Chapter 31: The Shadow of His Skin

Vespera

The strong smell of blood and burnt gunpowder filled the master bedroom, hanging in the air and soaking into the heavy velvet curtains like a dark shadow.

Down in the courtyard, the sound of gunshots had finally stopped. Jonas and his team had managed to stop the attackers at the iron gates, but many people had been badly hurt, and the victory had come at a terrible cost.

Kasimir sat on the edge of the dark wooden bed, shirtless. A deep, rough bullet wound cut across his left shoulder, and blood ran down his chest. Sweat covered his skin, and he clenched his jaw so hard that the muscles in his neck stood out.

My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hold the silver bowl filled with hot water.

“Put it down, Vespera,” Kasimir said roughly, his deep, rough voice making the room feel tense.

“No,” I whispered, my voice shaking as I fell to my knees on the cold floor between his legs. “You’re losing so much blood because you stayed on that balcony to protect me.”

“It’s just a flesh wound,” he growled, but he let out a sharp breath as he rested his head against the carved headboard. His dark hair was wet with sweat and stuck to his forehead. “I’ve survived worse.”

"Stop talking like you're made of iron!" I snapped, tears filling my eyes as fear took over.

I dipped a clean cloth into the water and squeezed out the extra water. Steam rose around my shaking fingers. I stepped between his knees and gently lifted the wet cloth to his shoulder.

The moment the warm cloth touched his open wound, Kasimir didn’t move or pull away. Instead, he quickly reached out and grabbed my wrist with his strong hand. He wasn’t trying to stop me. He just seemed to need something to hold on to.

He stared straight at me so intensely that my heart started beating fast.

“Careful, little bird,” he whispered, his warm, shaky breath brushing my neck. “You’re pressing too hard.”

“I need to clean the gunpowder out of the wound, or it could get infected,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and not pull my wrist away from his hand.

I leaned closer, my knees touching his dark jeans. The heat from his body kept me warm against the cold air coming through the broken windows downstairs. Every breath he took shook his chest, and I could feel his ribs move against me. He looked so big and dangerous, yet so weak and vulnerable at that moment.

I slowly moved the cloth over his skin, carefully wiping away the blood running down his collarbone.

My fingers touched his bare chest. I felt the hard skin of his shoulder and the old, pale scar along his ribs from the bullet he took for me in Hamburg. Under my hand, his heart was beating hard and fast.

A shiver went through his large body when I touched him. His fingers tightened around my wrist, and his thumb slowly moved over my pulse.

“You’re shaking,” he whispered, never taking his eyes off me.

“Because you almost died,” I choked out, a tear slipping down my cheek and falling onto his chest. “You promised you would protect me, Kasimir, but you keep putting yourself in danger like your life doesn’t matter.”

Kasimir made a low sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a frustrated groan. He pulled on my wrist, bringing me closer until I had to place my hands on his strong, uninjured shoulder to keep my balance.

“My life meant nothing until you came into this house,” he said, his voice low and serious. “For ten years, I lived without caring what happened to me. I built my empire through anger and blood. I didn’t care if I lived to see another day.”

He leaned closer until his forehead rested against mine. The smell of blood, cedar, and rain surrounded me.

“Then you looked at me in that vault,” he whispered. “You looked at me with those frightened eyes, and you made me want to survive this war.”

My breath caught. All the doubts and fears I had been holding onto suddenly started to disappear.

“Kasimir…” I cried softly.

“Tell me to stop, Vespera,” he said in a low voice. His hand moved up my arm and rested behind my head, his fingers tightening in my hair. “Tell me you hate me for bringing you into this mess. Tell me now, because if you don’t… I’m never letting you go.”

I looked into his eyes. I could see how deeply he cared about me, even though it frightened me. To everyone else, he was a monster and a ruthless warlord. But here, sitting in the dark and bleeding, he seemed like a broken man giving me everything he had left.

I didn’t tell him to stop.

Instead, I raised my shaking hand and touched the back of his neck. Then I pulled him down and kissed him.

The kiss was slow and deep. I could taste blood and whiskey as his lips met mine. His desperation made it hard for me to think clearly. He let out a low groan and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me close against him.

I gave in to him completely. My hands moved through his dark hair, and my body pressed against the hot skin of his bare chest. Every touch felt like I was giving myself to him, like a silent promise we were making in the middle of all the chaos around us.

He only broke the kiss when his breathing became heavy. His lips moved along my jaw before he pressed a warm kiss against my throat.

“I’ll tear the whole world apart to keep you safe,” he whispered against my skin. His hand held my waist so tightly that I knew it would leave a bruise. “Tomorrow, we attack the Swiss facility. We get your sister back, and we end this.”

“We’ll end it together,” I promised.

I rested my head against his good shoulder and listened to his strong heartbeat. Soon, he closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep from the pain medicine and exhaustion.

I stayed in his arms for almost an hour, watching the firelight move across his face as his breathing slowly became calm and steady.

Carefully, so I wouldn’t wake him, I slipped out of his arms and stood up.

My skirt was covered in his blood.

I picked up his dark, damaged tactical vest from the floor. I wanted to get all the bloody gear out of the room.

As I lifted the heavy vest, a small satellite phone slipped out from a hidden pocket inside it. It fell onto the rug with a soft thud.

The screen lit up right away.

A new encrypted message appeared. It was marked as high priority.

I froze for a moment, my heart dropping.

I picked up the phone. There was no passcode. It had unlocked automatically because Kasimir had held it earlier.

I opened the message, expecting it to be a report from Jonas about the Swiss border.

But it wasn’t.

It was a scanned document from a private forensic lab in Munich. The message had been sent by Jonas twenty minutes earlier.

Herr Adler,

The private autopsy report from seven years ago has been successfully removed from the state database, just as you ordered. Vespera will never know that her father did not die from a heart attack.

She will also never know that the sapphire ring your grandmother gave her tonight was taken from her father’s dead finger.