The moment the plane landed, the seatbelt sign chimed and went dark. I had barely shifted in my seat, my muscles still stiff from the flight, when cold metal snapped shut around my wrist.
I gasped and looked up.
Alex was still seated on his seat, calm and unhurried, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. The other cuff locked around his own wrist, binding us together in a way that felt deliberate, intimate and deeply wrong.
His fingers lingered over the steel for a second too long.
"I can't have you fighting me at every turn," he murmured, leaning in until his mouth brushed my temple, his breath warm and unhurried as if this were a negotiation between lovers. "This is only temporary," he added softly. "Just until you learn to behave."
I yanked my wrist hard enough for the chain to rattle sharply between us, biting back a gasp as pain flared and shot up my arm. "Over my dead body," I hissed, meeting his gaze with every fight I had left.
Something like satisfaction flickered across his face.
"Good," he said easily, almost fondly. With a soft click, he unbuckled his seatbelt and rose to his feet, leaning over me as though he was claiming the space I occupied. His lips curled, possessive and pleased. "I don't mind being chained to you anyway."
The words made my stomach twist.
Before I could react, his fingers were already at my waist, unfastening my seatbelt with the same practiced ease. Once it was released, he simply turned toward the aisle, pulling me with him. I let out a string of curses, both in Italian and in English, earning yet another soft chuckle out of him.
The flight attendants barely spared us a second glance. Just polite indifference, as if a woman being handcuffed to a sociopath was nothing out of the ordinary. I hated how seamlessly he moved through the space, how convincingly he wore his calm, like a man who knew no one would dare to stop him.
And then the absurdity of it struck me.
His jet was massive. Larger than my family's ever was. Impossibly so. The kind of aircraft that didn't seem to belong to a man like Alex, but to something far beyond quiet startups and careful lies. Making me wonder, which powerful man did he manage to swindle this from.
The thought sent a chill in my chest.
He's good. Too good.
And somehow, without ever seeing it coming, I had married a criminal.
The air outside was cut sharp and clean. The wind whipping against my skin as the December sunlight spilled cold and bright across the tarmac. There was salt in the air clinging to my senses, unmistakably familiar. Fuck.
I didn't need my phone to know where I am. I knew exactly where I was.
Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Right where it all began.
A line of vehicles were parked on the runway. Two sedans flanking a large, black SUV positioned in the middle, solid and inevitable. I already knew where we were headed, but I kept my face blank. I pretended not to notice the car we were walking toward, even as something tight and awful coiled in my stomach.
Because it was the same car.
The same car he used to drive when we were together. The same one he had kissed me against in the mornings. The very same one he also had been driving on, in the morning of the attack.
I turned my head away before he could notice, forcing my body into practiced indifference. If he noticed anything, he certainly didn't say it. He simply opened the door for me.
I slid into the seat, and the door shut behind me, sealing the moment in place.
The engine purred to life, smooth and controlled. As we pulled away from the airport, he reached forward and turned on the radio. Music filled the air, low and melodic, something gentle. Familiar enough to feel intentional.
The road stretched ahead of us, the highway opening wide as the city fell away behind. They all moved in quiet precision. For a moment, I focused on the car in front of us, its dark silhouette steady and reassuring in its predictability.
Then, once we reached the exit, it veered off.
My chest tightened.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked, my voice steadier than I felt. The question settled between us, heavier than the low hum of the engine, or the music threading softly through the car.
He didn't look at me at first. His gaze simply remained fixed on the road, his hands steady on the wheel, as if he was guiding us toward somewhere sacred.
"I'm tired of you fighting me," he said at last, not unkindly. Almost weary. "I want you to remember everything." His jaw tightened, just a fraction. "Because maybe then, you'll understand what we had. What we still have."
The highway stretched endlessly ahead, sunlight glinting off the asphalt like a promise. Then he turned to look at me, not apologetically, but achingly steady.
"That's when all of this," he said quietly, "becomes worth it."
He still didn't know that I remembered everything. In his mind, my memory was the thing that would restore me to him, return me to the version of the woman he loved. The woman who loved him without fear. Who didn't yet know the cost of that love.
Lara James Barinov.
"What makes you think I'd go back to being her," I asked quietly, leaning my head against the seat, pressing my fingers to my temple when the ache behind my eyes sharpened. "If I remember everything, I'll remember this version of you, too. Not the man you wanted her to see, the one you definitely hid from her."
His jaw tightened. His grip on the wheel turned rigid, his knuckles paling.
I noticed, of course. I just simply chose not to acknowledge it. Instead, I turned towards the window, watching the landscape blur past.
"That version of me was real," he said after a moment. His voice was steady, almost wounded. "I just kept the uglier parts away from her. She didn't need them." A pause. "Everything else...that was all real."
I closed my eyes. The steady hum of the engine, the low music, the weight of his presence pressing down on me until my exhaustion seeped back into my bones.
"And that's the problem," I murmured. "The way you say it...it's like you're talking about two different people."
He laughed then. Breathless, almost disbelieving.
"Does it really matter?" he said, finally turning his head just enough for me to catch the edge of his expression. There was pain there, definitely. Old and deep, carefully contained. "I let her love the parts of me that were easy to carry. She never would've known what it cost me to keep the rest away from her."
His fingers tightened around the wheel.
"I bled so you could feel safe, Lara," he continued softly. "I broke myself in places you never had to look at." A pause. Then quieter, almost pleading. "Is that so wrong?"
"I'm not Lara," I bit out sharply, deliberately this time. "Don't call me that. Ever again."
He went still.
Because in my mind, she was already dead.
That woman had existed within a fairytale, one built on omission and carefully curated truths. She had loved freely because she believed she was safe, that she could escape her future. But in truth, she never really existed.
Lara James had only ever been real until the illusion shattered.
The car continued forward, steady and unhurried, the tires whispering against the road. His hands remained on the wheel, his knuckles pale, grip precise. The radio played on, but he reached out and turned it down, not off. Low enough to fill the tense silence.
Whatever he's feeling, he certainly was locking it away with the same discipline he had applied to everything else. The drive past in silence, thick and oppressive, filled with all the things neither of us dared to say.
Outside, the road stretched endlessly ahead, though I was starting to see the ocean.
Beside me, a man drove on in silence, carrying the quiet certainty that even if his beloved wife was gone, he would still find a way to make her real again.
Even if it kills me.