Page 36 of Empire
If I fail, a monster gets her.
I turn my head and look at Ruslan again. His mouth parts slightly on an exhale. There’s a bruise low on his throat where I put my mouth a few hours ago, and seeing it now feels almost sacramental.
My mark on my weakness. My proof that for a handful of hours, he was simply mine.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, so quietly that even I barely hear it.
I know the shape of my choice without speaking it aloud, and understand that whatever happens next, will not begin with hatred. It will begin here.
With love, with fear. With my sister’s future held over my head like a blade, and with me lying beside a man I love, knowing I’m about to put a dagger in him.
I do not move.
I do not sleep.
I only lie there, staring at the first gray light touching Ruslan’s face, and wait for the morning to finish making a traitor out of me.
Ruslan
Dangerous – Sleep Token
Thevillasitsfarenough from the city that silence sounds real here.
Actual silence, the kind that doesn’t belong to hotel corridors, conference floors, or family compounds where every quiet moment is just another form of surveillance.
Out here, the world still makes noise, but none of it sounds like a threat.
Cicadas in the trees, the whisper of leaves, distant water, and old wooden beams settling in the heat. Nothing that means danger. Nothing that screamsfathers.
I bought this place in Kolomna a year ago through three different names and a man in Naples who doesn’t ask questions because he prefers cash to curiosity.
It isn’t grand by any standards of our families, which is exactly why I like it. No ballroom, no staff quarters full of ears, no front drive long enough for a spectacle.
Just a low stone house built into the rise of the land; all pale walls, shuttered windows, and a kitchen too small to host anything but conversation.
The first time I brought Salvatore here, he stood in the doorway with his coat still on and looked around like he was waiting for the trap to show itself.
There isn’t one, which is why he starts to relax later on.
Not all at once, he’s still a Vieri. But I see it happen in pieces: the line of his shoulders eases within a few hours, his mouth starts losing that constant hard set that reminds me so much of Aldo.
He stops checking the windows every time he hears a car passing on the empty stretch of road below. But the thing that tells me he’s finally started to relax is the way he starts falling asleep faster here. As if the animal part of him knows this is the closest thing either of us has to neutral ground.
I shouldn’t let myself think that way. Neutral makes things sound safe, and safe makes men stupid.
And fuck, do we become stupid here.
The day after we arrive starts with sunlight through the linen curtains and Salvatore still asleep beside me—on his stomach, face half-turned into the pillow, dark hair a mess across the white linen.
I wake before him because years of training, habit, and general mistrust of the world make proper rest feel like a weakness I only indulge in with the help of a needle.
But here, with him in my bed and the villa keeping the outside world away, I lie still instead of immediately moving. That alone is fucking miraculous.
He sleeps more deeply here, too. Not soft, because even in sleep, Salvatore carries tension in the hidden part of himself that still believes love is an ambush.
But deeper, yes. He breathes slower, doesn’t wake at every floorboard sound, and doesn’t flinch toward wakefulness if I shift too quickly beneath the sheets.
I reach out and drag my knuckles lightly over his shoulder, down his spine, and his mouth tightens before his eyes open.
