Page 51 of Wicked Vow

“So you forgive him for it?” Levin looks at me curiously. “You’re not angry with him?”

“I think I’m–” I struggle to find the words, to figure out how to properly describe what my feelings are when I don’t even entirely understand them. “I think I’m sad. In some other life, where we met under different circumstances–we might have been so good for each other. I think I’m the only woman who has ever really challenged him. The only one who makes him have to fight for what he wants. And he’s the only man–”

I take a deep breath, closing my eyes briefly. “He’s the only man that has shown me parts of myself that even I didn’t see. Who saw me without the privileges of my name or my money and still wanted me. Who seems tostillwant me, even now, even if it gets him killed.”

“Love is never simple or easy,” Levin says quietly. “In my experience, it’s painful and costly. It hurts as much as it heals. And it doesn’t always end well.”

I glance over at him. His face is drawn and taut, and I can tell he’s remembering something from a long time ago, his hands tightening on the steering wheel.

“Would you still say it’s worth it?” I ask him quietly.

A long moment passes, and then he looks over at me, his face softer than I’ve seen it before, and sad.

“Yes,” he says finally. “It always is.”

Natalia

I’m not sure if anything could have prepared me for what I see when I’m escorted into the room where Mikhail is being held, Viktor and Levin on either side of me.

Mikhail is hanging from the ceiling, feet just brushing the concrete floor–not unlike how he had me in his basement. The irony of it isn’t lost on me–but just then, I’m not feeling all that interested in it. All I can think about is the way the sight of him like that feels like a punch in the gut.

His head is hanging down, but I can see the bruises on his face. They’re shadowed in the dim light as he hears the door open and looks up–and the expression that I see there when he catches sight of me takes my breath away.

He looks at me as if I’m the only thing left in the world that he wants to see.

“Mikhail?” His name comes out like a whisper, and I feel my chest ache as I step closer. “Are you alright?”

His mouth, swollen a little from someone who struck him, turns up on one side in a half-smile. “Well, I guess that’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?”

“I’m hearing that a lot today.” I swallow hard, looking at him. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’m better now that you’re here.”

That one statement, spoken so simply, floors me. I’ve never heard Mikhail say anything like it. He doesn’t sound like the arrogant, demanding man who kept me prisoner in Moscow. He doesn’t even sound like the cocky man who had approached me at first at the strip club.

He sounds like a man who knows he has nothing left to lose except his life, which will be taken from him soon, too.

“Can you give us a moment?” Mikhail turns his head heavily to look at Viktor, the words punctuated with a low groan. “I want to talk to her alone?”

Viktor hesitates, and I turn to look at him too. “There can’t be any harm in it,” I say quietly. “He’s chained up. What is he going to do?”

“Do you want to talk to him?” Viktor’s tone is the coldest I’ve ever heard it. I suspect it’s less because he’s worried about what Mikhail might say to me and more because he’s insulted that Mikhail directly defied him, but right now, I don’t particularly care either way.

“Yes.” There’s no confusion there, at least. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

“Let them talk,pakhan,” Levin says, the formal title punctuating the air between him and Viktor. “Like she says, there’s no real harm in it.”

“We’ll be right outside the door,” Viktor says stiffly. “If you need us, call.”

I wait until both of them have left, the door closing heavily behind them, before I walk closer to Mikhail, leaving only the smallest space between us. I can hear him breathing heavily, and his mouth twitches in that smile again as I look at him, his face just a little above mine.

“It must feel good to see me like this,” Mikhail murmurs. “It must feel like revenge. Doesn’t it,kotenok?”

I swallow hard, reaching up ever so gingerly to brush my fingers against the side of his face, in a spot that looks mostly unharmed. “Not everything is about revenge, Mikhail,” I whisper. “No, it doesn’t feel good.”

“He’s going to kill me,” Mikhail says quietly. “I begged him to let me see you before then. I needed you to know–”

“You begged?” I feel him lean into my hand as I press it against his cheek, my heart aching in a way that I’ve never felt before. “That doesn’t sound very much like you.”

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