Chapter 191: You Are Not Leaving. You Belong To Me

The words hung between them, heavy and lethal.

Dimitri remembered. Of course he remembered. He’d thought about those words every single day since he’d made the decision not to tell her about his plan to infiltrate The Covenant’s Headquarter. He’d replayed them like a warning he’d chosen to ignore.

"If you lie to me again, I’ll leave. I won’t give you another opportunity to convince me you’ve changed. I’ll walk."

"Eve, let me explain...."

"I’m done." She didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t need to. "I’m done, Dimitri. I’m done being lied to. I’m done accepting crumbs of truth and pretending they’re enough. I’m done."

She turned and walked out of the office.

Dimitri said "Fuck," and it came out like a prayer and a curse combined. He stood immediately, his body moving on instinct before his mind caught up.

Marco watched him leave without a word. But he saw the raw panic move across his boss’s face. Saw the moment Dimitri understood that this wasn’t like the other fights. This was different.

This was the end if he didn’t fix it.

*** ℴℴ𝘮

POV: EVE

Eve moved through the penthouse like a ghost.

Her bedroom...their bedroom....felt enormous and cold when she opened the door. The afternoon light was dying, casting everything in shades of blue and gray.

She went directly to the closet and pulled out her suitcase.

It was small...overnight-sized. She’d bought it months ago, before everything changed, when she used to travel for work. Now she was using it to leave the man she loved because he couldn’t do one simple thing: tell her the truth.

Her hands shook as she started pulling clothes from hangers.

She couldn’t breathe properly. The anger was so massive, so all-consuming, that it was almost paralyzing. It lived in her chest like a second heartbeat, like something alive and dangerous.

He’d promised her.

Not once, but repeatedly. After Enzo’s visit. After Isabella arrived. After every single conversation where she’d forced him to acknowledge that she needed honesty more than she needed protection.

And he’d lied anyway.

Eve threw clothes into the suitcase without folding them. Didn’t care that her favorite blouse was wrinkled. Didn’t care that she was throwing her things in haphazardly. This wasn’t about packing carefully. This was about leaving.

Her hands were shaking so badly that she could barely grip the fabric.

"Eve."

She froze.

Dimitri stood in the doorway, and something in his expression had shifted. The controlled businessman was gone. What remained was something rawer. Something that looked almost desperate.

Eve didn’t look at him. Just kept packing. Kept moving. If she stopped, if she turned around and saw his face, she might break. And she couldn’t break. Not right now.

"Don’t," she said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to keep it steady. "Don’t say anything. Just... don’t."

"I asked you for one thing," she continued, her voice rising slightly. "One thing, Dimitri. Honesty. Complete, total honesty. And you couldn’t even give me that. You told me everything. You promised me that after Enzo, after Isabella, after every single lie you’ve told me, you promised there would be no more secrets. And the whole time, you were lying about The Covenant. You were planning an infiltration. You were deciding what truths I was strong enough to handle."

She pulled out another handful of clothes, threw them into the suitcase with more force than necessary.

"You’re right. You’re absolutely right," Dimitri said, and his voice was rough with something that sounded like pain. "Let me explain...."

"There’s nothing to explain." Eve walked to the dresser and started pulling out her bras, underwear, socks. Things that felt too private to be doing in front of him, but she was beyond caring about dignity. "You lied. Again. You stood in your office and told Marco that I ’can’t handle the weight of what’s coming.’ Do you understand how much that hurts? Do you understand what that does to me?"

She threw the last items into the suitcase and turned back to face him.

His jaw was clenched so tight she could see the muscle jumping. His hands were curled into fists at his sides. He looked like a man barely holding himself together.

Good.

She wanted him to feel this. Wanted him to understand exactly what he’d destroyed.

"You’re not leaving," Dimitri said quietly.

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact. Of certainty.

And somehow, that made it worse.

"Watch me." Eve grabbed the suitcase handle, tried to move past him.

Dimitri caught her arm....not roughly, but firmly. His hand was warm around her wrist, and the touch was almost gentle, which made the whole thing so much worse.

"Let go," Eve said. "Let me go right now, Dimitri. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore."

The words hung in the air between them.

I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.

And something in Dimitri’s expression shifted. Went absolutely, completely feral.

His eyes changed. Went from that controlled silver-gray to something darker. Something that looked almost like rage, but underneath it was something more primal. Something that looked like possession.

"Never," he said, and the single word was a promise and a threat simultaneously. "You belong to me. And you’re not going anywhere."

Before Eve could process what was happening, he lifted her completely off the ground with one hand gripped around her waist. Her suitcase fell to the floor, forgotten.

"Put me down!" Eve struggled, beating at his shoulders. "Dimitri, put me down right now! I’m serious...."

"I know you are," he said, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. Something intimate and terrifying all at once.

He carried her to the bed and set her down, but instead of releasing her, he stood there. Just stood there, looking at her like she was something he’d lose if he blinked.

Then his hand went to his belt.

Eve’s breath caught.

Slowly....so slowly that it felt deliberate, like a threat conveyed through motion....Dimitri unbuckled his belt. The leather slid through the loops with a sound that was somehow terrifying.

Snap. Snap. Snap.