Page 81 of Bratva Stalker Kidnaps His Bride

“You are working.”

“No, ma’am.”

“You are conducting threat assessments while pretending to appreciate the sea,” she says drily.

“They can both be done at the same time.”

Her smile deepens. “I know.”

Those two words carry years inside them.

She reaches me and slips her fingers through mine with such ease that the movement feels less like choice than instinct. Once, she would have resisted every touch simply because I initiated it. Now her hand settles naturally against mine, warm despite the ocean breeze, her thumb tracing absent circles across my knuckles while she watches our son discover that collecting seashells requires considerably more patience than chasing waves.

Peace is a weird feeling. I expected it to feel triumphant, but it feels more like contentment, like finally discovering that theroom I spent years defending has contained an open window all along.

“He looks like you when he is concentrating,” Zara murmurs.

I follow her gaze to see Soren kneeling beside a tide pool, studying a tiny crab with complete fascination. His brow furrows exactly the way mine does during strategy meetings, as though the creature has presented him with a complex math problem.

“He looks like you when he refuses to give up.”

She smiles without looking at me.

“Poor child.”

“I think he’ll survive.”

She leans lightly against my shoulder.

“So long as he inherits your patience instead of mine.”

“You have remarkable patience.”

She turns toward me with theatrical disbelief. “I spent three consecutive days arguing with you because you reorganized my books by subject instead of author.”

“Objectively, it was more efficient.”

“My ass. It was objectively infuriating.”

“You eventually admitted it worked.”

“I admitted nothing of the sort,” she scoffs playfully.

“You admitted it silently.”

She laughs again, nothing like the careful laughter I remember when we first got married, measured as though joy itself required permission. This laughter arrives freely, rolling acrossthe shoreline like sunlight across water, impossible to separate from the morning surrounding it.

I just listen to its timbre as it fades.

There was a time when I believed silence was the highest form of peace because silence allowed preparation. I understand now that genuine peace has its own sound. It sounds like the ordinary conversations I have with Zara, in shared glances requiring no explanation, in Soren’s delighted shout as he discovers another shell that appears, to him, more extraordinary than every shell collected before it.

Farther along the beach, two bodies draws my attention, waiting near the wooden pathway leading from the dunes.

Arman and Samira. They don’t approach us immediately, allowing our son to continue his exploration uninterrupted. Time has softened neither of them into different people, though it has revealed who they used to be before life ripped them away from their daughter.

Arman still carries himself like he’s thinking about the consequences before decisions, his intelligence visible in every thoughtful pause. Samira's expression remains gentler, though experience has carved quieter depths into her eyes than photographs ever captured.

Zara notices them a heartbeat after I do.