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"The Fiori brothers?" Tomasso asks quietly.
I gesture vaguely toward the bodies, suddenly exhausted beyond words. "Dead."
He nods, unsurprised. "Good."
We watch in silence as the medics stabilize Stefano enough to transfer him to the stretcher. His face is obscured by an oxygen mask now, tubes and wires connecting him to portable monitors that beep with concerning irregularity.
"Will he survive?" I ask, my voice small, broken.
Tomasso doesn't answer immediately, his gaze fixed on the man who is both his boss and his friend. "He's strong," he says finally. "A fighter."
It's not the reassurance I was hoping for, but it's honest. And in a world built on lies, honesty is its own kind of kindness.
As they lift the stretcher, I move forward, needing to touch Stefano one last time before they take him away. Needing him to know I'm here. That I'm not running. Not anymore.
"Sorry about the mess," I say, attempting humor through my tears as I take his limp hand in mine. "But you're going to be okay. Do you hear me, Stefano Rega? You're going to live through this because I'm not done yelling at you yet."
For just a moment, I think I feel his fingers tighten around mine, the faintest pressure, a whisper of response. Hope blooms in my chest, fragile but persistent.
"I love you," I whisper, my lips brushing his ear. "I have for longer than I want to admit. So you have to fight. For me. For our baby. For that damn ranch in Montana you promised to build."
They begin to wheel him away, but I keep hold of his hand until the very last moment, until distance forces our fingers to separate. The loss of contact hits like physical pain.
"I'll ride with him," Tomasso says, gesturing for me to follow another of Stefano's men to a waiting SUV. "Meet us at the private clinic."
I nod, too exhausted to argue, too numb to do anything but comply. As I walk away from the warehouse, from the bodies, from the blood, from the evidence of what I've become capable of, I catch sight of the Fiori brothers one last time.
They look smaller in death. Less powerful. Just men, in the end. Men who underestimated what a woman would do to protect those she loves.
Outside, the night air feels shockingly clean after the warehouse's copper-and-fear stench. I gulp it down, letting it clear my head as I'm guided to one of the waiting vehicles.
The city sprawls around us, oblivious to the power vacuum we've just created, to the blood that's been spilled, to the fact that my entire world hangs in the balance along with Stefano's life.
As the SUV pulls away, following the medical transport carrying Stefano, I rest my hand on my stomach. Our child. The heir to an empire built on blood and power. A legacy I never wanted, never asked for, but somehow find myself fighting to protect.
"Your father's a stubborn, impossible man," I whisper to the life growing inside me. "But he loves us. And he's going to fight to come back to us. I know it."
The certainty in my voice surprises me. After a lifetime of lies, of cons, I find myself confronted with a truth so profound, it shakes the foundations of everything I thought I knew about myself.
I believe in him. In us.
In the future we might build from the ashes of today's violence.
And as the lights of the city blur past, as we race toward whatever comes next, I hold that belief close, a talisman against fear, against doubt, against the darkness that threatens to swallow us whole.
Stefano will survive.
He has to.
Because I'm not letting him go.
Not now.
Not ever.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
Ava