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“It hardly matters now, in any case,” Yuri adds, out of the blue, “since she is with Maksim.”

Maksim straightens off the wall, and I go still, suddenly on the receiving end of every stare in the room.

I do a double-take and laugh, short and startled. “Maksim and I are not together,” I say. “I lied to you in Philadelphia because I needed you to stop looking for me. I let him drive me away from the hospital, and I let him help me move, because I had no one else, I was in over my head, and I was carrying his brother’s child alone. That is not the same thing as yes. I never once said yes to him.”

Lev’s pupils contract.

Maksim makes a small sound, and the air in the room goes vacuum-sealed and tight. For the first time since I walked in, newfound hope lights up behind Lev’s eyes.

“That doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I add, my eyes flashing briefly. “Not yet, and maybe not for a long time.”

The light in his eyes stops where it is.

He’s quiet for a long, protracted moment. “I understand,” he says at last, measured and even.

“You took a bullet for me,” I say, my stomach knotting at the memory. “So I know your feelings are real. That part I believe now. But a bullet doesn’t erase everything that came before it.” My voice shakes at the end, and I force a wavering smile to cover it.

His gaze sinks, but he doesn’t look away from me. “I know,” he says.

“You always say that,” I say, cocking my head slightly. “You always just say you know.”

“Then tell me what I should say instead,” he says.

I have no clean answer for him. He’s buried everything he feels somewhere deep and layered that I cannot reach, nothing at all like Maksim, who wears every thought on the outside.

I don’t have an answer for the question of us either.

“I’m confused,” I admit, while a small voice whispers in my head that confused is not the same as no. “Part of me wants to believe you, and a bigger part of me is scared to. The last time I let myself believe you, I ended up giving in entirely to your control. You decided every single thing for me, and then you sent me hobbling back to my old desk without a word. I cannot survive that twice. It could be the death of me. I have Milo, and now I have this baby, and I don’t get to fall apart the way other people do.”

“So show me you have changed,” I say, reclaiming my voice. “Not with money. Not with orders. I need to actually see it.”

His gaze slides down to my lips and back up, slow, as if he wants to capture me in a kiss. “Tell me what to change,” he says.

“You can start by not deciding things for me,” I say.

“Done,” he says, a little tipsily, so fast that I wonder if the anesthesia is still in his blood.

“I’m not finished,” I say.

“I will agree to all of it,” he says, and turns his hand over on the sheet, palm open, and waits. He doesn’t reach for me.

I rest my fingertips against his open palm, and his fingers curl only the barest amount, holding the restraint at the exact edge of a grip. God, I hate how much I want this. He wants to close his hand around mine. I can feel it in the fine tremor running through his fingers, in the effort it costs him to keep them still.

This is a mob boss, once my lover, a man who takes what he wants without asking, and he is holding himself back for me, and that restraint burns hotter through me than any kiss ever has, hotter even than the remembered weight of his big hand on my thigh.

“Let me show you,” he says. “That is all I ask.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” I warn him.

“And what about me?” Maksim interjects, jabbing a thumb at his own chest with the pout of a sulky child.

Lev doesn’t let go of my fingertips. “What about you,” he says, calm, like it is just another Tuesday.

“Why does only he get a chance?” Maksim demands. “Am I the dumb bastard here?”

“Because she wants to give me one,” Lev says, his lips curling with the promise of a fight. “That is reason enough.”

Maksim’s face darkens.