We pull through the gates just after 3 AM. The house is quiet, most lights off except security perimeters.
I should shower in the guest wing. Should deal with the blood and soot before anyone sees me like this.
Instead, I head straight upstairs to my bedroom.
She's there.
Valerie, curled in my bed wearing one of my shirts, reading something on her phone. She looks up when I enter, and her eyes widen at the state of me.
Blood spatter across my chest and face. Soot streaking my arms. Grigor's blood still under my fingernails.
Three weeks ago, she would have screamed. Flinched. Run. Looked like she would faint.
Tonight, she just sets her phone aside and stands.
"Is it done?" Her voice is steady.
"Yes."
"Thank goodness." She moves toward the bathroom. "Come on. Let me help you clean up."
“You did not sleep?”
“I couldn’t.” She takes my hand. “Come.”
The domesticity of it is surreal. She runs a bath while I strip off the rest of my clothes, dumps expensive salts into the water that smell like lavender and rosemary. Steam fills the space, and my muscles involuntarily relaxes.
When the tub is full, she helps me in, and I allow her because I need her touch, no matter how little. Her hands are gentle as she uses a washcloth to scrub blood from my shoulders, my chest, my face.
"Did he suffer?" she asks quietly.
"Yes."
"Good." No hesitation. No moral conflict. Just satisfaction that the man who threatened Mila paid the price. "He deserved it."
I catch her wrist, pull her closer. "You're not bothered by this? By what I am? What I do?"
"I am… I mean, I would have been bothered three weeks ago." She continues washing, methodical and careful. "Now I just see a man protecting his family. Doing what needs to be done, now I think if it were my daughter, I’d do the same."
I chuckle under my breath, "That's a dangerous way to think."
"Maybe." She shrugs and rinses the cloth, wrings it out. "But it's honest."
Her fingers find the split skin on my knuckles, damage from hitting Grigor's face repeatedly. She examines them with a small frown, then reaches for antiseptic.
"These need tending."
I let her work. Watch her clean each wound, apply ointment, wrap them carefully in gauze. The care she takes is almost painful in its tenderness.
When she's done, I pull her into the bath with me.
"Lev—my clothes—"
"Take them off then."
She grumbles under her breath, but does it anyway. Strips out of my shirt and her underwear, steps into the water, settles between my legs with her back against my chest.
Perfect.
