I moved back toward the stairs, toward the chaos, toward the blood and the gunfire and the sound of my men systematically dismantling everything Lorenzo had built in this corner of his empire. My vest was warm with other people's blood. My hands were shaking—actually shaking—and I couldn't stop, couldn't control it, couldn't pretend I was anything other than completely, catastrophically devoted to this woman.
"You walked into his facility intentionally," I said against her hair. Not a question. A statement. An acknowledgment of what she'd done.
"I needed to confirm where he was hiding," she replied. "He was here. In this building. I heard him—smelled his cigars, heard his voice through the walls."
My jaw clenched. "Where is he now?"
"Gone." Her voice was flat. Bitter. "The moment your teams breached, he ran. There's a tunnel system—I heard them talking about it. He's probably halfway to Westchester by now."
The rage that swept through me was molten. He'd been here. Right here. And he'd slipped through my fingers because I'd been too focused on getting to her.
"Then we go after him," I said.
"No." She pulled back enough to look at me, her eyes fierce. "Not yet. He's scattered now, running scared. But he'll surface again. And when he does, we'll be ready."
Of course she had. Of course she'd used herself as bait with the kind of cold calculation that proved she wasn't just my wife in name. She was my match. My equal. My mirror in every way that mattered.
The main floor was chaos. My teams were moving through corridors, systematically neutralizing resistance. Bodies on the ground. Dust in the air. The smell of cordite and fear and inevitability.
I carried her toward the exit, and men fell away before us like the world was reordering itself around her presence. Maybe it was. Maybe that's what happened when you married a woman like this—the entire criminal underworld had to reorganize its gravitational center.
The night air hit us like a slap.
The warehouse district spread out before us, emergency lights painting everything in red and blue. My vehicles. My soldiers. My territory, secured and controlled and absolutely impenetrable to anyone who thought they could take what belonged to me.
I stepped out into the light with blood on my clothes and my wife in my arms and my face set into the expression of a man who had just made a decision that would reshape the entire balance of power in this city.
"No one," I said quietly, to no one and to everyone, "touches what's mine."
Julietta looked up at me from my arms, and in her eyes I saw the exact moment she understood what I'd become for her. Not a protector. Not a jailer. A weapon.
Her weapon.
"Take me home," she said.
So I did.
The journey back was silent except for the sound of the engine and the distant wail of sirens responding to a chaos they'd never untangle.My hands didn't shake once I had the wheel beneath them. My mind didn't fracture once I had a direction to move.
The penthouse received us like it had been waiting for this moment—for us, bloodied and bound by something far more dangerous than marriage vows, to return and stake our final claim on this life we'd stolen from everyone who thought they could control us.
I set her down only when we reached the bedroom, and then only because I needed to see all of her, needed to verify that the damage was only external, needed to understand exactly what she'd endured so I could calculate appropriate retribution.
Her wrists were the worst—deep red lines where the plastic had cut, evidence of her struggle, proof of her strength.
I took them gently and brought them to my lips, and she made a sound that wasn't quite a gasp, wasn't quite a sob.
"I've got you," I whispered against her skin. "I've got you now."
"I know," she said, and there was no fear in it. Only certainty. Only the voice of a woman who'd finally understood that love in our world didn't mean safety.
It meant someone willing to burn cities.
And she'd married exactly that.
CHAPTER 22
Julietta
