I lay there, my head on Aleksander's chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
"Tell me about her," I said. "Elena. Tell me about the woman you loved."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he spoke, his voice low and rough.
"She was brave. Brighter than anyone I've ever met. She made me laugh—really laugh, the kind of laugh that comes from somewhere deep. She was pregnant when she died. I didn't know until after."
"Gabriel and Nathan?"
"They were already born. This was a third. A baby we'd been trying for years to have." He paused. "She was so happy. She'd been so happy. And then she was gone."
I felt the tears on his chest—his, not mine. I looked up. He was crying, silent tears sliding down his cheeks.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I don't want your pity."
"I'm not offering pity. I'm offering... understanding." I touched his face, my thumb tracing the line of his jaw. "You've been carrying this for years. You've been holding it alone. That's not strength. That's just loneliness."
"Monika..."
"I'm not going to leave." The words came out before I could stop them. "I don't know why. I don't know if it's love or exhaustion or something else. But I'm not going to leave."
He pulled me tighter, his arms wrapped around me like I was the only thing holding him together.
"Thank you," he said.
"Don't thank me. I'm not doing it for you."
"Then why?"
I thought about it. About the cages. About the warehouse. About the things I'd seen and done and agreed to.
"Because I have nowhere else to go," I said. "Because this is the only home I have. Because I'm broken too, and maybe we can be broken together."
He kissed my forehead. Soft. Gentle. The way he'd kissed me the night we'd first been together.
"Broken together," he repeated. "That's enough."
"For now."
We lay in silence, watching the sun rise, and I felt something shift in my chest. Something that might have been hope. Or resignation. Or something else entirely.
I didn't know.
I didn't care.
The day passed in a blur.
I ate breakfast with the family—Gabriel quiet, Nathan smirking, Aleksander stone-faced. No one mentioned the night before. No one mentioned the confrontation. We ate our eggs and pretended everything was normal.
But nothing was normal.
That night, I lay in my bed and stared at the ceiling, and I thought about Elena. About her face, her smile, the baby she'd never held.
I thought about Aleksander, hunting her killers for twenty years. I thought about the plan he'd made, the way he was using me as bait.
And I thought about myself, lying in this bed, letting three men use me like a toy.
