Page 62 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“Do you still visit it?”

“The garden’s gone now, replaced by something more practical years ago. I think about it sometimes anyway. She was the only person in that house who ever treated gentleness like it wasn’t a weakness.”

“I’m sorry. About your mother.”

“It was a long time ago.” He said it plainly, without inviting further sympathy, though something in his expression suggested the loss still carried weight even decades later. “I don’t talk about her often. I’m not entirely sure why I brought her up tonight, of all nights.”

“Maybe because tonight feels different. Safer, somehow, to say things you don’t usually let yourself say.”

“Maybe.” He studied me a long moment, something warm in his tired eyes. “You have a way of making that true, actually. More often than you probably realize.”

I let myself enjoy the easy rhythm of ordinary conversation between two people who genuinely liked spending time together.

But underneath the easy conversation, I knew exactly why I’d arranged tonight this way.

I’d been carrying the words since I’d said them out loud to Camila, and that had made it something real that I could no longer pretend was simply a private, manageable feeling. Tonight, I understood I couldn’t wait any longer to say them plainly.

Eventually, I stopped avoiding it.

“I love you,” I said quietly, setting down my fork, meeting his eyes directly.

The words came out steady, with no hesitation left trailing behind them the way there might have been a month earlier. It was a simple truth.

Dmitri went completely still.

For a long moment, he simply looked at me. I felt my pulse climb despite every effort to stay composed, a familiar fear that saying something this true out loud might somehow make it fragile creeping up on me.

“I love you too.”

The simplicity of it landed harder than anything more elaborate could have managed.

I exhaled slowly, like I was finally taking a breath I didn’t realize I was unsure of.

“I’ve wanted to say that properly for weeks,” I admitted. “Not in the middle of a crisis, not right before something terrible happened. Just say it, plainly, and actually let it exist without immediate danger interrupting the moment.”

“I understand exactly what you mean.” He reached across the table, taking my hand, his thumb tracing slow, absent patterns against my knuckles. “For what it’s worth, I’ve felt it for longer than I said it out loud the first time. I just didn’t trust myself to say something that significant without the world immediately testing whether I meant it.”

“And now?”

“Now I’ve said it.” He studied me with an intensity that made my breath catch slightly. “I love you, Val. Completely, and considerably more than I ever expected to feel for anyone, given everything I assumed about myself before you walked into my life.”

I brought his hand to my lips and kissed it, my eyes on his.

“I need to ask you something,” I said, my voice dropping lower.

“Anything.”

“Don’t die.”

The words came out raw, not as a demand but as an unfiltered fear I could no longer keep contained beneath layers of careful composure and forced steadiness. His expression.

He reached for my hand again, holding it firmly, his eyes never leaving mine.

“I will come back to you.”

He didn’t hesitate. He simply said it. And for the first time, I believed the promise wasn’t simply reassurance offered to settle my nerves.

It was intent. A decision he’d already made, regardless of whatever the planned attack actually demanded of him.