Page 135 of Married to My Sis’s Bratva Fiancé

The past version of us wasn't worth returning to.

If there was an after, it only started from the rubble.

Kiryan's thumb kept stroking the back of my hand, slow.

"Elena."

"What?"

"When I can stand again, I want to ask you something."

His tone was too calm. It made my skin prickle.

"You can't ask now?"

"If I ask now, you'll say I am milking the injury for sympathy."

"You are."

The corner of his mouth lifted.

That was the look Pakhan wore right before a negotiation.

"Then I wait until I can stand on my own."

His fingers tightened, not letting me pull away.

My heart slammed once, heavy.

Chapter 28

Kiryan

I braced a hand on the mattress and pushed myself upright. The shoulder harness bit into the wound, and my left lung felt like somebody scraped it with a dull blade.

"Move back in. I need you to take care of me."

She glanced toward the doorway. Olga waited out there with two aides, and Feodor had even arranged for a nurse to stay at the manor.

"You don't lack people to take care of you," she said.

"They aren't you."

"How are they different?"

Admitting I needed someone felt harder than ordering a room full of armed men to stand down. My father had treated need like weakness, then spent his life proving that indifference only got people killed. I'd learned him too well. Now it was on me to carve that rot out, piece by piece.

"I want you to take care of me."

Her lashes fluttered, just once.

The hand resting on my arm looked small, paint-smudged at the tips, a faint dusty blue. She'd been working before she came to the hospital. She hadn't thrown away the life she'd started rebuilding just because I'd taken a bullet.

I liked her like that.

And I hated myself for ever wanting to break her.

"Just take care of you?" she asked.