Page 75 of Bratva Stalker Kidnaps His Bride

The back of my neck goes warm.

“He is—” I halt, because the sentence could go seventeen different ways and I am trying to find the one that is accurate without being everything, and failing. “Complicated,” I finish.

“Complicated? Give us something more,” my mother tuts.

“Complicated like—he shows up,” I manage lamely, the simplicity of it surprising me even as I say it. “In every way that matters. He shows up. He does not ask for acknowledgment for it or make it a performance. He just does the thing that needs doing and stands there after. He brought me coffee every morning for three months without being asked. He sat with me when I cried about you both and he didn't try to fix it. He flew to Dubai on a lead I had and saidI'm going with youlike it was the most obvious thing.”

“Of course he did, dear. He loves you,” my mother says like it’s obvious, and I try not to freeze.

“We haven't… quite used that word,” I laugh awkwardly.

“Does not mean it is not true,” she says softly.

My father’s brown eyes are assessing and knowing as they peer deep into my soul. “Does he make you feel safe?” he asks.

The question catches me off guard.

Does he make me feel safe?

I remember the alley in Dubai, and the corridor in the compound, and the mornings I woke up and found fresh bandaging on my arm. I think about the night I came back from Greece and walked into him and did not have to explain why I was falling apart.

“Yes,” I blurt out. “He makes me feel safe like I’ve never felt before.”

My mother envelopes my hand with hers, and the warmth of it is something I have been waiting fifteen years to feel.

“Then that is enough for now,” she reassures.

My father nods like it’s a conclusion he has accepted. He pats my head again.

Sitting with my parents for only the fourth time in my conscious memory, talking about the man I married under duress…

Who would have thought my life would come to this? And that I have, somehow, across the improbable and complicated architecture of everything that followed, fallen entirely in love with it.

My parents leave at six.

My mother hugs me at the door tightly, like she’s not certain how much she is allowed to ask for, and has chosen with their arms rather than their words. I hug her back, inhaling her scent like I never got to as a kid.

“Same time Thursday?” I ask, pulling back.

She nods, and this smile is the first completely unguarded one I have seen from her. My father squeezes my shoulder on his way out. Though a small gesture, it is the largest thing he has given me and I receive it accordingly.

The door closes and everything goes quiet. The same ordinary hush as before.

Staring at the closed door for a moment, I let the last four days wash over me slowly.

The compound, its corridor, the binding at my father's wrists, my mother's hand on my face before she left. How curious they were about me and Mikhail, and how open they are to him; it’s a careful, fragile thing that exists at the end of it that is not yet quite forgiveness but might as well be.

His musky scent envelopes my senses as his warm palm comes to rest on my shoulder, steady and grounding.

I am here,it says.

I turn around, neck tilting to look him in the eye.

The afternoon light catches the ink on his throat—those dark vines I've traced a hundred times with my fingers, curling up from beneath his collar like something alive. His hair is a mess, falling across his forehead, and there's a shadow of bruising along his jaw from his fight with O’Connor.

He is close and there’s none of that careful energy that has been serving my parents' needs rather than anything else. Just us, in the penthouse, in the quiet after.

“They're gone,” I exhale hoarsely.