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I sink onto the edge of the mattress, my other hand coming down to cover his. The guilt of my words at the Met echoes in my ears: ‘You made your bed; now lie in it.’ I had hated him for three years, hated him for leaving me to rot in the dark, and hated him for selling me away. But feeling his pulse fluttering like a dying moth against my fingertips, the hatred shatters into a hollow, aching grief.

"Forgive me, my Rose," Danny rasps, his chest wheezing under the strain of every word. "I was weak, lass. God help me, I was a coward from the day your mother died."

"Don't talk like that," I whisper, tears leaking down my cheeks, tracking over the ridged scars around my eyes. "Save your breath, Da. The doctors are working on you."

"No doctors can fix a hollow man, Iris," he says, a faint, bitter chuckle catching in his throat, instantly cut off by a gasp of pain. He turns his head slightly, his grip on my hand tightening until his knuckles tremble. His thumb glides over the heavy ring on my fourth finger, pausing on the cold cut of the emerald.

He lets out a long, shuddering sigh.

"You're wearing it," he whispers, a strange, broken relief coloring his tone. "The Messina stone. Thank God. Thank God almighty."

I furrow my brow, leaning closer to the bed. "You knew about this ring? You agreed to this?"

"I begged him for it, Iris," Danny confesses, his voice cracking with raw emotion.

Behind me, Romeo remains standing like a marble guardian, his hand never leaving my shoulder.

"What are you talking about?" I demand, my heart hammering in my chest.

"The church... the bishop's council back in Scotland... they never saw you as a daughter, My Rose," Danny wheezes, his breathing turning shallow. "They saw you as something to own and use. A holy bloodline to bleed dry whenever the Irish docks fell short of their profits. They took you when you were four to put the fear of God into me, and when this boy saved you at the cabin in the woods, I thought the debt was buried."

His trembling hand moves, his thumb tracing the pink, jagged line on my palm, the scar from Mick's knife all those years ago.

"When they came for you the second time, when they strung you up on that altar, I knew I couldn't save you," Danny cries, a tear splashing onto my knuckles. "My own men were bought by the diocese. The only man in New York with the stomach, the cruelty, and the bloodlust to burn down their whole empire for you was and is Romeo. I traded your name to him when you were barely conscious in the hospital because I knew he would rather die in hell than let another soul touch you."

The air leaves my lungs in a single, stunned rush.

All this time, I thought Danny had traded me like livestock to clear his gambling debts. I thought Romeo had taken advantage of an unconscious girl to feed his sick obsession.

Danny hadn't sold me to an enemy. He had handed me to the only monster vicious enough to kill the predators hunting me.

"He took care of you, didn't he, lass?" Danny whispers, his voice fading to a fragile thread. "He kept you safe in the light."

I swallow the lump in my throat, my fingers tightening around his cold hand. Through the tears, through the lingering hurt and the madness of the last three years, the truth sits before me, bare and undeniable.

"Yes, Da," I say softly, my voice steadying. "He kept me safe."

A faint smile touches Danny's lips beneath his graying red beard. "Good. That's my brave little Rose. Don't look back, Iris. Don't hide in the dark anymore. Rule them. Rule them all."

The heart monitor suddenly shrieks, a high, piercing wail that tears through the silence of the room.

Danny's hand slackens in my grip, his fingers sliding limply onto the white sheet. His chest stops its ragged rise.

"Da?" I gasp, leaning over him, my hands patting frantically across his still chest. "Da! Danny, wake up!"

The monitor flatlines in a single, unending tone.

The room door bursts open as doctors and nurses rush in, their voices overlapping in frantic medical jargon.

Before the panic can swallow me, large, unbreakable arms wrap around my torso, lifting me up and pulling me back from the bed. Romeo pulls me flush against his hard chest, turning my face into the crook of his neck, blocking out the sound, the chaos, and the cold reality of death.

"I've got you, Kitten," he rumbles into my ear, his heartbeat pounding steady and fierce against my temple. "I've got you."

I don't push him away. I clutch the back of his suit jacket with both hands, burying my face into his neck, letting the tears fall until my cheeks are raw.

When the doctors finally call the time of death, a cold, crystalline stillness settles over the room.

I pull back from Romeo's chest, wiping my face with the back of my hand. The grief is still there, heavy and sharp, but beneath it, something ancient and lethal snaps into place.