I let go.
The second orgasm breaks me open. I scream, actually scream, and he follows, burying himself deep and groaning my name. I feel him pulse inside me, feel the heat of him filling me, and the sensation prolongs my own release until I'm sobbing with it.
"God," he manages.
"Fuck, I can’t even think right now. Give me a minute.”
He laughs. The sound is still rough, still unpracticed, but it's real. He rolls to the side, pulling me with him, arranging us so we're facing each other on the pillow.
His hand finds my hip. Strokes lazy circles on my skin.
"I meant it," he says. "What I said before. I'm going to spend the rest of my life figuring you out. Every day. Every night. Learning what makes you moan, what makes you scream, what makes you laugh."
"You've never tried to make me laugh before."
"I'm adding it to the list."
"I'm not going anywhere," I tell him again. "I know you don't believe it yet. I know some part of you is still waiting for me to disappear. But I'm not Dahlia. I'm not running."
"I know."
"Do you?"
He falls silent, contemplative. Then he takes my hand, presses it flat against his chest, over his heart.
"I'm trying to," he says. "I'm trying to believe that something good can stay."
"I'll prove it to you." I lean in, kiss him softly. "Every day. Every night. Until you don't have to try anymore."
His arm tightens around me. Pulls me closer. I tuck my head beneath his chin and listen to his heartbeat slow, evening out, settling into the rhythm of rest.
Chapter Seventeen: Leone
Thewarroomhasnever been this full.
Aurelio sits at the head of the table, flanked by his senior captains. Claudio and Emilio stand against the wall behind me, arms crossed, faces blank. Three intelligence analysts occupy chairs along the side, tablets and laptops open, ready to take notes. And at the far end of the table, in a chair that used to be reserved for visiting allies, sits Alexandra.
She looks different today. Still wearing my clothes, a dark sweater that hangs loose on her frame, but she's pulled her hair back into a tight knot and there's tension in her posture that wasn't there before. Straighter. Sharper. The posture of a woman who knows she belongs in this room and is daring anyone to disagree.
I stand beside Aurelio, where I always stand. But my eyes keep drifting to her. The line of her jaw. The way her fingers tapagainst the table, impatient, ready to begin. The fading bruise on her cheek that reminds me of what she survived and what I did to bring her back.
Aurelio clears his throat. The room goes silent.
"We have a problem," he says. "A problem that's been growing in the shadows while we've been focused on the Castillo’s. Miss Clark has been analyzing financial data recovered from our compromised systems, and what she's found changes everything we thought we knew about this war." He gestures toward Alexandra. "The floor is yours."
She stands. Every eye in the room follows her as she moves to the whiteboard mounted on the wall, where she's already pinned a series of documents, charts, and hand-drawn connection maps. Items stolen in the raid, ones she painstakingly redrew from memory.
"Three weeks ago, I started looking at the money," she says. Her voice is clear, confident, carrying to every corner of the room. "The Castillo’s have been funding their operations through a network of shell corporations based in Cyprus. Standard money laundering, nothing unusual. But when I dug deeper, I found something that doesn't fit the pattern."
She taps one of the charts. "The money flows two ways. Into Castillo accounts, yes. But also out of Bonaccorso operations. Small amounts, skimmed from dozens of transactions, routed through the same Cyprus bank before disappearing into a web of subsidiaries."
One of the captains, a thick-necked man named Vincent, leans forward. "You're saying someone is stealing from us?"
"I'm saying someone has been bleeding both families for at least two years. And all of it, every dollar, funnels through the same convergence point before scattering."
She moves to the next document. A corporate filing, dense with legal language.
"Apex Meridian Holdings. Registered in Delaware, administered through a trust, no public officers. On paper, it's nothing. A ghost. But Apex Meridian owns two real subsidiaries. The first is a logistics company that specializes in international freight. Their shipping manifests overlap exactly with known Castillo weapons resupply dates. Same ports, same carriers, same timing."
