Page 55

She didn’t look convinced, but she nodded anyway. “Okay. But Salvatore?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t do anything stupid while you’re there. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. Just... come back to me in one piece.”

“I will,” I promised. “I swear to you, I will.”

We stayed on the call for a few more minutes, neither of us wanting to be the first to hang up. Finally, she yawned, and I knew I needed to let her sleep.

“Goodnight, baby,” I said softly.

“Goodnight,” she whispered back. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The screen went dark, and I was alone again.

But somehow, seeing her face, hearing her voice, had steadied something inside me. She had reminded me of what I was fighting for. What I was willing to sacrifice everything to protect.

I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, my phone still clutched in my hand. Illyria was right. I needed to decide quickly. And I already knew what my decision would be. I was going back to Montana. Back to Madigan. Back to the life we were building together. And if that meant walking away from my family, from everything I had ever known, then so be it.

Because she was worth it.

They were worth it.

And I would do whatever it took to keep them safe.

Even if it meant becoming the villain in my own family’s story.

Even if it meant losing everything else. Because without her, without them, I had nothing worth keeping anyway.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The flight back to Montana felt endless, stretching out before me like some kind of cosmic punishment designed specifically to trap me with my own thoughts.

I sat in first class, which felt both luxurious and wasteful given my current state of mind, staring out the window at clouds that stretched like cotton across an impossibly blue sky. The view should have been calming, meditative even, but instead it just felt like a blank canvas for all my anxieties to project themselves onto. I tried to convince myself that I had made the right choice. That walking away from Giovanni, from the family crisis that had been spiraling out of control for weeks now, from everything I had been raised to prioritize above my own needs and desires, was the only decision I could have made. The only decision that wouldn’t have destroyed me completely.

Deep down, beneath all the noise and chaos and second-guessing, I knew it was right. I could feel the truth of it in my bones, in that muted place inside me that had been screaming for attention for months.

But the knowing didn’t stop the doubt from eating at me like acid, corroding every moment of peace I tried to grasp.

You chose too late.

The thought had been circling my mind since I left Chicago, growing louder with each passing hour, each mile that separated me from the life I was leaving behind. Not that I had chosen wrong, but that I had chosen too late. That something had already been set in motion, something I couldn’t see, couldn’t stop, couldn’t outrun no matter how far I flew or how fast I drove. Like dominoes already tipping, like a wave already cresting, like fate itself had been waiting for me to finally make my move just so it could show me how little control I’d ever really had.

The plane touched down in Bozeman just after three in the afternoon. The landing gear hit the tarmac with a jolt that brought me back to the present moment. I rented a car. A sturdy SUV that felt more appropriate for Montana than anything I’d driven in Chicago, and drove the familiar route back to the ranch, watching the landscape shift from town to wilderness, from civilization to sanctuary. The buildings grew sparse, then disappeared entirely. The mountains rose around me like sentinels, ancient and immovable, their peaks still dusted with snow despite the late spring warmth that had begun to green the valleys. The sky was so vast here, so impossibly open and endless that it made Chicago feel claustrophobic in retrospect. Made the life I’d been living there feel small and suffocating.

This was home now. Not the place I was born, not the family I was raised in, but the place I had chosen. The place that had chosen me back.

This was where I belonged, where I could finally breathe without feeling like the air itself was weighed down with expectations and obligations.

So why did it feel like I was driving toward something instead of away from it? Why did the mountains feel less like protection and more like witnesses? Why did every mile bring a tightness to my chest that had nothing to do with altitude?

The ranch appeared in the distance, nestled in the valley like a secret the mountains were keeping. Smoke curled from the chimney. Madigan must have lit a fire despite the mild weather. She always said she liked the smell, the comfort of it.

I parked and sat in the car for a moment, my hands still gripping the steering wheel, trying to shake off the unease that had settled over me like a second skin.

You’re home, I told myself. You’re safe. She’s safe.