“You’d better have a list of baby names ready,” he whispers into my ear. “This one’s yours to choose, remember?”
I think about it for exactly one second.
“How about Bianca?”
His smile softens instantly.
“Perfect.”
Before I can react, he lifts me clean off the ground and spins me once in the middle of the dance floor.
“Nico!”
He sets me down and kisses me like we’re still that reckless pair from seven years ago.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you too.”
Around us, the restaurant erupts into cheers.
26
EPILOGUE: NICO
TEN YEARS LATER
Ten years later, the truce still holds.
Not because the city became kinder. Cities like this rarely do. It holds because the Five Families learned something the Pavlovs never understood. You don’t win by terror alone. You win by loyalty. By roots. By building something people would die to protect.
New York still belongs to us.
And for the first time in my life, it doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like something worth guarding.
Izzy and I have a tradition now.
Once a year, on the anniversary of the night we met, we return to the club where everything started. Not to relive it like a fantasy. Not to pretend we’re still those reckless strangers who didn’t know what they were starting.
We come back to reclaim it. To take the place that once held our secret and turn it into something that belongs to us openly.
The club hasn’t changed much. Same velvet ropes. Same low lighting. Same music vibrating through the walls.
But everything about how it feels to stand here is different.
Izzy appears beside me like she always does. Ten years and she still moves through a room like she owns it. She looks up at me with that same playful smile she had the night we met.
“Come on,” she says softly.
She takes my hand and leads me through the club. Past the dance floor. Past the music.
Toward the hallway I remember far too well. The privé room.
The door closes behind us with a quiet click.
For a moment we just stand there.
It’s strange how the room feels both smaller and larger than it did that night.
