The private jet cut through the skies like a sharpened blade, its hum a dull contrast to the chaos Alina and Nicholas carried inside them.
She sat across from him in a silk slip, legs crossed, hair still damp from the storm they had walked through in Italy. There were bruises blooming on her thighs, love marks that throbbed with every shift of her hips. Proof that Nicholas hadn’t made love to her in the wreckage.
He’d taken her.
And she had begged for it.
Now, the war was in the air. In the stare he gave her across the jet. In the silence that said:
“We’re not just fighting for blood anymore. We’re fighting for our souls.”
She stood, closing the gap between them in slow, deliberate steps.
“You’re too quiet,” she said, sliding into his lap.
He didn’t speak. Just gripped her hips and
