Then they're gone, melting into the night as sirens wail in the distance. But all I can focus on is Emma's pale face, her eyes fluttering closed, her breathing too shallow.
"Why?" I whisper, cradling her head in my lap while Sofia keeps pressure on the wound. "Why would you save me after everything I did?"
Her hand finds mine, grip weak but determined. She manages two words before unconsciousness takes her: "My choice."
"Don't you dare leave me, stellina." My voice breaks on her nickname. "Don't you fucking dare."
The blood keeps coming, soaking through everything. Sofia kneels in it, whispering apologies that mean nothing if Emma dies. "I killed her," she repeats. "I brought them here. I thought I was protecting you, and I killed her."
"She's not dead," I snarl, but Emma's eyes have closed. "She's not fucking dead!"
The medical team bursts through the door, but I can't let go. They have to pry her from my arms, and when they do, I see the full extent of the blood loss. The floor looks like a slaughterhouse.
As they work on her, all I can think is that she chose this. After everything, my lies, my manipulations, keeping her brother from her, she still chose to save me.
And somewhere in the night, Alexei Volkov is planning his next move, with Sofia's debt hanging over us all like a blade waiting to fall.
If Emma dies, I'll paint the world red with Volkov blood.
But she has to live. She has to fucking live so I can spend forever making this right.
29 - Emma
“These are yours.” Alex slides a manila envelope across his mahogany desk, his hands trembling slightly as he releases it.
The weight feels wrong, too heavy for paper. My shoulder throbs where the bullet tore through it yesterday, the wound still raw despite Alex's careful tending. The pain medication makes everything feel distant, dreamlike, as I reach for the envelope with my good hand. Alex won't meet my eyes, staring at his healing knuckles like they hold answers. His cologne has faded, replaced by something rawer: whiskey and sleeplessness and the metallic tang of fear I've never smelled on him before.
The study feels different than it did an hour ago when he called me here. The compound is eerily quiet. Marco handling the aftermath of the family dinner shootout, the other siblings recovering from Sofia's revelations about me. Alex insisted on this moment alone, away from family complications. Then, his voice had carried that commanding tone I know so well. Now he sits behind his desk like a man awaiting execution, green eyes darker than I've ever seen them.
Cash spills out first when I open the clasp. Neat stacks of hundreds, more money than I've ever seen. My fingers shake as I touch them, feeling their reality. Then a passport catches the light, and my breath stops.
The photo is mine, taken recently, but the name reads Emma Pitt. Not Frances Hewson. Not Emma Rosetti. Just Emma Pitt, like I've been returned to who I was before all this began.
"There's enough cash for a new start anywhere," Alex says, his voice carefully neutral. He studies the cuts on his knuckles with intense focus, avoiding my gaze. "The passport's real. Completely clean, no connection to the Rosettis or Hewsons."
My fingers find car keys next, attached to a Mercedes fob. The metal is hot against my palm, substantial. Then an apartment lease for a place in Boston, paid in full for two years. Bank documents showing an account in Emma Pitt's name with enough zeros to make my head spin.
"This is…" I trail off, unable to process what I'm seeing.
"Freedom," he finishes quietly. "Real freedom, not the illusion of it."
The last item makes my hand freeze. A handwritten note in Alex's precise script: "Tommy's prison transfer can be arranged. New identity waiting. Guards paid to ensure his safety until release." My brother, still trapped but with a promise of protection I never thought possible.
The weight of choice crushes my chest. As a servant, as a fake bride, I always had someone else to blame for my circumstances. But this, choosing freedom, this would be all me. The responsibility of it makes my hands shake worse than any threat ever did.
"You're giving me everything," I whisper, the papers trembling in my grip. "Why?"
Alex finally looks up, and the rawness in his expression takes my breath away. Not the hunger I'm used to, not the possession, but something vulnerable that makes my chest ache.
"Because you never had a real choice, stellina." The endearment slips out, and he winces. "Not with the Hewsons' threats, not when I claimed you at that altar. Every moment between us has been tainted by coercion." His jaw clenches. "So now you choose. Take it all and disappear. Start fresh, wait forTommy's release somewhere I'll never find you. Or…" He stops, unable to voice the alternative.
"Or stay," I finish for him.
"Only if you want to." The words come out strained. "Only if Emma Pitt, not the woman I forced to be my wife, actually wants this life. Wants me."
I study the documents again, each one a key to a door I thought was welded shut. Real freedom, not just the promise of it. The ability to walk away from everything: the violence, the lies, the constant danger of being a Rosetti.
Even with freedom in my hands, my traitorous body aches for his touch. My pussy clenches at the memory of his hands, his mouth, the way he makes me feel powerful even in surrender.
