Page 117 of His Stolen Bride

“Everyone,” I answer. “Quietly.”

She nods once. “Vienna is polite until it isn’t.”

She said that in Vladimir’s room too. She listened. She learned. She came back and she didn’t lose herself in it.

A thought settles, sharp and clean.

I’m not just protecting her.

I’m building with her.

I gesture toward the chair across from me. “Sit,” I tell her.

Alina does, steady.

I slide a different folder across the desk.

It has her name on it.

Not Morozova. Not Morin. Something else. A new identity. Documents. Accounts. Routes. Safe houses. Enough money to disappear for a lifetime.

Her eyes drop to it and lift back to mine.

“You kept that ready,” she says.

“Yes.”

“You weren’t bluffing,” she says.

“No.”

She doesn’t touch the folder. She leaves it where it is like it’s a weapon she doesn’t want to pick up unless she has to.

“Why show me now?” she asks.

“Because the war is ending,” I say. “The next part is life. And life is where people get careless.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “And you think I’ll want that door again.”

“I think you should always have it,” I reply.

The silence between us stretches.

Enzo clears his throat. “I’ll take the noon call in the hall,” he says and leaves.

We’re alone.

Alina looks at the folder again, then pushes it back toward me with two fingers.

“I’m not leaving,” she says.

I nod once. “I know.”

She holds my gaze. “So, what now?”

I lean back slightly, controlled, but my voice drops anyway. “Now you stop being hidden.”

Her breath catches.