Page 47 of Triplet Babies
The words make anger flare inside me. I study her face, noting details I should have seen before, like the way she flinches when people move too quickly, how she always positions herself near exits, and the unconscious way she covers her wrists when she’s nervous.
“He hurt you.” It’s not a question because I already know the answer.
She nods, still focused on the bandage.
“How often?”
“Often enough that I learned to patch myself up.” Her voice is steady, but I catch the tremor underneath. “He always said hewas sorry afterward. Brought me a single red rose and always promised it wouldn’t happen again.”
“But it did.”
“It always did.” She finally looks up at me. “Until I escaped. Nina and I ran here...”
Rage builds , hot and violent. Some faceless bastard put his hands on her. Hit her. It made her afraid and caused her to learn to tend her own wounds because he couldn’t control his temper. “What was his name?”
“Yarik, he’s in the past?—”
“What was his name?” I repeat, my voice harder than I intend.
She pulls back slightly. “Alex. His name was Alex.”
I file away the name, along with every detail she’s given me. If this Alex ever surfaces or ever tries to find her, he’ll discover what happens when someone hurts what’s mine. “He won’t touch you again.”
“I know. He doesn’t even know where I am.” She says that, but a wobble in her voice indicates she’s not entirely certain he’s truly gone.
“If he ever tries?—”
“He won’t.” She cuts me off, but I see the fear she’s trying to hide. “That part of my life is over.”
I want to promise her it’s truly over, and I’ll make sure of it. Instead, I focus on remaining calm. Showing the level of my anger won’t do anything to reassure her. I don’t want her to think I have anything in common with him.
She finishes bandaging the wound and sits back, finally meeting my gaze. That’s when I see the tears that are silent and barely there but real. They track down her cheeks slowly, and she doesn’t bother to wipe them away.
“Hey.” I reach for her face, thumbing away the moisture. Her skin is soft and still warm despite the shock of the past few minutes. “I’m all right.”
“I know.” Her voice breaks slightly. “I know you are.”
She’s not crying because I’m hurt. She’s crying because I could have been killed. When the shooting started, she realized what losing me would mean to her. The knowledge shatters me more than any bullet could.
I pull her closer, tangling a hand in her hair. When I kiss her, it’s with everything I can’t say, every promise I can’t make, and every future I can’t guarantee. She tastes like tears and fear and something sweeter underneath, like hope, maybe, or the ghost of it.
The kiss is deep, desperate, and filled with the rage that’s building inside me. Someone sent those men. Someone wanted me dead, and Sarah was here to witness it. She could have been hurt or killed. She could have become collateral damage in someone else’s war against me.
The thought ignites something savage in me that goes beyond anger into territory I’ve never explored before.
When we break apart, her breathing is unsteady, and I see my own intensity reflected in her wide eyes. “Yarik...”
“They could have hurt you.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend, scraped raw by emotions I don’t know how to name. “If they had touched you...”
I don’t finish the sentence, but the promise hangs between us anyway. If anyone ever touches her, I’ll burn their world to the ground. I don’t say it aloud, but she feels it in the way I hold her, the way my hands shake. The way my entire body has gone rigid with the need to destroy whoever dared threaten what’s mine.
“I’m okay,” she whispers, her hands coming up to frame my face. “We’re both okay.”
Her touch grounds me slightly, but the fury remains, coiling in my chest like a living thing. Alex hurt her once. These men could have hurt her today. How many other threats are out there, circling, waiting for their chance?
She drives us back to the estate in silence, but my mind is anything except quiet. The attack wasn’t random. The men had Nikitin tattoos. I saw the double-headed eagle clearly before I killed the second one. This was a message, a test, or the opening move in something larger.
They brought violence to a place where Sarah could have been hurt. They crossed a line I didn’t even know existed until this moment, a line drawn around her safety that I’ll defend with my life.
