“Did they touch you?” The question tears from my throat, rough and desperate as my hands move over her body, cataloging injuries with clinical efficiency even as my heart hammers against my ribs. A bruise is blooming on her cheekbone. Split lip. Abrasions on her wrists. My fingers trace each mark, rage building with every discovery. “Did they?—”
“No,” she gasps, eyes locking with mine. “No, I’m okay.”
The control I’ve maintained during the assault crumbles like ash. My hands aren’t steady anymore. They tremble against her skin in a way they never have during an operation.
Cyrus falls to his knees beside the chair, pulling Keira against his chest despite the knife wound in his shoulder. Blood seeps through his tactical gear, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. His arms wrap around her from behind, his face buried in her hair.
I frame her face between my hands, feeling the warm proof of her life beneath my palms. We’re both shaking—Cyrus and I—our bodies betraying emotions we’ve been trained since childhood to suppress. The fear of losing her has stripped away decades of conditioning, leaving us raw and exposed in a way I’ve never experienced during an operation.
“We thought—” The words catch in my throat, refusing to form.
I don’t need to finish. She knows. The hands that have ended countless lives without trembling now shake against her skin, telling her everything words cannot.
I pull Keira from the chair, my body moving on instinct rather than calculation. The three of us collapse to our knees on the concrete floor, a tangle of limbs and desperate touches.
My hands find Cyrus’s face, then Keira’s, then back to Cyrus—needing the tactile confirmation that they’re both here, both alive. Blood and sweat mingle on my palms, but I can’t tell whose is whose anymore. It doesn’t matter.
Keira’s fingers clutch at my tactical vest, her other hand gripping Cyrus’s arm with white-knuckled intensity. Her body trembles between us as we envelop her from both sides, creating a fortress of flesh and bone.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispers against my neck, her breath warm and alive. “I knew.”
Cyrus has one arm crushed around her waist while his other hand finds the back of my neck, squeezing. His forehead presses against mine over Keira’s shoulder, our breath syncing as it has since our first kill. But this is different—this isn’t the controlled rhythm of synchronized violence. This is ragged, desperate, human.
We’re pressed so tightly together I feel Keira’s heartbeat against my chest, Cyrus’s pulse through his grip on my neck. Three distinct rhythms gradually align, finding harmonious cadence.
My fingers trace the curve of Keira’s spine, up to tangle in her hair, confirming every inch of her is intact. I’m vaguely aware of leaving bloody fingerprints on her skin, but I can’t stop touching her, can’t stop the frantic inventory my hands need to take.
Cyrus’s wound is bleeding through his gear, staining Keira’s shirt, my hands, all of us marked with the same crimson proof of survival.
“I love you,” I murmur, not knowing or caring which of them I’m speaking to. The words encompass both. “I love you both.”
46
CYRUS
Ifeel Keira’s warmth between us, her heartbeat strong against my chest, when I hear it—the faint scrape of a door at the far end of the warehouse. My head snaps up, predator’s instinct cutting through emotion.
“Volkov.” The name tastes like copper in my mouth.
I’m on my feet before I make the conscious decision to move, my body remembering what my mind had forgotten in the relief of finding Keira alive. We’re not finished.
“Stay with her,” I tell Ace, already moving toward the sound, my gun raised.
Blood seeps down my arm from the knife wound, but I barely register the pain. There’s only one thing that matters now—the man who took Keira from us, who dared put his hands on what’s ours.
I track him through the shadows, moving silently despite the tactical gear weighing me down. At the back loading dock, I catch a glimpse of his silhouette slipping through an exit door.
Three strides and I’m through the door after him, the night air hitting my face like a slap. Volkov is fifteen yards ahead, running toward a chain-link fence.
I don’t call out. Don’t warn him. My bullet catches him in the calf, a precision shot dropping him to the gravel with a satisfying thud.
When I reach him, he’s trying to crawl, leaving a dark trail behind him. I press my boot into his wounded leg, grinding down until his scream cuts through the night.
“You touched what’s mine.” My voice is ice. I kneel beside him, pressing the barrel of my gun under his jaw. “You put your hands on her.”
“Business,” he gasps, “just business?—”
I slam his head back against the gravel. “Every minute she was afraid, every second she wondered if we’d come for her—you’re going to feel it all.”