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The first notes of the orchestra tuning reach us, signaling the performance's imminent start. My father straightens, dignity reasserting itself despite the blood staining his tuxedo.

"This is not finished, Francesca," he warns, moving toward the door.

"It is," I counter. "But tell my brother I miss him. That I love him. And that if you ever try to sell him too, I'll personally ensure the Castellano name ends with you."

My father pauses at the threat. Then, when he sees that I'm speaking with deadly fucking clarity, he departs without another word.

Dante pulls me against him, one hand cupping my face with startling tenderness. "Are you alright?"

"Better than I have been in years," I admit, reaching to straighten his bow tie where it had shifted during the confrontation. "Thank you for breaking his nose."

Dante's laugh is dark, genuine. "My pleasure, princess. Though next time, I'd prefer to break considerably more than that."

"Next time," I agree, as the opera's opening chords fill the theater, "I might even let you."

He brushes his lips against mine, the taste of violence and protection and something dangerously close to devotion mingling between us.

Chapter Nineteen

Dante

I stand at the windows of my London penthouse, watching rain lash against glass that separates me from the city I've fought to control every night that we were away.

For a week now, we've been back from Rome. A week of encrypted messages from Nico, of financial restructuring, of piecing together a new strategy based on the Volkovs' betrayal.

A week of watching Francesca now move through my home not as captive, but as something more dangerous: as someone who belongs here by choice.

Behind me, screens display surveillance footage from across Europe. The Volkov compound in St. Petersburg. Luca's movements between hospital and mansion. The shifting alliances visible to those who know where to look.

But my focus keeps drifting to the feed showing Francesca in the library, curled in a leather chair with a book open in her lap.She's wearing one of my shirts, her legs bare beneath it, hair cascading over her shoulders as she reads.

The sight of her there, completely comfortable and unguarded, twists something inside my chest that I've spent a lifetime denying exists.

"Sir?" Marco interrupts my thoughts, appearing silently at my office door. "The documents you requested have been retrieved from the vault."

I nod, turning from the window. "And the other item?"

"Also secured, as requested."

"Good. Send her to me in an hour. And Marco… Ensure we're not disturbed."

Marco departs with a nod, and I run my thumb over the scar where my finger should be. The phantom pain flares as it always does when big,harddecisions loom.

She's changed everything—this woman who entered my life as a symbol of power I could claim.

Now, as intelligence from Nico confirms the Volkovs' treachery and Luca's vulnerability, I find my ambitions shifting in ways I never anticipated.

The throne still beckons. But the cold victory I once craved has transformed into something more complex. Something that includes the fierce, golden-eyed woman who tried to kill me and now shares my bed.

My phone vibrates with an encrypted message from Nico:Confirmation received. Elena's letters located. Luca doesn't know.

Another piece slides into place. The final confirmation I needed.

It's time.

***

"You wanted to see me?" Francesca appears in my doorway an hour later, exactly as Marco instructed.