Page 50 of His Stolen Bride

Once they’re settled, I lock the wing down and move fast. Phones first. Internal comms audited. Movement logs pulled. Access codes rotated. I pull Enzo and Luca into my office and shut the door.

“Who knew where I was?” I ask.

Luca answers immediately. “Eight people. Six staff. Two council contacts.”

“Cut it to three,” I say. “Anyone who objects gets sidelined.”

No one argues.

I order the DNA test before anyone can question why. Private lab. No Vienna facilities. No digital trail tied to my name. Samples collected quietly. Alina doesn’t protest when I tell her. She just looks at me like she’s already accepted the answer and is bracing for the fallout.

The results come back in under twelve hours.

Oisin Morin. Probability absolute.

I stare at the report longer than necessary, not because I doubt it but because reading it makes everything that followed her escape snap into place. She didn’t run to spite me. She didn’t run to humiliate me or prove independence. She ran to protect him. From my world. From my enemies. From me.

That realization hits harder than the betrayal ever did.

I’m furious anyway. Furious that she thought anywhere else was safer. Furious that she trusted strangers over my walls. Furious that she underestimated what it takes to stay alive without power backing you. And then the second wave hits, colder and sharper.

She wasn’t wrong.

The shot in the garden. Lira’s betrayal. The driver. The SUVs. The timing. The fact that someone tracked both of us six years apart and almost succeeded twice.

I didn’t have control then and I don’t have full control now.

That’s the part I don’t say out loud.

I burn the report after I memorize it. No paper survives me.

I keep my distance from Alina that first night, but that’s not out of restraint, but discipline. She’s not a problem to be solved or a weakness to be exploited. She’s a variable I misjudged, and that’s on me.

Still, I start watching her again, clocking in all familiar patterns until I recognize her habits. She checks exits when she enters a room, keeps the boy on her non-dominant side, sleeps lightly and wakes faster than my guards. She hasn’t lost her edge, but she has sharpened it.

That costs something.

I see it in how tired she looks when she thinks no one’s watching, how the boy flinches at raised voices even when they aren’t angry, and how neither of them unpacks fully.

That does something to me I don’t like naming.

One day, I get to the dining room earlier than I usually do. Alina enters minutes later, with Oisin’s hand in hers. He’s looking at the floor, but he looks up the moment he sees me. Then he looks at Alina, whose lips press into a thin line. I sigh. “Breakfast?”

“Just coffee for me,” she answers. I nod and pour her a cup, adding a splash of milk and a teaspoon of brown sugar. She takes it from me with a small “thanks” and sits down at the table. Oisin sits beside her, and I join them. He looks at the plates first, then at me, then back at the food that’s been laid out.

“You don’t eat much,” he says.

“I eat when I’m hungry,” I tell him.

He considers that, then nods. “Mama eats toast in the morning,” he says. “With honey.”

Alina stiffens slightly, not enough for him to see.

“Honey’s good,” I say. “Do you like it thick or thin?”

“Thick,” he answers immediately. “So it doesn’t drip.”

Alina watches the exchange without interrupting, her expression carefully neutral. She’s reading intent, not words.