Chapter 6
The sun was fully up now, painting the penthouse in shades of gold and amber.
Dora finished bandaging Victor’s ribs with practiced efficiency. She smoothed the medical tape down with her palm, checking that the gauze was secure. Victor watched her the entire time, his gray eyes tracking her every movement.
“You should sleep,” she said, gathering the supplies.
“So should you.”
“I don’t trust this place enough to sleep.”
Victor’s jaw tightened. “You’re safe here. I told you—”
“You told me a lot of things.” Dora cut him off, standing up. “You told me you’d fix my reality. You told me no one would touch me. And then you left me alone in a glass tower with a frying pan and a bounty on my head.”
Victor’s eyes flashed with something—regret, maybe, or shame. “I underestimated how fast the news would spread.”
“And if Leo hadn’t gotten here when he did? If those men had come through that door instead of him?”
“They didn’t.”
“But they could have.” Dora’s voice cracked. “I sat here for six hours, Victor. Six hours, waiting for someone to kick down that door and put a bullet in my head. Do you have any idea what that does to a person?”
Victor stood up slowly, wincing as the movement pulled at his stitches. He walked toward her, stopping when he was close enough that she could see the exhaustion carved into his face.
“I know exactly what it does,” he said quietly. “I’ve been living with that feeling for fifteen years.”
Dora looked at him. Really looked. At the scars on his knuckles. The bruise blooming across his jaw. The shadows under his eyes that spoke of years of sleepless nights.
“Then why do you do it?” she asked. “Why live like this?”
Victor’s smile was bitter. “I didn’t choose this life, Dora. It chose me. When you grow up in the neighborhoods I grew up in, you either become prey or predator. I decided I’d rather be the one people fear than the one who’s afraid.”
“And now?”
“Now?” He looked at her, and something shifted in his expression. The coldness flickered, revealing something raw underneath. “Now I’m not sure what I am.”
The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken things.
“I should go,” Dora said finally. “The bounty is cancelled. I can go back to my life.”
“Your life.” Victor’s voice was flat. “Serving drinks to people who treat you like furniture. Coming home to a room that isn’t yours. Wondering if you’ll make rent next month.”
“It’s my life.”
“It’s a survival strategy. Not a life.”
Dora’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. “You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to show up after eight months and tell me my life isn’t good enough. It’s mine. I built it. It might not be much, but it’s honest.”
“Honest.” Victor shook his head. “You keep using that word like it’s a shield. Like being honest will protect you from the world.”
“It’s better than being like you.”
Victor’s eyes hardened. “You think I enjoy being this? You think I wake up every morning and choose violence?”
“I think you’ve made choices. And now you’re living with them.”
“Just like you.”
The words hit their mark. Dora’s breath caught. Because he was right. She had made choices too. She had chosen isolation over vulnerability. She had chosen to trust no one rather than risk being hurt. She had built walls so high that even she couldn’t see over them.
“I’m not like you,” she whispered.
“No.” Victor’s voice softened. “You’re not. You’re better. You’re the kind of person who stitches up a stranger’s wounds because it’s the right thing to do. Who works three jobs and still finds the strength to be kind. Who faces down a room full of billionaires without breaking.”
He stepped closer.
“I’ve done terrible things, Dora. Things I can’t undo. But meeting you—” He paused, searching for the words. “Meeting you made me feel like maybe I’m not completely lost.”
Dora’s heart was pounding so hard she was sure he could hear it. “Victor—”
“I’m not asking you to save me.” His voice was rough. “I’m asking you to stay. Not because you owe me. Not because of the debt. But because—” He stopped, his jaw working. “Because I don’t want to go back to the person I was before I met you.”
The words hung in the air between them, fragile and dangerous.
Dora thought about her empty apartment. Her minimum-wage jobs. The loneliness that had become her constant companion. She thought about the way Victor had looked at her in the ballroom—not with pity, but with recognition. Like he saw her. Really saw her.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted, her voice barely audible. “I don’t know how to trust someone.”
“Neither do I.” Victor’s hand came up, hovering near her face, giving her time to pull away. When she didn’t, he cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone. “But I’d like to learn. With you.”
Dora’s eyes burned. She blinked, and a tear slipped down her cheek, catching on his thumb.
May you like
“Okay,” she whispered.
Victor’s forehead dropped to hers. They stood there, breathing the same air, two broken people finding each other in the wreckage of a war that had nearly consumed them both.
