He brushes his fingers across my scars. “I believe inus—in what you built.” He presses his lips to my forehead: solid promise.
We leave together, descending to the ground floor where civilians stroll near the casino’s neon-washed facade without guards at their heels. They’re with us now, quietly. Our new base of power.
On the waterfront, old colleagues from Justice Ministry gather—reporters, aides, some former adversaries. They watch me approach, subdued respect in their gazes. One whispers loud enough for me to hear: “ShefixedGoldwin’s underworld.” Another adds, “I never thought I’d say this about amobster—but damn, she’s good.”
Aebon’s arm tightens around my waist.Redemption is a system too, I think. And we’ve built one.
Under the neon haze and the pulse of distant waves, I let compassion settle over me. I smile and greet the media. I answer their questions. I say: “We’re protecting people. Not territories.”
Aebon stays beside me—guardian, partner, witness.
Goldwin is changing. We are changing.
No more courts. No more cages.
Just something stronger: pragmatic justice born from ashes—and a woman who refused to give in to either darkness or absolution.
We live in the grey—and we’re shaping it into something better.
The afterglow of praise doesn’t reach me where I stand. I watch the city from our private balcony—lights weaving a labyrinth across the night. The hum of hovercars, distant laughter, the soft pulse of neon against the harbor. I should feel triumphant: my reforms stabilized the underworld, my name is spoken in awed tones, even my oldest legal adversaries grudgingly commend me. But inside, I feel unmoored.
I grip the balcony rail, fingertips whitening. My mind loops in tight spirals:justiceredefined,moralitycompromised. I replaced bribery with contracts, blackmail with bureaucracy—but beneath every ledger entry and new ordinance lies power. Pure, unflinching power. And I’m the hand holding it.
He steps up behind me—solid presence in tailored black. I don’t turn. My ribs throb softly—a memory of violence and rescue—but my heart aches with something deeper.
Aebon’s voice is quiet. “You did it.”
His words barely stir me. My eyes linger on the skyline, where shadows wage silent wars beyond my reach. I say nothing.
He moves closer, his scent a mix of cedar and smoke. “You made the system better,” he says. “You did it your way.” His hand settles on my shoulder, secure, grounding.
Better?I inhale, tasting salt and cold. “Better for who?”
He frowns. “For them—for everyone. The innocent who no longer vanish in the streets. The vendors who don’t fear midnight raids. The mothers who can walk without fear.”
I swallow hard. Iseeit all—but the image fractures when I remember the cracked laws, my language of leverage, the silenced gangs. I turned the city’s underbelly into a chessboard.Innocentpawns sacrificed,criminalpieces sacrificed—but at what cost?
He steps up beside me. “The rules were broken. You fixed them.”
I shake my head. “I redefined them.”
“You didn’t silence the law,” he says. “You reshaped it—built a structure that works.”
My throat tightens. His defense sounds less like reassurance and more like absolution.
He tilts my chin to meet his gaze, façade stripped: “You’re not damned. Not to me.”
I close my eyes, leaning into his heat. "Sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore."
He tightens his embrace. "Look at me."
I open my eyes and do. Up close, I see everything: grief, determination, pride. The bone-sculpted face I love. And behind it, something softer: hope.
“You’re my heart,” I whisper. “And my reckoning.”
He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Then you can carry both.”
I exhale. The balcony light falls across us like a benediction. The city’s pulse aligns with ours—heartbeat and breath, life threaded in underworld and sky.
