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“You won’t be killed or expelled. Come back to Moscow, Volkov. Take your beating like a man, and go back to your wife. I’ll give you a little time before your next mission. And this time–don’t fuck it up.”
“Two days.” The words come out before I can stop them. “Two days before I return. And then I will submit to what you’ve decided.”
“You’re in no place to bargain,” Vladimir snorts. “But alright, Volkov. Two days. If you’re late, I’ll rethink the agreement we’ve made.”
Two days,I tell myself,is enough.Lidiya will see, when I come back from the Syndicate, the brutality that she’s married into. The things I have to face. And I don’t know if she’ll be able to bear it.
But we have two days before I have to face anything at all. A honeymoon, as she’d said.
I don’t intend to waste a single second of it.
—
The punishment, when we return to Moscow, is swift and brutal. When I leave Vladimir’s compound, heaved into the back of a car that returns me to the hotel where Lidiya and I are staying until we can find a place to live, I can barely move. Pain lances through every part of my body, and I barely make it up to our room, stumbling in to see a horrified expression on her face.
I know that this is the moment where I might lose her. I’d warned her that I’d come back in bad shape. That there was nothing I could do. And yet, when I look up at her as I stumble into the bathroom with her following, sitting on the edge of the tub, all I see is quiet acceptance in her eyes.
“Let me help you get your shirt off,” she says softly. “There. I’ll help clean it up, but it’s going to hurt.”
I know what she sees. Bruises already purpling from a knotted rope. Flesh laid open across my back.
But she doesn’t flinch. She cleans my back, her touch gentle through all of the pain, without a word until it’s done. Until I’m bandaged and stiff from sitting still for so long, and then she helps me to the bed, helping me lie down on my stomach as she curls up on the mattress next to me, stroking my hair.
“I want to stay with you, Levin Volkov,” she says softly. “I know this isn’t going to be an easy life. And I would be lying if I didn’t say that I’d thought about leaving, when we came back. That I hadn’t wondered if it would be easier. But I can’t see a future without you any longer. And I want you. That’s all that it comes down to, really. I wantyou.”
“I want you too,” I tell her quietly, turning my head on the pillow to face hers. “You changed something in me, Lidiya, that first day I met you.”
I reach out stiffly, taking her hand that’s lying between us. “There’s not an easy way out of the life I’ve chosen, Lidiya. I don’t know if there’s one at all, if I’m being honest. But I’m going to try to find one. For you–for us.”
I run my fingers over the back of her hand. “I want to take you on a real honeymoon. To Greece, maybe. I want to lie on the sand next to my wife under a blue sky, and never think of anything again except for how happy you make me.”
Slowly, I lift the hand I’m holding, her left hand, up to my mouth and press my lips against her ring finger. “I’m going to get you a ring and ask you to marry me all over again, Lidiya Volkov. We’ll have a wedding in a church. And I’ll make you proud of me.”
“I’m already proud of you,” she whispers, her fingers brushing over my lower lip. “And I love you, Levin. Forever.”
When she presses her lips to mine, gently, that’s all I hear in my head. That one word, over and over again.
Forever.
Want to dive even deeper into Levin’s world? Keep reading for a sneak peek at my next dark mafia, arranged marriage series, The Savage Trilogy, or click here to start reading book one, Savage Assassin, now!
Chapter One: Elena
In all the years I’ve known him, my father has rarely ever raised his voice.
It’s terrifying to hear him raise it now. Especially to my mother.
I’m crouched outside the heavy wooden double doors that lead into his office, listening as they argue. It feels even worse than a normal argument, because they’re arguing about me.
“This is real danger, Lupé,” I hear my father say, his voice low and urgent. “Diego isn’t going to stop. He’s notevergoing to stop, not until he’s dealt with or we give him what he wants. We’re on a verge of all-out war–and I refuse to give him my daughter.”
“Ourdaughter,” my mother hisses. “This is Isabella’s fault. The match was perfectly suitable, it just wasn’t what she wanted. She ran off with that Irishman, all because of her selfish decisions, and now we’re left to pick up the pieces.Elenais left to pick up the pieces.”
A jolt of fear pierces through me. I don’t fully understand what she means, but I can feel the tension in the air, seeping out from the room until my stomach feels like a series of cold knots, my heart beating hard in my chest.
“You are right about that,” I hear my father say tiredly. “Diego wants her to make up for losing Isabella. But I’m not giving in to those fucking demands. He can’t have her. It’s not an option, no matter what he threatens–”
“You might consider that it’s possible to make it work.” My mother’s voice is taut and haughty, the tone I’ve always heard her use when she’s insistent that she be listened to. But I can hear a thread of fear in it too, and I know she’s scared.
