CHAPTER FIVE

Zyran

When Luca asked me, I didn’t react. My face, as always, was a blank page. But inside, the world cracked open.

We were in the back room of The Vault, the Kingsmen’s most secure lounge. The meeting was over. Cristian was pouring drinks, telling a loud, crude story. Lorenzo was checking his phone. Dante was just a shadow in the corner as always. Luca had pulled me aside, his usual charm replaced by a raw, desperate energy.

“I need a favor, Vin. A big one.”

I paused, but then continued sipping my bourbon.Luca wasn't known for asking for many Favors so it made me wonder what the matter was. Favors in their world were currency. I expected a request for some ammunition, for a strategic strike against a rival, for a problem to disappear, a strategy fo their next attack on those serpents. 

“It’s Myra.”

The name was a live wire dropped into still water. I didn’t flinch. I took another slow sip, letting the burn ground him. “What about her?”

Luca ran a hand through his hair, a gesture of pure agitation. “My father is selling her off. To Damon Sokolov. The old Bratva bastard. She’s to be married next month.”

A cold, precise fury settled in my veins. I had known this day might come. I had calculated the probabilities, the alliances, the inevitable moment when her family would use their most beautiful asset. I had files on Sokolov. I knew the man’s habits, his reputation with women, his declining health. The thought of Myra in that house, with that man, made the darkness in me stir, hungry and violent.

“I can’t let it happen,” Luca hissed, leaning in. “You know I can’t.”

“So stop it,” I said, his voice low and flat. “You have resources.”

“Not like that. Not without starting a war we can’t afford right now. But there’s another way.” Luca’s eyes locked onto mine. “You.”

I remained perfectly still.

“Marry her.”

The words hung in the smoky air. To anyone else, it would have sounded insane. To me, it sounded like a prayer I had never dared utter.

“Hear me out,” Luca rushed on, misreading my silence for refusal. “A contract marriage. You’re more powerful than Sokolov. My father can’t refuse. You keep her safe, under your name, you're family hasn't had a marriage tie with mine yet, making your marriage to her valid, just for a year. Just until the heat is off, until Sokolov backs down and my father’s obsession with the alliance dies. Then… you let her go. A quiet divorce. She gets her freedom, and her safety. It’s clean.”

A contract husband.

The phrase was a joke. A beautiful, painful joke.

Luca was still talking, about loyalty, about friendship, about the favor he was owed from a mess I had cleaned up years ago. I heard none of it.

My mind was seven years in the past. The first day I’d come to the Rossi mansion with Luca from a meeting. I been in the foyer,calculations and strategic mind mapping and sharp edges, when she’d come down the stairs. Myra. Nineteen, with a book in her hand and a smile for her brother that lit up the whole damn marble hall. I felt it then—a seismic shift, a crack in my foundation. I had known instantly that wanting her was a catastrophic idea. She was light. I was nothing but wiring rust and danger.

So, I had built a wall. A fortress of indifference. For years, I had perfected the art of not-looking. I would visit Luca, and she would be there—a soft presence in the periphery. I trained him myself to never meet her eyes, to offer only a nod if she spoke, to make myself a statue in her presence. I thought if I pretended she didn’t exist, the wanting would fade.

It did the opposite.

It became an obsession, quiet and all-consuming. I had a room in my penthouse she would never see. A room with photographs. Her graduating college. Her laughing with a friend at a café he’d had watched from across the street. Her buying flowers at a market. I knew her schedule, her favorite books, the music she played when she thought no one was listening. I knew she was more than the beautiful doll the world saw; she was thoughtful, surprisingly witty in her texts to Luca that he’d… acquired, and possessed a quiet steel beneath the gentleness.

I stopped visiting as often because it was torture. Watching Cristian flirt with her, seeing the easy way other men were drawn to her smile—it lit a fuse of a jealousy so pure and violent it scared me I, who felt so little, felt that too much.

She was my best friend’s sister. She was innocence. She was a line I had drawn in the sand of my own soul.

And now Luca was asking me to cross it. To not just cross it, but to have it handed to me, wrapped in a bow of duty and loyalty.

Luca finished his pitch, his eyes pleading. “She’ll agree. She’s terrified of Sokolov. She’ll see you as the safer option.”

The safer option. The words were almost funny.

I finally moved, placing my empty glass on the table with a soft click. I looked at Luca again, the brother of the woman who haunted me. I saw the fear for her in Luca’s eyes. 

I would not be doing this for the favor. I would be doing it because the thought of any other man, especially a decaying monster like Sokolov, putting a hand on her was enough to make him want to paint the city red.

But I also wouldn’t be doing it to let her go.

“A year,” I said, his voice giving nothing away.

Luca’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Yes. Just a year. You won’t have to… you know. It’s just for show. You can even live separately if you want, I just need your name to protect her.”

I almost laughed at the idea. Live separately? 'yeah that wasn't happening'. If she was mine, even just in name, she would be under my roof. In my space. Where I could ensure her safety. Where I could… observe.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

Luca grabbed my arm, gratitude pouring off him. “Thank you, Vin. I owe you everything for this.”

You have no idea what you’ve just done, 

As Luca walked away, already pulling out his phone probably to call Myra with the " good news,” I stayed by the table. The noise of the room faded. The question Luca had unwittingly asked echoed in the silent, calculating chambers of my mind.

A contract husband.

I had agreed to be her shield. Her temporary protector.

But as the image of her—my Myra—finally living in my home, being my wife, seared itself behind my eyes, I faced the real, terrifying question.

Could I really let her go after having her, or could I stop myself from even having a taste?