Chapter 156: I just I don’t want my heart broken again

"You know how I like the slow ones." He turned before Marcel could answer, already walking away, already done looking at him.

"Hang him upside down."

"No... no, Viktor, Viktor..." Marcel’s voice cracked into something raw, all the smirk gone out of it now, nothing left but panic as the men closed in around him.

Viktor didn’t turn back. His phone buzzed against his hip as he stepped out of the cell, and he answered it without breaking stride, Marcel’s shouting fading behind the closing door.

"She’s been delivered," the voice on the other end confirmed. "Aliya. At the manufacturing site, like you ordered."

"Good." One word, cold and final, and Viktor kept walking until he was standing in front of the bedroom door.

Viktor stood with his back against the door, shoulders pressed flat to the wood, head tipped back like he could feel her presence right through it.

"Sienna." He kept his voice low. "I know you’re still up in there." No answer. But no sound of her moving away either, and that was enough to keep him talking.

He could have pushed the door open. It wouldn’t have taken much a shoulder, a little force and he’d have been standing in the room with her whether she wanted him there or not. His hand actually drifted to the handle, hovered there a moment.

He let it drop back to his side. "I’m not going to force it. I just need you to hear me."

He closed his eyes, forehead tilting back against the wood.

"A long time ago, twenty years now, there was a man who helped his friend take back his family’s business. Saved his life doing it. Afterward, the two of them built something together. Partners." A pause, and something almost bitter crept into his voice.

"And to make sure that partnership would last, they promised his five-year-old daughter to his friend’s fifteen-year-old son. Some... some foolish idea two men had, thinking they were securing a future."

He let out a breath, slow, tired.

"I never told you, because it never felt like it mattered. My father is dead. And the girl... she went missing twenty years ago, during a crossfire. Never found. She’s probably dead, Sienna. Or as good as. That’s the whole of it. That’s the great secret Aliya thought she was handing you like a knife."

Silence answered him from the other side of the door. He pressed his palm flat against it, like he could reach through the wood if he tried hard enough.

"Have you not realized yet," he said, quieter now, "that I would burn the entire world down before I let anything happen to you? Before I let you go?"

Something in his voice cracked open, just slightly, just enough.

"I never thought I’d fall in love with anyone, Sienna. I didn’t think I was built for it. But I did with you completely and madly. I will not let anything come between us. Not that pact, not Aliya, not anyone left breathing who thinks they can try." A beat, steady now, certain. "You are mine. Always. Forever."

He waited.

For a long moment there was nothing no sound, no movement, just his own heartbeat loud in his ears.

Then, slowly, the door began to open. The door came open, just wide enough for her face to appear in the gap, eyes still red-rimmed, but calm now. Studying him.

"Is that it?" she asked, quiet, like she was testing the weight of the story he’d just handed her, checking for the parts that didn’t sit right.

Viktor was already on his feet, close enough now that she had to tip her head back to keep looking at him. "That’s it."

"You haven’t seen her. Since then."

"No." He said it plainly, no hesitation in it. "I’ve never seen her. Never once. Heard of her, maybe a rumor here and there, nothing solid. I don’t even know her name, Sienna."

She wrapped her arms around herself, chin dipping. "What if she’s found? And she’s beautiful."

That pulled something like a laugh out of him, soft, disbelieving. "Who could possibly be more beautiful than my wife?" He reached for a strand of her hair, tucked it back gently. "You’re standing here worried about a ghost."

"Men get swayed by beauty." She wasn’t smiling yet. "Besides, her family could actually help you. Give you something. I can’t offer you anything like that."

"I don’t want what her family could offer me." His hand slid to her jaw, tilting her face up to his. "I want you. Just you. We’ll build everything else ourselves, conquer whatever needs conquering, together."

She let out a breath, something between a laugh and a sigh. "Okay. I wasn’t jealous." A pause, and her eyes dropped from his. "I just...I don’t want my heart broken again."

She started to turn away from him.

"Hey." He caught her gently, turned her back. "I’m nothing like your stupid ex. I will never betray you." His voice softened, dropped lower. "Now. Please. Say it again."

"Say what?" But she already knew. He could see it in the way color rose in her cheeks.

"Come on, Sienna." Something almost vulnerable crossed his face, a man who’d waited his whole life to hear four words and was terrified, even now, that he’d somehow imagined the first time.

She looked up at him, and this time there was nothing guarded left in her expression at all.

"I love you, Viktor. All of you. However messy, however dark and twisted it is, I don’t know when it happened, or how, but I love you."

Something in his chest gave way completely. He pulled her into him, arms wrapping fully around her, and kissed her like he’d been waiting his whole life for permission to.

"I love you too, Sienna." He said it against her lips, then kissed her again, slower this time, as he had nowhere else on earth to be.

His phone rang in his pocket. He ignored it, chasing another kiss instead. It rang again. And again, insistent, refusing to stop, until it finally cut through even this.