“I’m serious.” My voice doesn’t waver. For once, nothing in me wavers. “Be my wife. Let me give you the world. Everything you deserve. I swear to you, I will make you the happiest wife anyone has ever known.”
She stares at me, caught between disbelief and something else—something softer. Finally, she exhales, a shaky sound. “I’ll say yes once we tell Leo… once he knows you’re his father.”
I nod without hesitation. “Agreed. He deserves the truth. No more secrets.”
I want this memory to burn into us both. I want her to feel, with every touch, that she is mine and I am hers. That no force on earth—not Mikhail, not Anton’s loyalists, not even death itself—will sever what binds us.
Later, when we finally make it up to her bedroom and lie tangled together again under her sheets, I stroke her hair in long, slow passes, my heart refusing to slow. The sound of the front door opening downstairs jolts us both up and out of bed.
“Shit, my parents,” Ivy mutters.
I sigh, dragging a hand through my hair, the strands still damp from sweat and the softness of her touch. The afterglow of our intimacy fades too quickly, eclipsed by the icy weight of what waits beyond her bedroom door. It’s a cruel shift going from heaven to judgment in the span of a breath.
But I suppose it’s better this way. Better to rip the bandage off and get this confrontation out of the way now, rather than after I’ve stolen their daughter and grandson from them for the second time.
Because that’s exactly what I plan to do.
I move to stand, grabbing my shirt from the pile we’d carried up with us when we retreated to her bedroom. There’s a part of me that wants to laugh bitterly. After all of our back and forth and indecision, and finally coming to a compromise both of us are happy with, now we’re facing an entirely new threat.
“Ivy? You home, sweetheart?” her mother’s voice floats up from downstairs, sounding perfectly calm.
She doesn’t know yet—that her daughter has let the devil back inside.
Beside me, Ivy reaches for my hand, her fingers wrapping around mine. When she squeezes, something shifts in me. The storm quiets for a breath.
I let her pull me along down the hallway. Every step toward the stairs feels like marching toward trial. Judgment. A sentence already written.
When we reach the landing, we stop.
Her parents are in the entryway.
Her mother holds a brown paper bag in one arm, her purse slung over her shoulder. Her father stands just behind her, keys still in hand as he pulls the door shut behind them. Then her mother looks up and the moment she sees me, the color drains from her face.
“What is he doing here?” she demands, her voice rising in pitch. “He can’t be here! Where is Leo? Oh, please tell me you didn’t?—”
“Stop,” Ivy says sharply, lifting a hand.
Her mother falls silent.
Ivy’s voice softens as she takes a step forward, still holding my hand. “We all need to talk.”
Her mother’s eyes immediately fall to our joined hands, widening as if our laced fingers are some declaration of war. I feel the shift in Ivy’s grip, the subtle tremble beneath her strength, but she doesn’t let go. And for that, I’m grateful. For once, I’m not standing alone against her parents.
Her father is the one who speaks next. “Talk about what, exactly?”
The way he says it, it’s clear he already knows. Or suspects enough to make him uneasy. The pinched look around his eyes, the tight line of his jaw, the way his arm presses firmer against his wife’s back. They’ve braced themselves for bad news.
And still, hearing it aloud will be worse.
We descend the stairs together, step by step, and follow them into the living room.
Ivy’s mother sets the grocery bags on the kitchen counter with shaking hands before she joins us, as if clinging to the ritual of unloading fruit and bread will somehow delay whatever’s coming. She abandons it moments later, though, returning to the living room and practically collapsing into the couch.
Her father doesn’t sit.
He paces toward the bay window, arms folded over his chest, eyes trained on the street outside like he expects danger to come storming up the sidewalk at any moment. He won’t even look at us.
Ivy lowers herself into the loveseat across from her mother, gently tugging me down with her. I don’t wedge myself beside her—there’s no room—but I perch on the armrest, my hand still in hers, my other braced against my knee.