Page 27

27

Isadora

Blood has a way of staining everything it touches. Not just clothes or marble floors, but souls. Lives. Legacies.

I sit on the edge of the bed, staring out of the open window as the night air brushes against my skin. The breeze carries the faint scent of jasmine and something cooler beneath it—like the ghosts of all we’ve survived.

The room is dimly lit, illuminated only by the soft golden glow of a single lamp on the bedside table. My dress, simple and loose, clings to my knees. My hands rest idly in my lap, and the promise ring Stefano gave me catches the light every time I shift.

It’s been three weeks. Three weeks since the blood dried, since the gunfire stopped, since the ground beneath our feet stopped shaking. Three weeks since I almost lost him.

I should feel nothing but happiness.

And I do. Mostly.

But happiness, I’ve learned, doesn’t erase grief. It doesn’t unmake the girl who once believed she would always be her father’s little princess, untouched by the ugliness of the world. It doesn’t undo the ache that sometimes blooms in the quiet moments, when no one is watching.

I miss it.

I miss being the daughter who could run to her father and have him make everything right with a stern word and a protective arm. I miss the simplicity of believing that love alone could keep the monsters at bay.

Now, I know better. Love doesn’t protect you from monsters. Sometimes, it turns you into one just to survive.

I trace the line of the ring on my finger, feeling its delicate strength. Alessio gave this to me not as a placeholder, but as a promise. A beginning. A future carved out of everything we had to burn down first.

I love him.

I love him more fiercely than I thought possible.

But there's a small, stubborn part of me that still aches for the life I lost. For the father who, in his own broken way, tried to keep me safe—even if it meant making promises to men who saw me as a pawn.

I hear the door open, soft footsteps crossing the hardwood floor.

"Angel?" Alessio's voice, rough and low, cuts through the quiet.

I turn my head to look at him. He's still in his shirt from the day, sleeves rolled up, jacket slung over one arm. His tie is loose around his throat, and exhaustion lines his face—but when his eyes meet mine, they sharpen instantly.

He sets his jacket and phone down on the dresser and crosses to me without hesitation, crouching slightly so we're eye level.

"Everything alright?" he asks, searching my face.

I smile, small but real. "Yes."

He doesn't look convinced.

I reach for his hand, threading my fingers through his. "Just thinking about how far we've come."

He watches me for a long moment, the lines around his mouth softening.

"We've come a long way," he says quietly.

I nod, resting my head against his chest when he sits beside me. His arm slips around my waist, pulling me closer, anchoring me to the reality I chose—and would choose again, no matter what ghosts still whisper in the dark corners of my mind.

I don't tell him about the ache I feel in my heart for my father. I don't tell him how sometimes, late at night, I close my eyes and see my father's proud smile from when I was five years old and danced around his study in a princess gown. How he would always tell me that one day he will walk his princess down the isle.

I don't tell him because it isn't his fault. Because loving Stefano isn't what took that life from me.

The world did.

The choices of men who thought they could trade daughters like coins.

And Stefano? He gave me back something they could never provide: freedom, choice, and a future chosen by me for me.

He presses a kiss to the top of my head, his lips lingering.

"We’re just getting started, angel," he murmurs. "You and me."

I close my eyes, breathing him in. Leather, cedarwood, and the faint scent of gunpowder that somehow clings to him no matter how many times he changes his clothes.

It's home now.

He’s home.

"I know," I whisper.

The minutes stretch around us, slow and golden. Outside, the city hums with life we no longer have to fear. Inside, the quiet wraps around us like a second skin.

I think of the girl I used to be—the girl who believed love was soft, safe, easy.

And I think of the woman I am now—the woman who understands that true love is a battlefield. A crown for which you bleed. A life you construct from ashes with your own hands.

I lift my head and meet his gaze, letting him see the raw truth there.

"I wouldn't change anything," I say.

His hand tightens slightly on my waist. "Neither would I."

“I need you,” I whisper, the longing I felt earlier melting into something more desperate. “Every second of every day, I need you.”

His eyes darken as his thumb traces my lower lip. “I’m here, now and always.”

Something breaks inside me—the careful walls I’ve built, the composure I’ve maintained throughout this period. I surge forward, claiming his mouth with mine, tasting whiskey and love and life on his tongue.

He responds instantly, arms wrapping around me as he devours me with equal hunger. The kiss is violent, a clash of teeth and tongues, hands grasping and pulling as if we could crawl inside each other’s skin. I bite his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, needing to taste his life, to prove he’s real.

“Fuck, I missed you,” he growls against my mouth, hands sliding to grip my hips, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “Watching you these past weeks, not being able to touch you—”

“Then touch me now,” I demand, already working on his shirt buttons, needing to see the damage again, to catalogue what’s changed. His chest is revealed, his new scars livid against olive skin—the puckered circle where Luca’s bullet entered, smaller marks from the fragments it left behind as it tore through him.

I trace them with trembling fingers, then replace my touch with my lips, tasting the raised flesh, salt and skin and survival. His breath hitches as my tongue traces the largest scar, his hands tangling in my hair to guide me back to his mouth.

“I want to take my time with you,” he murmurs, nipping at my jaw, my neck, the sensitive spot behind my ear that makes me shiver. “But I don’t think I can.”

“Later,” I agree, already working on his belt buckle, desperate for skin against skin. “We have forever for slow. Right now, I need you inside me.”

His growl vibrates against my throat as he lifts me, my legs wrapping around his waist as he carries me to the nearest wall. My dress bunches around my hips, his hands finding me already wet for him, ready from the moment he walked into our room.

“Mine,” he says as he slides into me in one powerful thrust that steals my breath. “ Sempre mia.”

“Always yours,” I agree, clutching his shoulders as he buries his cock inside me again and again, filling me so damn perfectly. The sweet burn of reunion obliterates three weeks of abstinence in an instant. “Don’t you dare get shot again.”

His rhythm is punishing, each thrust pressing me harder against the wall, reclaiming what has always been his. I match his intensity, nails scoring his back, marking him as thoroughly as he’s marking me.

“Never,” he promises against my skin, teeth grazing my collarbone. “Never again, principessa.”

The pleasure builds fast and fierce, my body remembering his like no time has passed at all. When I shatter around him, crying his name—his real name—he follows immediately, his release hot and pulsing inside me as he buries his face in my neck.

We stay joined, trembling in each other’s arms as reality slowly filters back through the haze of pleasure. Outside, rain lashes the windows. Inside, our breath mingles in the space between our mouths.

“I love you,” I whisper, the words no longer frightening now that I know what life without him feels like. “I thought I’d died with you that night.”

His thumb brushes away tears I hadn’t realized were falling. “Part of me did die. The ghost. The revenge. All of it bled out on that marble floor.” He kisses me softly, a contrast to our frantic coupling moments before. “What’s left is just Stefano. Just a man who loves you. If that’s enough.”

I laugh through my tears, pressing my forehead to his. “It’s everything.”

Outside, empires rise and fall. Inside, in the circle of his arms, I am finally, completely free.