“I have faith in you,” I said, and it was the truest thing I had ever spoken.
Something shifted in his gaze. A darkness returned, but it was different this time. Not the cold, empty void of the killer, but the banked fire of the predator. The one who had claimed me, who was determined to keep me.
“Good,” he said, his voice dropping to a low growl. “Because I’m going to need you to.” His thumb stroked my hip. “When you’re too swollen with my child to walk, when your breasts are heavy with milk, when you can’t think of anything but the next life growing inside you… you’ll need to remember that faith.”
My breath hitched, a fresh wave of heat pooling in my belly. His words were a spell, a dark incantation weaving a future so vivid, so intoxicating, I could already feel its weight.
Epilogue: LEO
4 years later
AuroraVenturacrossedherarms so hard her champagne-colored silk sleeves wrinkled. Across the ballroom, several men noticed the movement. Their eyes followed her like starving wolves catching the scent of blood. I noticed too. And unlike them, I already knew exactly how dangerous she was.
“She’s glaring at another one,” Sergio muttered beside me, entirely too amused for a man currently being discussed like livestock.
I took a slow sip of whiskey, watching Aurora terrify yet another young heir attempting to approach her near the marble staircase.
“Good,” I said calmly. “Fear keeps idiots alive.”
The ballroom glittered beneath crystal chandeliers and gold light. Music drifted through the Moretti estate while members of the Five Families circled tonight’s guest of honor like sharks in tailored suits.
Aurora’s eighteenth birthday. Which meant every ambitious bastard in New York remembered Lorenzo Ventura had a secondbeautiful daughter. Unfortunately for them, Aurora was nothing like Chiara.
Chiara had once looked at the world like it might still become kind. Aurora looked at it like she might burn it down herself.
“She’s going to stab someone before dessert,” Sergio observed.
“Hopefully.”
Sergio snorted quietly into his drink. Across the room, my wife laughed softly while trying to keep our twins from throwing gold-wrapped candies at each other beneath the dessert table.
God. Even after all this time, the sight of her still hit me like violence.
Chiara stood near the enormous birthday cake in a black silk gown that clung to every soft curve I’d put there myself. Her blonde hair fell loose down her back now, exactly the way I liked it. No braids. No fear. No permission needed from dead men.
Mine. Not because I forced it anymore. Because she chose it.
One of the twins spotted me first. “Papa!”
Tiny shoes slapped loudly against marble as both boys abandoned their mother and launched themselves toward me like missiles. I barely caught Bruno before he hit the floor.
“Careful,” I grunted, lifting him easily with one arm while Luca clung possessively to my leg. “You two trying to kill me tonight?”
“Yes,” Bruno announced proudly. Chiara appeared beside me laughing softly, one hand smoothing Luca’s dark curls.
“They inherited your charm,” she said dryly.
“They inherited your inability to behave,” I teased.
The twins looked almost identical. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Tiny expensive suits. Little Moretti princes already adored and feared by half the estate staff. But Bruno had Chiara’s smile. And Luca had my temper. God help everyone when they got older.
Chiara leaned lightly against my side while the boys argued about who got to sit on my shoulders during fireworks later. Domesticity looked dangerous on her. Beautiful too. I slid anarm around her waist automatically, pulling her against me while my gaze drifted back toward Aurora.
Another man approached her. Young. Rich. Smiling too confidently. I watched Aurora destroy him in under thirty seconds.
“I have no idea who she gets that from,” Chiara murmured.
“Herself,” I said calmly. “That level of cruelty isn’t genetic.”
