Page 135 of Vendetta Vows

I take a shuddering breath. The truth has been locked inside me for so long that it feels like pulling out shards of glass to speak it aloud.

"His name is Kristofer Christensen," I start, my voice barely audible even to my own ears. "He was a police cadet when I met him. We dated for a year in high school."

Ruslan's hand never stops its soothing motion in my hair, but I feel his body tense at the mention of Kristofer's occupation.

"When I tried to break things off, he... he wouldn't accept it." My throat tightens around the words. "He started following me everywhere. I couldn't report him because he'd already joined the force at that point. And his friends were all cops."

I close my eyes, pressing my face into Ruslan's chest as the images flood back.

"I told you that he wrote a message on the wall in my family's blood, but I never told you what that message was. It was just a single line." I swallow hard and look up at him through a haze of tears. "Look what you made me do."

Ruslan's arms tighten around me, and a sound rumbles from deep within his chest. A sound of pure rage. His hand stills in my hair momentarily before resuming its gentle strokes.

"I ran," I whisper. "I just ran and ran until I couldn't anymore. That was when I saw the accident by the time I reached the Eastern Sierras. That was when I saw therealAurora Castellanos."

Tears slip down my cheeks again. "I stole a dead girl's life, Ruslan. I left my family unburied. What kind of person does that make me?"

Ruslan cups my face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away my tears. The tenderness in his eyes undoes me.

"It makes you a survivor," he says quietly. "Who did whatever it took to stay alive."

"I'm a thief," I choke out, my voice raw from crying. "I stole Aurora's identity. I stole her life, her future... everything she should have been."

My fingers twist anxiously in the folds of my wedding dress, the beautiful fabric that should symbolize a fresh start now feeling like a shroud. The weight of seven years of lies presses down on me, making it hard to breathe.

"And my family..." My voice breaks completely. "They died because of me. They knew he wasn't good but I refused to believe them. It's all my fault."

Ruslan's hands tighten on my shoulders. The pressure isn't painful and it brings me back to the present when my mind wants to tumble back into that blood-soaked house.

"No," he says firmly. His voice is quiet but carries such conviction that my eyes flutter open. "No, Aurora. Kristofer killed your family. Not you."

I shake my head, desperate to make him understand. "But if I?—"

"Listen to me, Aurora." Ruslan's eyes flash with a fierce protectiveness. "You didn't kill anyone. You didn't spill their blood. You didn't write those words."

His thumbs brush gently over my cheeks, wiping away tears I didn't realize were still falling.

"Kristofer murdered them," he continues, his voice low and certain. "He made that choice. Not you."

Ruslan presses another gentle kiss to my forehead, and I close my eyes, savoring the connection. Here with him, I feel both terrifyingly exposed and completely safe at the same time. I've never shared my story with anyone besides Hannah, and even she doesn't know all the details. But Ruslan does. And somehow, impossibly, he's still here, still holding me.

"What would you like me to call you?" he asks softly, his breath warm against my skin.

The question catches me off guard. Such a simple thing, my own name, yet it carries the weight of everything I've been running from. I stare down at our intertwined hands, at the wedding ring glittering on my finger.

"I don't know," I admit, my voice barely above a whisper. "I've been Aurora for so long now, I sometimes forget..."

I trail off, unable to finish the thought. Jamie Fields feels like a ghost, a shadow of someone I used to be. Someone who died in that blood-soaked house in Kansas City seven years ago.

But Aurora Castellanos? The Aurora Castellanos that I became?

She was never really real either, was she?

But as I stare at our intertwined fingers—his tattooed hand holding mine so tenderly—I'm suddenly seeing things with newfound clarity.

Jamie Fields didn't run into Ruslan in that alleyway. Jamie Fields didn't hold Mikayla while she cried. Jamie Fields didn't stand up to Alexei and offer Eleonora that moment of solace.

And Jamie Fields certainly didn't choose to remain with Ruslan despite knowing the dangers of his world.

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