“Oh, fuck off,” Balor Cruz mutters. “You married her.”
“Damn right I did,” Remy says, smug. “Andrea’s got claws and curves and a bite that makes a man beg.”
“Speaking of bites,” Nico Jr. cuts in, voice low and full of heat. “Leanna? I got bit by that love bug before it was even legal. But I waited, and now she’s the one that branded me. I let that woman ruin me, and I thank her for it every goddamn day.”
Sammy Ramirez chuckles from the edge of the circle. “Amateurs. Aella just waited for me to come back from war, and I was gonna leave her alone. I knew my hands were too fucking dirty to ever touch her. But then I saw her again, and I couldn’t walk away.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me about all that eye-fucking you were doing on her Vegas birthday trip,” Junior says.
“Oh yeah? Like you weren’t staring at Lee-Lee the whole time,” Sammy counters and snorts.
“Well, at least your women don’t have fan-fucking-pages dedicated to them. I swear I spend half my time shutting that shit down,” Balor mutters, but he’s grinning as he says it.
“What about you?” Junior asks.
They all look at me then.
All these powerful men who once would’ve sold their souls to keep control of their empires.
Now? Now we’d burn the world to protect the women we call ours.
I look down into my glass, but I’m not really seeing it. I’m seeing her.
My brilliant, infuriatingly beautiful, soft and savage wife.
Cecilia Stavros. God, I love her name. Love her.
She didn’t just upend my empire—she became the heart of it. Of me.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I say aloud, my voice low.
“Some of us were at war. Some of us were running. Some of us were just too damn proud to admit we were alone. But love doesn’t give a fuck about your bank balance. It doesn’t care how many enemies you’ve buried or how many walls you built.”
I pause, letting that settle.
“I thought I was playing the long game. Building legacies. Protecting my father’s name. Controlling the board.”
A second pause, watching the firelight catch on the engraved ring on my finger—the one she slipped there with tears in her eyes and a vow on her lips.
“I never expected the one deal I’d fight hardest to keep would be my wife.”
They all go quiet.
Not because they disagree.
But because they know exactly what I mean.
So I raise my glass one last time, for the bastards who lost themselves and the women who found us.
“To desperate men,” I say. “And the women who made us whole.”
Because love?
Well, that’s just the ultimate acquisition.
No matter how desperate the merger, love is worth every risk.
Epilogue 2-Cecilia
