Page 179 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

“I know.”

“But your father’s leverage is gone.”

She doesn’t rescue me from the rest of it.

I keep my hands loose at my sides because everything in me wants to reach for her, and that would be easier than saying this cleanly.

“None of the protection depends on you staying here. Anna and Ivan stay covered. Your business stays covered. You stay covered.” I hate the sound of the next words, but I say them anyway. “If you want to go back to your own apartment, you can. If you want to leave New York for a while, I’ll make that safe. You don’t have to sleep in my bed or wear my ring to keep what should’ve been yours from the beginning.”

She says nothing, and for once I have no route to clear, no order to give, no threat to remove.

Tamara stands slowly.

The cardigan slips off one shoulder. She doesn’t fix it.

“Are you offering me an annulment?”

“No.”

Her face hardens.

I correct myself immediately. “Yes. If that’s what you want. But that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m giving you a choice.”

She laughs once, with disbelief sharp enough to draw blood. “Why does it feel like you’re trying to send me away?”

I wanted her to spare me the confession. She does not.

Good.

Tamara has earned directness.

So I give it to her.

“Because I’m in love with you.”

She gives me nothing.

“I love you,” I say again, because she deserves to hear it without having to pull it out of me. “I love you in this apartment. At my desk. In my bed. Moving furniture I explicitly told you not to move. I love your work spread through rooms I thought I had finished living in. I love that you cannot make a crêpe to save your life and your brutal opinions about marble.”

She takes that in without helping me. I don’t step closer.

“I want you to stay. But I love you too much to let this apartment become another room someone locked you inside.”

Tears gather before she can stop them, and she looks furious about it.

“I didn’t choose this marriage,” she says.

“I know.”

“I didn’t choose this apartment. I didn’t choose to share your bed. I didn’t choose any of the things that brought me here.” Her voice stays steady, but I can hear what it costs. “And I don’t want to wake up six months from now and realize I let the shape of the trap become the shape of my life because falling in love made it prettier.”

There are sentences a man earns by shutting up.

This is one of them.