

A tear slides down my cheek. I let it fall.

A year ago, I was traded to a stranger like currency. Handed over by a brother who valued his ambition more than my autonomy. Walked down an aisle toward a man I didn't know, carrying the certainty that the truest version of myself would have to die so the wife I had to be could survive.

I look at Yevgeny in the dark car and I know with absolute certainty that this is the life I was supposed to have. Every broken piece of my history, my parents’ untimely deaths, Yana's murder, the sloppy first kill, the scar on my thigh, the six years of training, all of it was the path that led me here. To this man. To this partnership. To a marriage that was supposed to be a cage and became the only place I've ever been free.

“There’s another reason why this was the one,” I finally say, building the courage to tell him what I need to. “And why this wasn’t a kill.”

He frowns and tilts his head, looking at me as though he can read what I’m about to say on my face before the words even materialize.

“I made a promise to you on our wedding night.” The words are quiet as I find myself breathless with anticipation. I briefly watch him search his memory and land on what I know he remembers. “I promised I wouldn’t put myself in danger when I was carrying your child.”

His face opens up as the realization dawns across his features.

“This was the last one for at least the next seven-and-a-half months or so.”

“You’re pregnant,” he says, fully turning to face me.

I nod. “About six weeks or so. I found out this morning.”

“I’m going to be a dad.” He smiles. That rare, real smile that changes his entire face.

I laugh. A proper laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere deep and warm and unguarded. He pulls me against him and I go willingly, the dagger still in my hand, his heartbeat under my palm, and the whole dark, beautiful, dangerous world stretched out in front of us.