Page 43 of Vendetta Vows

But what if I'm tired of running? What if, just this once, I want someone else to share this burden with me?

My gaze shifts from his outstretched hand to those golden eyes that have haunted my dreams. There's danger there, yes. A predator's intensity that should send me sprinting in the opposite direction. But there's also something else. Something that looks suspiciously like devotion.

Has anyone ever looked at me like that before? Like I'm worth protecting?

Even as my rational mind screams warnings.He kills people, he watched you without consent, he's clearly involved in something dangerous.

But my heart beats a different rhythm.

He saved you. He came for you. He wants you.

If I take his hand, there's no going back. No pretending I don't know who he is or what he's capable of. No maintaining the fiction that Aurora Castellanos is just an ordinary woman with an ordinary past.

But if I don't take his hand... if I face this alone...

Slowly, the words take shape on my lips. "Where would we go?"

"Somewhere safe," Ruslan replies. "Somewhere private. A place where nobody will ever find you."

I continue to stare at his hand, and that's when I realize.

Power radiates from Ruslan like heat from a flame.

Not a cruel, desperate power that Kristofer wielded like a weapon.

But something different. Something natural, absolute, and unquestioned.

When Ruslan commands a room, the world bends to his will. I saw it at the production party when he ordered the photographer away. I felt it in how naturally he took control in the car, and how effortlessly he parted the crowd at Nikoforov.

And I can feel pulsing in the air between us in the presence of the dead man who was trying to kill me mere moments ago.

Power emanates from him even when he's watching me from a distance.

That's why I keep fantasizing about him taking me against that window. Because with Ruslan, being seen doesn't feel dangerous anymore.

Standing next to him, I'm untouchable.

Protected.

I place my hand in Ruslan's.

His fingers close around mine with a gentle squeeze that sends warmth radiating up my arm and through my entire body. That simple touch anchors me, pulling me back from the edge of panic I've been teetering on since I first heard my would-be murderer's footsteps on the stairs.

The dead man's blood is drying on my skin, making everything feel sticky and wrong.

I should be horrified by this—by all of this—but all I can focus on is the solid pressure of Ruslan's hand holding mine.

He leads me through my apartment, past the living room where Hannah and I spent countless nights watching bad movies and drinking wine.

Part of me wants to leave her a note. But what can I even say?

Slowly, Ruslan guides me down the stairs towards his black Lamborghini. He opens the passenger door, and I slide in, feeling oddly detached from my body as I do so.

Only when the engine purrs to life do I exhale a breath I didn't know I was holding.

I should be terrified. I should be questioning every choice that led me to this moment.

But as we pull away from the curb, leaving behind the dead man, my apartment, and the life I've carefully built as Aurora Castellanos, I feel something unexpected bloom in my chest.

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