The door clicked shut behind her.
The silence that followed was deafening. A silence so heavy it seemed to press against the walls, suffocating, echoing with the ghost of her footsteps. His chest felt hollow, like someone had scooped him out with cold hands and left nothing but bone and rage inside.
His eyes drifted, unbidden, to the bed. To the spot where her warmth still lingered in the sheets, a dent in the mattress where her body had been. And there—like some cruel reminder—lay the ring.
It glimmered faintly against the dark bedspread, a small circle of promise, now abandoned.
Nikolai's throat tightened. Slowly, almost reverently, he reached out and picked it up. The cool metal pressed into his palm like ice. He turned it between his fingers, watching the way the dim light caught against its edges. It felt heavier than it should, weighted with everything it was supposed to mean, with everything he had thought they could be.
A shaky sigh escaped him, one he didn't even realize he had been holding back. He pressed the heel of his hand into his face, dragging down hard until his skin burned. Then both hands covered his face, fingers digging into his scalp.
He didn't know whether to cry… or destroy everything within reach.
He had thought he had it all figured out. For once in his chaotic, blood-soaked life, he thought he had found something solid. Someone solid. He had Rose. She was supposed to be his anchor. She had been the one person he could imagine sharing his life with, a life that never seemed to belong to him in the first place.
But no.
She wanted more.
She wanted him to peel off every last layer, to bare himself until there was nothing left but raw flesh and ugly scars. She wanted all of him. His truth. His filth. His darkness.
And he couldn't do it.
Not with what he carried inside. Not with the stench of his past that still clung to him no matter how many showers he took, no matter how many tailored suits he wore, no matter how much blood he washed from his hands.
"Rose…"
Her name slipped from his lips like a prayer, broken, aching. He whispered it into the silence as if saying it aloud might conjure her back into the room. But the bed remained empty. The sheets remained cold.
She was gone.
And he—he had told her not to come back if she walked out that door. He had thrown the words like knives, sharp and final. Now the blade twisted in his own gut.
What if she took him at his word?
What if she never came back?
What if he had lost her forever?
His stomach clenched, bile rising at the thought. No. He wouldn't allow it. He couldn't. Rose wasn't someone you just let walk away. She was his. She had to be his.
He would wait for her. He would give her space to calm down. She would come back—she had to. She always came back. Didn't she?
Didn't she?
His hands trembled as he rubbed them down his face again, the ring biting into his skin where he still clutched it.
He could drag her back if he wanted to. He could put her exactly where he wanted her—chain her to the bed, lock every door, throw away the key. The thought flickered in the back of his mind, dark and tempting, the kind of solution that Sergei would sneer at him for not already taking.
But no. That wasn't what she wanted.
Rose wanted all of him.
And he… he could only give her the present. The man standing here now. Not the boy who came before. The boy was poison. And poison only killed what it touched.
His jaw clenched, breath shuddering.
Because if she knew—if she really knew—she wouldn't stay.
She would look at him with pity. Or worse, with disgust. He could see it already: her warm eyes turning glassy with revulsion, her lips pressed into a tight line as if she couldn't bear to breathe the same air.
He wanted her to see him as he was now. The man who could protect her. The man who could give her a future. Not the boy who crawled out of filth and blood.
But Rose… Rose was stubborn. She didn't let go once she had her claws in something. She would dig. She would demand. She would not stop until she had it all.
His breath came out in a ragged laugh—bitter, humorless.
Maybe she thought she wanted his past. But she didn't know. She couldn't know.
Because what was his past, really?
It was a boy in a brothel, abandoned by the only person who was supposed to protect him. A mother who didn't just sell her soul—she sold him too. A boy with too many hands on him, too many nights spent as nothing more than a commodity, until something inside him snapped like brittle bone.
Twelve years old. That was all he was. Twelve. And his mother's skull split beneath his hands, blood and brain staining the floor until there was nothing left of the woman who birthed him. Nothing but silence. Nothing but the raw knowledge that he had killed the only family he had.
Would Rose want that?
Would she want a murderer?
And that was just the beginning. Juvenile prison had been worse. He had spent years there, though it felt like decades. Each day grinding him down, reshaping him into something harder, colder, less human. He had learned to fight, to kill, to survive, because survival was all he had.
And when he was finally spat out onto the streets, he had nothing. No one.
Starving. Filthy.
He had sold himself then, too. Sold his body to women with diamonds on their wrists and ice in their eyes, women who wanted the thrill of something dangerous, something dirty. They had paid him well enough at first. Until the hunger in his eyes made him too repulsive to look at. Until no one wanted him anymore.
Would Rose want that?
Would she want a whore?
His stomach twisted as he squeezed the ring so tight it cut into his palm.
Then Sergei found him. Took him in. Molded him into a weapon. A blade that could be aimed wherever Sergei wished. Nineteen years old, broken and starving, and suddenly with a purpose: kill, obey, survive.
That was what he had become. That was what he still was.
Would Rose want that?
Would she want a monster?
His breath stuttered out, shaky and uneven.
No. That was what he didn't want her to know. That was the rot he couldn't let her touch.
He wanted her to love him now, not pity him. He wanted her to crave his future, not recoil from his past. He wanted her warmth without her eyes turning cold.
But Rose… Rose was stubborn.
And something deep in his chest told him she wouldn't let this go. That she wouldn't stop until she dug all the way to the bottom, until she pulled every ugly secret into the light.
He closed his eyes, head dropping forward, shoulders curling inward.
He wanted to believe she would calm down. That she would come back. That if he gave her some excuse, some carefully spun half-truth, she would let it go.
Right?
His hands trembled as he pressed them against his face again, the ring digging into his skin.
Right?
The silence gave him no answer. Only the echo of her absence.
Only the ghosts of who he used to be.
And for the first time in years, Nikolai felt something close to fear.