Page 96 of Bound

“Erin.”

“Don’t use that Lucian voice with me when you’re proposing.”

But she’s smiling.

So, I grab her hand. And I say it again. “Erin. Marry me.”

I won’t stop till she says yes.

But there must be a God because she does.

“Yes,” she says, staring down at me with tears in her eyes.

“Say it. Again.”

“Yes, Lucian,” she laughs. “I’ll marry you.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THREE MONTHS LATER

Lucian

Bachman Jewelers is no longer a crime scene.

That should feel like progress.

Instead, I stand in the back office with my hands in my pockets, staring at the exact stretch of floor where Carlos died, and feel nothing at all.

Not satisfaction.

Not grief.

Not even rage.

Only the strange, hollow quiet left after a fire finally goes out.

The office has been rebuilt from the studs. New floor. New plaster. New safe. New security system designed by Gregory, tested by Rafe, and threatened into perfection by me.

The old courier route beneath us has been sealed behind steel, stone, and enough surveillance to make ghosts reconsider haunting.

No hidden backdoor opens without three living Bachmans approving it.

No dead credential breathes under this floor.

No twelve-second delay waits in the dark.

Carlos is gone.

And still, some rooms remember what they were.

I turn away from the floor.

Beyond the open office door, the store glows.

Bachman’s.

The gold letters have been restored on the front window. The glass counters sparkle beneath warm brass pendant lights. Diamonds sit in velvet trays. Pearls gleam. Watches rest in neat lines under crystal. The air is clean and cool, quiet in that expensive way that makes ordinary people lower their voices before they know why.