Ruthless Addiction: Chapter 3

My gaze ricocheted between the side exit Dmitri had disappeared through and the small, furious boy now kicking and twisting in the iron grips of two guards twice his size.

Vanya was screaming—half Greek, half English—his little sneakers flailing in the air, his face blotched red with rage and tears.

“Άφησέ με! Let me go! That’s my dad! You can’t touch me!”

My heart didn’t just break—it detonated.

I didn’t remember deciding to run. My body moved on instinct, feral and unstoppable. I flew down the aisle, black dress snapping at my legs, heels striking the marble like a string of gunshots.

“He’s my son!”

My voice tore through the cathedral like lightning cleaving a tree.

“Get your filthy hands off him!”

The nearest guard didn’t have time to react—my palms slammed into his chest with all the strength I had earned over five years of rage and grief.

He stumbled back, shock painting his features. The second guard froze mid-grip, mouth falling open.

They looked at me like a ghost had walked out of the grave and demanded her child.

I ripped Vanya out of their hands and crushed him to my chest, wrapping myself around him like living armor.

His small body was shaking—fury, fear, heartbreak all tangled into one. He curled into me instantly, like he had been trying to climb back into my ribs.

“Mom,” he hiccupped, “I found him. I found him.”

I couldn’t speak. I could only hold him.

We barely made it two steps before a third guard—new, arrogant, and too stupid to live long in this world—stepped into the aisle, blocking us. A cigarette hung from his lip, ash dangling precariously.

“Well, well.” He looked me up and down with oily amusement. “Trying to get the boss’s attention with a kid? Women like you—”

He flicked his eyes over my hips.

“—are a dime a dozen in this territory.”

I went still.

Still in the way knives go still right before they slice.

“Step. Aside.”

He smirked. Took a slow, lazy drag. And then—he exhaled the smoke directly into my face.

The nicotine hit my lungs like acid washed in razors.

My asthma slammed into me with instant, merciless force. My throat closed. My lungs seized. A strangled wheeze ripped from me. Air became a stranger.

I staggered backward, clutching Vanya with one arm while the other clawed at my collar, at my chest, at the air that wasn’t coming.

My knees buckled.

“Mom? Mom!” Vanya’s voice cracked, shrill with terror.

Through the blur of my watering eyes, I saw him twist in my arms—and then my son, my sweet five-year-old boy, launched himself at the guard.

He punched the man’s thigh with all the righteous fury of a child whose world was being ripped apart.

One tiny fist.

Then another.

Then another.

“How dare you!” Vanya shouted, voice shaking, face wet with tears.

“How dare you blow that in her face! You wicked, wicked man!”

He kept hitting him, small palms slapping against muscle, each blow fueled by pure, unfiltered rage.

For a moment the entire cathedral—hundreds of crime lords, billionaires, heirs—went dead silent.

Watching a five-year-old try to defend his mother.

Air still wouldn’t fill my lungs. My vision darkened at the edges.

The guard laughed—an ugly, barking sound—amused by a five-year-old’s fury and an asthmatic woman on her knees.

He didn’t laugh long.

Because I used the last molecule of oxygen left in my collapsing lungs to launch forward, dragging air through the tightening vise in my throat, and I drove my fist straight into his nose.

CRUNCH.

Cartilage shattered under my knuckles. Blood sprayed across the marble in a red arc.

He staggered back, eyes rolling, hands flying to his face.

I didn’t give him time to breathe.

A vicious uppercut—years of boxing classes, grief, and survival distilled into one strike—snapped his head back. The cigarette flew from his mouth, hitting the floor in a pathetic little bounce.

He toppled like a felled statue, crashing onto the marble with a wet thud.

Out cold.

The other guards didn’t move to help him.

They just stared.

Then—they started laughing. Deep, rumbling, mafia-born laughter that climbed the frescoed ceiling and bounced back down like mockery from God Himself.

“Holy shit—did she just fold him with one hit?”

“Yeah Riccardo is out cold. Hard to blame him, though—she hits like she’s got steel in her bones.”

“Oh, I’m waking him up with a bucket of ice and one question: ‘How’s it feel to get knocked out by a lady?’ Man’s never living that down.”

Another guard whistled under his breath. “Wild, though… she’s got the same face as—”

“Shut the hell up.”

The senior guard stepped forward, eyes ice cold. “You got a death wish? Boss doesn’t tolerate anyone talking about his late wife. Not a whisper. Not a comparison. Keep your tongue or lose it.”

I didn’t wait for round two.

I grabbed Vanya, who latched onto me like a terrified little monkey—arms around my neck, legs locking around my waist—and I ran.

We tore down the aisle, out through the carved wooden doors, and burst into the blinding Lake Como afternoon. Sunlight stabbed my eyes.

I sprinted across the courtyard, heels skidding on the cobblestone, Vanya clinging to me with his whole trembling body.

We reached the rented black Mercedes.

I threw us inside, slammed the doors, and hit the locks so hard the car shook.

My hands fumbled on the gear shift.

Then—

SCREEEEEECH—

We shot out of the gravel drive, tires spitting stones, engines roaring, leaving a trail of dust, gasps, and scandal behind us.

Twenty minutes later, we were inside the hotel suite.

Door triple-locked. Curtains drawn. Shoes kicked off.

My lungs finally cooperating again.

I collapsed face-first onto the bed, chest heaving, adrenaline draining out so fast I felt boneless.

“Vanya,” I rasped, rolling over onto my back, “why in God’s name did you run to him?”

He stood at the edge of the bed, his cheeks flushed, fists still balled like he was ready to fight the entire mafia for me.

“He’s my dad,” Vanya said fiercely. “Isn’t he?”

I pressed my hands over my face. “He doesn’t know that, Vanya. And you do not—you do not—just march up to a man like Dmitri Volkov. Things could have gone so much worse.”

“He’s not a stranger.”

Vanya’s voice softened, but the stubborn line of his mouth didn’t move.

Then his little body straightened, like he’d just remembered why he wasn’t afraid.

He dug both hands into his pockets—rummaging, determined, lips pressed tight the way he did when solving a puzzle.

“Vanya,” I whispered, warning and plea tangled together.

But he ignored me.

A second later, he yanked his hand free and held something up with small, triumphant fingers.

A phone.

Matte black. Titanium case. The faint scratch on the corner—so familiar it made my chest seize.

My lips parted, breath catching. “Where… where did you get that?” I whispered, barely

Vanya lifted his chin, eyes blazing with small, fierce pride, the triumph of a child who had just outwitted a giant. “I took it when I tugged at his trousers. I wanted proof.”

The words hit me harder than any blow.

My body froze, time stretching, the world narrowing to the tiny, perfect figure in front of me and the phone burning like a secret in his hand.

For a moment, I couldn’t move.

Then I snatched the phone, hands shaking so violently I nearly dropped it. The screen flared to life the moment my thumb brushed it.

I went still. Completely, utterly still.

Wallpaper: Me.

Not the woman I was now—older, harder, carved by grief and survival.

But her.

The girl I used to be.

Asleep beneath the old oak tree at the Brooklyn estate, sunlight filtering through the leaves in warm gold patches across my skin. Hair spread like a dark halo over the grass. One bare shoulder exposed from the loose white summer dress he loved. My lips parted in that soft, unguarded way he used to kiss me awake.

Fifteen.

Fifteen years old.

Long before the blood. Before betrayals. Before the grave he dug in his heart and lowered my memory into.

The world tilted like it was trying to shake me out of myself.

He had kept it. He had kept me.

Not tucked away in some forgotten gallery, not sealed in a dead phone or an encrypted archive—

But here.

Front and center. As his lock screen. As his home screen.

Every day. Every morning. For half a decade.

A relic of a girl he once loved more than oxygen—preserved in pixels, protected by titanium, carried into every room, every meeting, every battlefield of his life.

I felt something inside me crack. Not break—crack, like a vault door forced open by something too heavy to ignore.

Vanya watched me, chest rising and falling with anxious curiosity, but I couldn’t look away from the screen.

I finally shoved the phone into my pocket, swallowed the sob clawing at my throat, and forced my face into a mask of stern control.

“You,” I said, pointing at him with a trembling finger, “have gotten us into so much trouble, Vanya.”

Vanya blinked up at me, confused. “…Why?”

I took a shuddering breath, voice tight with equal parts fear and fury. “I know you’re desperate to see your dad. It hurts me—God, it hurts me too—that you don’t have him in your life. But you can’t go around acting reckless. Do you understand? Reckless.”

His brow furrowed.

“First,” I continued, pacing a little, “you march up to a mafia boss at his own wedding, in front of hundreds of people, and—what?—call him ‘Papa’ as if he’d magically know who you are. He doesn’t know he has a son. Anywhere. I’ve told you that already!” My voice rose, cracking at the edges. “Then you make me expose myself in front of all those people, having to fight just to keep you safe. Do you know how close I was to fainting when that guard blew smoke into my face? That was it, I was done!”

I pressed my hands to my temples, trying to will down the adrenaline still hammering through my chest. “And now—you picked his pocket. How… how did you even do that? This was supposed to be a quiet visit. Not… not a catastrophe waiting to happen! Do you know what kind of trouble we could be in?”

Vanya’s eyes widened. His lower lip began to tremble, guilt flickering across his small face.

Then, almost imperceptibly, he climbed onto the bed, crawled into my lap, and wrapped his tiny arms around me, burying his face against my chest.

“I just wanted my dad to see me,” he whispered, his voice muffled but carrying every ounce of longing and innocence that made my heart splinter all over again.

I froze, one arm instinctively tightening around him, my other hand pressed to my lips as tears burned behind my eyes. The weight of it—his longing, his trust, his small, defiant love—nearly broke me.

“I know, baby,” I murmured, stroking the back of his curls, “I know. But we have to be smart. We have to do this… carefully.”

He sniffled, still clinging. And my heart broke for the second time that day.

“Mom… I’ve seen other kids in Greece,” his little voice trembled, full of longing and frustration, “their dads… they take them to the park, buy them toys, play with them, even come to pick them up at school. My friends’ dads… they read them stories at bedtime… they teach them things. My dad… he never comes.”

The words, so small, so earnest, cut deeper than any cruel whisper or vicious rumor in that cathedral could ever have. My breath hitched.

I held him tighter than I should have, wishing I could fold the world around him so no one—least of all his father—could hurt him.

“My relationship with your father…” I murmured, voice thick with the weight of memories and unspoken pain, “is… complicated.”

I buried my face in his curls, inhaling the faint scent of baby shampoo and sunshine—the smell of innocence I would protect with every ounce of me.

“I know,” he whispered back, muffled against my chest. His little fists pressed against my ribs in earnest. “But mine… mine doesn’t have to be.”

God. That simple, pure sentence shattered something inside me. Something I realized I could never protect from love.

I pulled back, cupping his small, stubborn face in my hands. “If I introduce you, he won’t let us leave, baby. He’ll take you… and he’ll send me away. That’s the kind of man he is.”

Vanya’s eyes flared.

His fists clenched at his sides, knuckles white. “Then we make him choose,” he said, voice trembling with determination. “Right here. Right now. Before we leave Lake Como.”

My heart lurched into my throat. “Vanya—”

But I didn’t get to finish.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The knock slammed against the hotel door, rattling the frame like it was about to give way. Three hard, commanding raps.

I froze mid-breath, my blood hammering in my ears.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Another three. Sharp. Insistent. Impossible to ignore.

Vanya’s tiny hand shot for mine. I gripped it, squeezing once—steady, quiet. “Be brave.” I told him silently. Then I nudged him to the chair tucked into the corner, whispering, “Stay. Silent.”

My pulse throbbed in my temples as I crept to the door, fingers tightening on the chain lock.

“Who is it?” My voice sounded calmer than I felt, brittle like fine porcelain.

A beat of silence. My ears strained. The faint hum of the hotel corridor seemed to swell with threat.

Then—

“Open the door..”

My stomach turned over.

I knew that voice—the kind that could make men flinch, that had once made my own heart stop.

Giovanni. His voice. Low. Controlled.

I swallowed hard, forced my hands to steady on the chain, and pressed my back against the door.

“You’re the mother of the boy who ran to the boss at the altar,” Giovanni said, voice flat, like he was reading a statement, not speaking to a person.

I drew a sharp breath. “Correct. Thank you for having him manhandled. Are you here to apologize?”

No response. Just the faint click of a boot shifting, a shadow pressed against the frosted glass.

“My boss wants to see you. Right now. He’s waiting in the lounge downstairs.”

I laughed, bitter and low, the sound ricocheting against the peeling wallpaper. “Tell your boss I’m busy being a mother. Goodnight.”

Surprisingly, the knob twisted under his grip, as if he had a master key. The door creaked, and I lunged to slam it shut—but a heavy palm pressed against it, stopping me cold.

Giovanni leaned into the frame, fluid and precise, sliding the chain free in one practiced motion. With a shove, the door swung wider, filling the threshold with six-foot-four menace. His dark suit was perfect, every line tailored; a gun peeked from beneath the jacket, resting like a silent promise.

“You and your son are coming with me. Now.” His voice was low, gravelly, carrying the weight of a threat that didn’t need to be spelled out.

I froze, chest tightening as if it might crush me from the inside.

“I… I’m busy being a mother,” I said, voice even, though the tremor I fought to mask betrayed me.

Giovanni’s eyes flicked to Vanya, sharp and calculating, then back to me, cold and unwavering. “The boss isn’t asking.”

Why would Dmitri want to see me? Was it because of what Vanya had done—marching up that aisle like he owned the place—or had he somehow traced his stolen phone to us?

My mind raced, piecing together the puzzle while my heart thudded in warning.

Giovanni’s gaze swept the room again, slow, methodical, lingering on every detail—the peeling wallpaper, the faint chlorine smell, the way the light hit the scratches on the table—and then settled back on me, sharp and unblinking, as if trying to reconcile what he was seeing with what he knew.

Of course. Anyone would think I had risen from the dead.

His presence filled the doorway like a storm waiting to break.

Vanya launched off the bed like a tiny missile.

For one wild second I thought he would run to me—hide behind me, cling to my legs, play the part of a frightened five-year-old.

But no.

My son marched straight in front of me, planted his bare feet shoulder-width apart, raised his fists like a miniature Spartan warrior, and glared up at a six-foot-four Bratva enforcer.

“You can’t take my mom,” he said, voice trembling but loud. “You’re not allowed.”

The audacity stole my breath.

Giovanni’s gaze dropped to him—slow, assessing.

And for a heartbeat, something flickered across his face.

Recognition.

And beneath that… fear?

Because even a Bratva enforcer knew what it meant for a child to look exactly like his king.

I slid Dmitri’s phone into my pocket so smoothly it almost looked like part of the argument. Then I squared my shoulders, stepped around my son, and faced Giovanni head-on.

“Fine,” I said, voice cool enough to frost metal. “If your boss wants to see me, he can come up here. Tell Dmitri Volkov I don’t do lounge visits.”

Giovanni’s jaw flexed, the muscle jumping.

His eyes sharpened to a razor’s edge.

For a dangerous, suspended second. I thought he’d simply grab us both and haul us out by force.

He had the size. He had the authority. He even had the gun.

But he didn’t.

Instead, without breaking eye contact, he pulled out his phone.

One press of a single button—speed dial.

Then a rush of low, rapid Italian poured from his mouth, clipped and official.

After a moment he ended the call, slid the phone away, and fixed me with a stare cold enough to rearrange bone.

“I heard you flew in from Greece,” he said, voice low and unhurried. “So maybe you forgot who owns the air you’re breathing right now.”

He took one step closer.

“This is Dmitri Volkov’s territory. No one born under the sun defies him and keeps their smile.”

He lifted two fingers.

“You have two choices. One: you walk out this door with me quietly. Two: I walk away right now, and in sixty seconds this room is full of men who will take your son somewhere you will never—ever—find him.”

A pause.

A threat carved from ice.

“Choose.”

“You would do no such thing,” Vanya snarled, stepping even closer, small fists balled. “You touch my mom, and—and—God will punish you!”

Giovanni’s jaw clenched. “Clock’s ticking.”

Ice flooded my spine.

Because I knew Giovanni. Cruel to the world. Loyal to Dmitri Volkov.

And I knew he would actually take Vanya if pushed. His threats were never empty.

The idea of anyone taking my son—even for a second—felt like someone ripping the skin off my bones.

But what kind of enforcer weaponizes a child against his own mother just because she isn’t ready to face his arrogant boss?

I swallowed hard.

“Take me to him,” I said quietly.

A small gasp cut through the room—sharp, wounded. Vanya spun around, eyes glossing with hurt even as his jaw locked in fierce resolve.

“No!” he shouted. “I’m coming too. I won’t let them take my mom.”

My heart broke cleanly in two.

I dropped to one knee and cupped his beautiful, furious face in both my hands.

“Vanya… stay here.”

My voice wobbled. “As soon as I leave, lock the door. I’ll return in under twenty minutes. On your name, baby—I swear it.”

“I want to go with you,” he insisted, voice cracking. “You can’t leave me. You always say we’re a team.”

“I know, baby.” I pressed my forehead to his. “But your mom needs to fix something first.”

A war raged in his small chest, and then—defeat.

With a sharp inhale, he marched to the bed, threw himself face-down onto the covers, and turned his back on the room with all the wounded dignity of a betrayed prince.

His small shoulders trembled, rigid with heartbreak and fury.

It gutted me.

But I stood and stepped out.

Giovanni closed the door behind us with a quiet, unmistakable click.

The hallway smelled of lemon polish and old carpet. Our footsteps echoed in the silence—mine uneven, his steady and certain.

Halfway down the corridor, his voice slipped out, low and almost… careful.

“How old is the boy?”

I kept walking. “Why do you care?”

He didn’t answer. Which meant he did care.

We stopped at the ornate double doors at the end of the hall. Old Italian wood. Heavy. Expensive.

Giovanni placed his hand on the brass knob.

Then he turned to me, eyes colder than the lake outside.

“One warning,” he said. “And I give it only because you look like her.”

My lungs squeezed tight.

“Dmitri hasn’t been sane since the day his late wife, Penelope, died. He kills faster now. Laughs less. Eats almost nothing.” Giovanni’s voice lowered to a gravelled whisper. “If you play games in there, he will end you.”

A beat.

“And your child becomes collateral damage.”

The air froze.

“Remember that.”

Then—he twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

The suite beyond was pure Volkov: dark walnut walls, black Italian leather, floor-to-ceiling windows framing Lake Como like a slab of obsidian.

Only one lamp burned in the corner, throwing long shadows across the room. And beneath it—

Smoke.

Thick, heavy, suffocating.

Like even the air had been grieving.

Dmitri sat on a low leather couch, back to us, elbows braced on his knees.

The charcoal shirt stretched across shoulders broader than I remembered, and the sleeves were rolled to the elbows, veins running like blue fire along his forearms.

Silver threaded through the black curls Vanya had inherited—streaks earned from sleepless nights, bloodshed, and the kind of mourning that never healed.

An ashtray in front of him overflowed with crushed filters. Another cigarette burned between his fingers like a fuse approaching its explosion.

He didn’t turn. “Step forward.”

The voice.

God.

Deeper. Rougher. Shredded by grief, liquor, and five years of talking to ghosts.

I walked forward until the lamplight brushed my face.

My spine was straight, my chin high—trying to look like a woman named Pen, not the corpse he buried under marble and roses.

He took a slow drag.

Exhaled. Then turned.

The cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth.

His grip on the cigarette tightened so hard the filter crumpled. His breath hitched—so soft no one else alive could have heard it.

“Your name,” he said, voice low as a firing squad.

“Pen.”

Something flickered. Something dangerous.

One corner of his scarred mouth lifted—not in humour, but in a smile that could carve a throat.

“First,” he murmured, “you send a child who looks exactly like me to ruin my wedding…”

He leaned forward, eyes stripping me to bone.

“Then you walk in wearing the face of my dead wife—answering to the name she used to beg me to call her in bed.” His gaze darkened, pupils swallowing the grey. “Tell me, little ghost. Are you trying to mock me?”

“Mr. Volkov, I—”

He cut the air with a flick of his fingers. “Who invited you to my wedding?”

His voice had dropped to something lethal. Something ancient.

“What the fuck are you doing in my city?”

“Lake Como is open to tourists,” I said, surprising myself with my steadiness. “Last I checked.”

A jagged, humourless laugh slashed out of him.

“A tourist crashes the wedding of the century, assaults my men, and steals my phone?” He flicked ash with a sharp snap. “Try again.”

So he did know. Of course he did.

No wonder they found me so fast.

Vanya—sweet, reckless Vanya—had shoved me straight into the lion’s jaws.

“I apologize for my son’s actions,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level even as my pulse rioted. “He acted on his own and… took your phone. I’ve already reprimanded him.”

I pulled the matte-black device from my pocket, the weight of it suddenly immense, and walked toward him with an unsteady breath trapped somewhere in my chest.

He didn’t lift a hand to take it.

Didn’t blink. Didn’t move.

So I set it gently on the table beside him and stepped back, putting distance between my body and his unreadable stare.

“I truly apologize for my son’s… barbaric impulsiveness,” I managed. “We’re leaving tomorrow. You won’t have to deal with us any longer, Mr. Volkov. Please forgive the intrusion.”

He studied me the way a wolf studies a deer that suddenly grew fangs—head slightly tilted, lashes lowered, pupils blown wide with something feral and unnameable. The silence stretched so long it became a blade, thin and trembling, waiting for one of us to bleed first.

Then—

Without warning—

He unfolded from the couch in one single, fluid, predatory motion.

Six-foot-four of controlled ruin.

And even after five years, even after the hatred, even after the world had collapsed between us—he was devastating.

He stepped closer, until the air between us trembled. Until I could smell every piece of him: tobacco, lake water, clean soap, and the same dark cologne that once soaked into my pillows and made me ache for him even when I hated him.

He lifted the cigarette to his lips—not rushed, not casual, but with the lazy confidence of someone who had killed men with less effort than breathing. He inhaled, exhaled…and angled the smoke away from my face.

A small thing. But it hit me like a punch.

He hadn’t done that consciously. It was an old habit. A reflex from a life he believed was buried.

His eyes—those storm-grey eyes that once softened only for me—dragged down my face, my throat, my shoulders, my waist.

He took in the muscle I’d built—my arms, my back, my posture. The cautious strength in my stance. The fire in my gaze.

You’re… different,” he murmured, not as a compliment, but as a puzzle he was trying to solve. “She was unmistakably plus-sized.”

She.

My ghost.

His ghost.

‘Penelope Volkov.’

Dead.

Gone.

Rotting in a grave I never lay in.

My mouth dried.

He moved. Circling me—slowly, languidly—like a man orbiting a memory he doesn’t trust.

“Same eyes,” he said softly.

A step.

“Same mouth.”

Another step.

“Same stubborn tilt of the chin.”

He stopped behind me.

Close enough that I felt the heat of him through the thin fabric of my dress.

Close enough that if he lowered his head an inch, his lips would touch the place he used to kiss to make me melt.

His breath brushed the back of my neck, warm and devastating.

“But Penelope,” he whispered, “hated cigarette smoke. Triggered her asthma.”

A pause.

A sharper inhale.

“Funny.”

I forced my spine straight, chin high, heartbeat a war drum in my ears.

He drifted around me again—closer this time. Much closer—until our breaths mingled. Until my pulse had no choice but to answer his.

Face-to-face now.

Too close.

Far too close.

And for the first time…

I saw him.

Not the mafia boss. Not the monster. But the man who had slept with his hand under my cheek.

The man who carried my inhaler in his coat pocket.

The man who once stared at my body like it was the only prayer he’d ever believed in.

“Marry me, Pen,” he said.

His voice was velvet and venom, a caress sharpened into a threat.

The cigarette slipped from his fingers, ash scattering over the Persian rug. He didn’t even glance at it. His full attention—every ounce of his focus—was on me.

My heart stopped.

Time stopped.

“What?” I whispered.

“You heard me,” he repeated, voice low and absolute. “Marry me. Tonight. Right now.”

A sound ripped out of me before I could stop it—a laugh, jagged and disbelieving, the kind that hurts on the way up because it’s made of shock and old wounds.

“Tell me this is a joke,” I said, barely holding my voice steady. “Because I don’t find it funny. I don’t know you, Mr. Volkov. And you certainly don’t know me.”

His face remained a stone wall—cold, unreadable.

“She collapsed. Fell into a coma right before the vows could be finalized,” he said, his tone almost casual. “The wedding couldn’t go on. And now… I’m single. Exactly as I’ve always wanted.”

He shrugged lightly, like Seraphina’s life didn’t weigh anything at all.

“I need a wife to quiet the politicians and the vultures,” he said. “You resemble my Penelope just enough that I can bear it. Good enough for my purposes.”

Good enough for his purposes?

The words sliced through me—sharp, merciless.

I lifted my chin.

“You do realize,” I said, voice steady but edged with steel, “that I have a son… and could possibly have a husband?”

Something changed in his eyes. A flicker—quick, pained, hunted.

But then it vanished beneath steel.