Page 143 of Mafia King's Broken Vow
THE FUTURE
YAKOV
Istudy Mila as she sits across from me on silk sheets, dark hair over bare shoulders. It’s never enough; this craving for her burns constant.
“The future,” I repeat. “What about it?”
Her fingers dance nervous patterns on silk, avoiding my stare. “This isn’t just about playing house, Yakov. It’s about what comes after. What we’re actually building here.”
I capture her restless hand, stilling it beneath my palm. Her skin feels fragile, misleading; I know the steel beneath that softness. “Whatever you want,” I tell her, and the words taste like truth for once.
She shakes her head, finally meeting my eyes. “It’s not that easy. We need to face what we’re dealing with.”
“I am facing it.” I drag her knuckles to my mouth, tasting salt and vanilla. “For the first time in years.”
“Then face this.” She yanks her hand free, the loss hitting me cold. “I can’t pretend you haven’t done monstrous things. Things that would destroy most people’s sleep.”
My jaw locks, every instinct screaming to deflect, manipulate, control this conversation’s trajectory. But Miladeserves more than strategy. “No,” I agree. “You can’t. And I wouldn’t ask you to.”
She inhales sharp, the psychologist surfacing, professional armor sliding into place even naked and vulnerable. “And you can’t promise me the violence is over. That you won’t become that man I watched break Pablo’s bones.”
The memory floods back, cartilage snapping under my hands, the righteous satisfaction of his agony. I’d do it again. We both know it.
“No,” I admit. “I can’t make that promise.”
She nods, as if my confirmation hurts and heals simultaneously. “So where does that leave us? How do we build something real with that poison between us?”
I get off the bed, unable to contain the storm raging inside my chest. Naked, I stalk to the window, city lights bleeding through glass. My reflection stares back, a man I barely recognize. Not the cold architect of kidnappings, not the nightmare Bratva whispered about, but not free of either shadow.
“When Ana died,” I begin, words crawling from some buried place, “I gave myself permission to be only the monster. Only the darkness.”
Mila’s presence burns behind me, close enough to feel but not touching.
“And now?” she whispers.
“Now I want to be more.” I turn, finding her wrapped in silk, eyes luminous with something that might be hope. “For you. Because of you.”
She stands and follows, vanilla and amber and sex flooding my lungs. “I don’t want you to change for me, Yakov. That’s not real.”
“Then what do you want?” The question emerges rougher than intended, frustration bleeding past control.
“I want us to stop pretending we’re other people.” Her palm finds my chest, pressing over the scar Jaromir carved. “I’m not asking you to become someone else. I’m asking if we can build something neither of us thought possible.”
I trap her hand against my heartbeat. “How?”
“By choosing each other,” she says, simple as breathing. “Not once in some dramatic moment, but every day. Making decisions that honor what we’re building, especially when it costs us.”
“Especially when it hurts,” I add, understanding igniting. “Not dwelling on the past or fearing the future. Just focusing on what we are doing now.”
Her smile stops my world completely. “Exactly.”
I pull her against me, needing to feel her skin, needing the anchor of her body to ground me in this moment that feels transformative. Her arms circle my waist, and I feel her surrender her weight to me.
“You’re mine, Mila,” I murmur against her hair. “Today. Tomorrow. For as long as you’ll have me.”
“And the past?” she asks, her voice muffled against my chest.
“I can’t undo the past. I can only move forward differently.”
