Page 39 of The Breath Before Forever

“What do you know about the things I’ve done, kisska?”

It was a genuine question.

For a few reasons ...

Vera took the bait, but not the way he expected her to. “Enough to say you know there’s a reason why you don’t want any skin in the game. Your words, not mine.”

Fair.

Reasonable, even.

“The problem you miss—or overlook, rather,” he corrected with an indifferent roll of his shoulders against the floor while his gaze fixated on the vaulted ceiling overhead, “is that it wouldn’t make a difference, my love.” His head fell back to the side, and his gaze landed on her as he smiled sadly.

He could finally finish painting that earlier picture for her even if it would shatter what remained of her rose-colored glasses regarding their marriage and life together. Hell, he thought she had already figured it out by now.

Shame.

“What’s done has already been done—I wrote the past. Nothing, not even me, gets to determine the future that’s yet to be made because of it. You see? Either the process and the oath means something to men who someday might want to find themselves in my position”— retired; a thief out of the game—”or it doesn’t. And either my past and legacy is enough of a warning to make it valuable and important for those men to leave me alone, or it isn’t. But what’s done is done, all the bodyguards in the world won’t make a difference.”

“Are we just sitting ducks?” Vera asked.

“Try not to think of it that way,” he returned easily, the joking tone belying the pain stabbing into the base of his skull, “who does that help, yeah?”

“Vaslav—”

“They’d have to get us together,” he interjected before his wife could concern herself over minor details of a plot that they didn’t even know was afoot. This was why he didn’t like to share his thought process regarding certain things. While he planned for events that may never happen because it was what managed his more obsessive tendencies, others simply worked themselves into a panicked mess.

Good for nothing.

“Which we’ll rarely ever be, and certainly not with enough forethought to let anyone else have the knowledge except in this house and on this property,” he added the impossibility under his breath.

Not quiet enough, apparently.

“So, what, just one of us gets killed or—”

“If it’s me, then it was never meant for you,” Vaslav explained.

“And if it’s me?”

Well ...

“God save them all,” he said.

“I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“I didn’t realize we had that chat for you to respond, honestly.” Vaslav sighed, scrubbing a hand over his mouth and down his throat before finally shoving himself higher into a sitting position. It did nothing for the current weakness in his stomach. A few deep gulps of air helped with the swaying of his shoulders, but little else. “Christ,” he mumbled into his hand. “You’ve got to put that other shit out of your mind—we won’t live scared. What good does that do?”

If she believed him, Vera didn’t say.

“Come to bed,” Vera urged instead. “I’ll help you to sleep.”

Or something close to it.

She always did, that was a certainty he could count on when it really counted. At the moment, a couple of blissful hours of near-sleep with her was a promise he couldn’t refuse. His body ached for her softness back, and the clean sheets that she’d put on their bed earlier in the day teased him from where he sat on the cold, hard floor.

“I know it doesn’t always make sense,” Vaslav said, groaning when he stumbled his way to his feet. His wife, still standing with her arms crossed over her chest in the doorway, remained like a silent statue as she waited for him. Stripped down to nothing but a blue sports bra and matching boyshort panties, she was his every wet dream come true. Wrapped around his finger, happy to be under his thumb, and wickedly willing to follow him anywhere or do anything he asked of her. Yes, she was perfect.

Except he couldn’t even get his dick to react in that moment. Not even a pathetic twitch to say the monster was alive to notice.