Light presses against my closed eyelids like a tide trying to drag me back into something softer than death, but heavier than sleep. I do not want to wake at first.
Not because I am afraid of what I will find, but because I am afraid of what I might not.
I expect pain, and it greets me.
A dull throb spirals beneath my ribs, wrapping itself around every breath like a reminder carved into bone.
My mouth is dry, my lips cracked. My fingers twitch against linen sheets that feel like they belong to someone else.
There is an antiseptic smell in the air, and lavender too faint to hide the sterility beneath it. A ceiling fan hums above, not quite turning fast enough to forget the silence of the room.
A woman squeals.
It is not a sound I associate with this house. She drops whatever chart she was holding and bolts from the room so fast I wonder if I imagined her entirely.
Footsteps echo outside the door before I can make sense of them. I try to sit up, but my body protests, all fire and ache stitched into every muscle.
I grit my teeth and manage to lift my head just enough to scan the room.
I know this place. Even in the haze of pain and memory.
It is the room I used to sleep in before I became what Luca made me.
Before the jobs took me far from home.
Before the walls of this house began to speak in whispers I could not always understand.
The armoire is the same.
The walls, pale cream with molding that has never been repainted. The chair in the corner still bears the imprint of old leather and forgotten conversations.
The door opens slowly, but the presence that fills the space is well-known to me.
Luca does not rush.
He never has.
He steps inside like he owns time itself, and maybe in this house, he does.
His eyes are sharp, but there is something beneath them I do not recognize.
Not pity.
Not concern.
Something quieter, deeper.
Like he watched the end draw near and refused to believe in it.
‘You took your time,’ I rasp, my voice more gravel than sound.
Luca pulls the chair up beside the bed and sits, adjusting his cufflink with idle precision. ‘You were out for seven days. Doctor said if you didn’t wake by today, we should prepare for the worst.’ He pauses. ‘I told him he didn’t know you.’
I manage a smirk, though it tears at the wound beneath my ribs. ‘Sounds like something you’d say.’
‘I never doubt my own.’ He says it quietly. ‘I only worry when they forget they are not immortal.’
We sit like that for a while, silence thick between us, but not unwelcome.
Luca watches me like a man evaluating a house after a fire.
Checking for which walls still stand. Which doors will still open.
‘What happened after?’ I ask, though the words cost me another, sharper burst of pain.
He leans back.
‘Cesare Gotti is dead. The rest of his network is unraveling faster than we expected. The Corsican authorities are calling it a local dispute, but we know better. We seized half his assets before his own men started turning on each other. Apparently, they didn’t like being led by a ghost.’
I nod slowly, the reality of it settling in.
‘You did well,’ Luca says, and the praise sounds strange coming from him.
Not because it is false, but because it is rare.
‘I took a hit.’
‘You came back breathing. That is more than I asked.’ He looks at me for a long time. ‘You gave everything to this family. You carried out orders no one else could have. You protected what I built even when it broke you.’
I want to tell him that it did break me, more than once.
That I bled for it in ways no stitches can hold. But I remain silent. Because I also loved it.
The power.
The purpose.
The clarity of being the sharpest blade in the hand of a king.
Luca rises then. ‘It’s time.’
‘For what?’
‘For you to choose.’ He adjusts his jacket, brushing a faint crease from his lapel. ‘You have done what I asked. There are no debts between us. No blood unpaid. You want out. You want peace. You can have it.’
The words settle on my chest like a second heartbeat.
I stare at him, unsure if I have heard correctly.
Luca Salvatore does not give freedom.
He buries men who ask for it.
And yet here he is, offering it like a gift wrapped in steel.
‘Why now?’ I ask, my voice barely audible.
‘Because you’ve earned it. And because I need you alive more than I need you loyal.’
He turns toward the door but pauses on the threshold. ‘There is someone waiting for you.’
The door opens again, and a breath I didn’t know I was holding slips from my lungs as Aria steps inside.
Luca steps past her, not speaking.
Aria moves slowly, and the light catches the curve of her cheek, the shadow beneath her eyes, the tremble in her hands.
And then, she’s running to me.
Aria crashes into me without hesitation, her arms locking around my shoulders like she thinks I might vanish again.
Her cheek presses to mine, her body curled into me, and the softness of her breath against my throat feels more real than anything that has happened since Corsica.
I close my eyes and let her hold me, let the world dissolve into the rhythm of her heartbeat against mine.
Her fingers are in my hair, her lips at the corner of my mouth, not desperate, not wild, just present. Just there.
‘You idiot,’ she whispers, and her voice is wet. ‘You absolute, beautiful idiot.’
I huff a sound that would have been a laugh if my ribs didn’t ache like they had been rearranged with a hammer. ‘Good to see you, too.’
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes searching every inch of my face like she’s cataloguing the damage.
I know what she sees—pale skin, faint bruises beneath my eyes, the stubborn cut near my collarbone that refuses to heal properly. Her hands slide down my arms, over the blanket, checking for things she can’t fix but needs to touch anyway.
‘I ran to Luca the second I heard,’ she says, her voice low, her hands trembling against my chest. ‘You were still bleeding. They told me you might not make it through the night.’
‘I didn’t mean to make a dramatic entrance,’ I murmur, my throat dry but functional. ‘I had intended something quieter. Maybe a postcard.’
‘You bastard,’ she breathes, and the kiss that follows is softer than anything I deserve.
I kiss her back, slowly, letting the shape of her mouth remind me what I fought for.
When she finally draws back, she rests her forehead to mine, and we stay like that, suspended in the quiet, the kind that comes after a storm that nearly broke the hull.
‘I thought I lost you,’ she whispers.
‘You didn’t,’ I answer, and for the first time, I believe it myself.
She moves to sit beside me on the edge of the bed, and I take her hand, letting my thumb brush along her knuckles.
The silence stretches again, but it doesn’t ache anymore. It breathes.
‘I’m done, Aria,’ I say, not as a confession but as a declaration. ‘Luca gave me the out. He said if I ended Cesare, I could walk.’
Her head turns slowly, her eyes narrowing. ‘And?’
‘I’m walking,’ I say, simply. ‘I’m not staying to collect medals. I’m not looking for a throne. I’m done breaking bones and disappearing into alleyways. I’ve had enough blood on my shoes to last a lifetime.’
‘And what will you do instead?’ she asks, though I think she already knows.
‘I’m thinking a house with a roof that leaks when it rains. A stubborn lemon tree in the back. Gabriel coming home with dirt on his jeans and stories about a girl he likes. And you, barefoot in the kitchen, swearing about the burned bread.’
‘You don’t bake,’ she says, lips twitching.
‘No,’ I agree, ‘but you will, and I will eat whatever you make, even if it’s charcoal.’
She leans in again, her hair brushing against my jaw. I take a breath. It smells like something warm. Like firelight and the end of a long night.
‘I don’t have a ring,’ I say, voice low, steady. ‘I should, but I don’t. All I have is this moment and the promise that if you say yes, I will spend every day trying to give you the life you fought so hard to keep.’
Her gaze doesn’t waver. ‘Say it.’
‘Marry me,’ I say, like I have known all my life that I would ask her this.
She nods, and it is the most powerful thing I have ever seen. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Even without the ring. Even without the lemon tree. Just don’t get shot again.’
‘I’ll try to keep it to once a decade.’
She laughs, and it spills out of her like a thing reborn. Her head drops to my chest, and I hold her there, arms tight around her, and it is quiet again.
But this time, it’s the right kind of quiet.
The kind that lives after war.
The kind that says we made it.
