Page 133 of Betrayal and Vows

“No, but I will keep watch over you. You’re safe. Sleep.”

I should sleep.

“Hold me.”

He gently tucks my body against his. “I will always hold you.”

“We’re in pretty big trouble,” I say.

He chuckles. “Yeah, we are.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“If you never saw me. Never met me. You—” I can’t finish.

“I was always going to go after Vadim,” he says. “Always. He was always going to try and kill me. Maybe he will, but he doesn’t get to kill you. I won’t let him touch you.”

He’s so calm as he discusses his father trying to kill him.

A second time.

We sit in silence for several minutes.

I’m trying to process everything.

Did I just sign my parents’ death warrants?

Are they even alive?

Did he kill them?

“Your mom left something in my room,” Anton says.

“What?”

He disentangles his body from mine and goes to a backpack Dmitri had brought in.

“Your mother brought me this box this morning.” He pulls it out and brings it back to the couch. “I assume it’s going to be more pictures. I didn’t look at it. Didn’t have time.”

I put my hand on top of the box. “Don’t.”

I don’t want to know. I’m afraid to know what my mother would have given him.

“I don’t think it’s bad,” he says. “I recognize this box.”

“From?”

He traces his finger over a design carved into the wooden box. It looks like it’s an old cigar box.

Really old.

“I think…it was my mother’s. I remember this.”

My heart clenches. I hear the grief in his voice. It’s the first time I’ve heard even a hint of vulnerability. When he told me about her, he’d been detached.

“Open it,” I tell him.