Bone Deep(75)

She went to her knees, a single tear tracking down her cheek. “Do not do this to me,” she pleaded. He had said the same words to her in Virginia. They hurt more here in this place of endings.

He came down before her, opening his heart and mind and soul to a killer who’d done nothing but save him time after time. “If I do not do this to you, I will walk alone my entire life. I cannot let you leave because you are my other half. You have become my food, my air, and my heartbeat. Without you, I am nothing.”

She pressed a single finger to his lips. “Do not say that. I am nothing more than a killer.”

He understood what the phrase meant to her. “But it is the truth.” He took her hand in his, placed it over his heart. “Every step in this life, moye, led me to you. Killer or not, you are mine. Do not leave me to walk the rest alone.”

“I am shavur.”

He shook his head, fear racing through his body. “I will never let you break, Bone.”

She did not say anything, her shoulders lifting and falling steadily though her pain. He lifted her face with his finger, amazed at the tracks on her cheeks. Dmitry swiped at the tears falling down her face. “Do not cry here in this place. They are not worth your tears or your pain.”

“But you are worth my tears. I cry for you, Dmitry Asinimov,” she protested.

He stared at her for long moments, thumb brushing her cheekbones, hand holding hers to his chest. “Forgive me.”

She stood then, watching him from those jade-splintered golden orbs and she pulled his head to her stomach. “I don’t know what forgiveness is.”

His heart stopped beating. “Forget what I’ve done.”

She sighed and sifted her fingers through his hair. “I cannot forget the things that form me.”

He had to try once more. “Love me.”

She smiled then and it was different from anything he’d ever seen on her face—it was joy. “I do not understand it, cannot comprehend the emotion, but I know this to be true—I will always love you.”

“How do I make this right?”

Her smile turned sad. He panicked but before he could speak she said, “There is nothing to make right, Dmitry. Just love me and I will be what I have always been meant to be.”

Her words gave him pause. They were exactly what Bullet had said to him. He nodded and stood.

“Mine,” he vowed. “You have always been mine.”

He stood and reached for her. She took a single step back.

“I must say this again—I am a killer, Dmitry. I cannot change that. I have taken many and I will take again. It is a path my feet were set on long before I met you. I still have things to do on my journey, things you may not agree with and things I may not discuss with you. I will not let you sway me.”

He nodded. It was all he could do. He understood but that did not mean he wouldn’t hawk her movements. He needed to protect her. It was who he was.

“We will struggle. It’s who we are. I know nothing about love except that I am warm with you. I know peace with you. That alone tells me the softer emotion is mine,” she admitted.

“There are things we need to talk about,” he said.

She raised a hand. “Not here.”

He accepted that.

“This is not the place to talk about anything but death and I’m weary of death today,” she told him.

Dmitry understood that too. So he took her hand and they walked through the ruins of Masada. She showed him her hiding places and they both stood on the edge of the ruin, holding each other to keep from falling.

And when the sun set and night grabbed the land, they slept beneath God’s twinkling eyes and knew a peace that was theirs alone.





Chapter Twenty-Eight


“Your sister was our creator. I know you all believe it was Joseph and he was the mastermind but we were all actually cemented in our creation the morning Ninka died,” Bone said softly, breaking the silence of the bedroom.

They’d returned to Sydney and spent the last two days wrapped in each other. Forgiveness was requested and given with every sigh and moan and there’d been calm between them. She needed to tell him these things though—needed to give him what she had of his sister.

“When we watched her killed in front of us, it destroyed the last pieces that could have been more than death. Ninka was all that was good and sweet and light. When she died, we became the darkness. She gave us purpose for something besides just survival.” She took a deep breath.

Dmitry pulled her even closer into his body, her back flush with his front, her head on his arm and his other hand entwined with hers. He did not speak as if realizing she needed to say this.

“You cannot imagine the hell we endured. Children being groomed for nothing but killing. Oh, we had other lessons—how to act like a lady, how to eat properly, how to speak different languages, and how to dress. He made sure we knew how to kill and remain women. His theory was that a man would never suspect a pretty woman had been sent to kill him.

“Our lessons were hard and brutal. One day I’ll share those things with you, but not today. I want to harm others when I remember those things. We bonded over her death. Until then, we had done nothing more than use one another to survive. Ninka, as the weakest, was the fulcrum around which we pivoted. Every action we took was to survive but also to protect her. We were a unit but until her death we weren’t blooded.”