Chapter 8: The Morning After

Afterward, they lay tangled together.

Her head on his chest. His fingers tracing lazy patterns on her bare shoulder. The first hints of dawn painting the sky outside the windows.

“What happens now?” she asked quietly.

“Now?”

He pressed a kiss to her hair.

“Now I take you home. Not to your apartment—that’s not safe anymore. To my home. Our home. And I spend the rest of my life making sure nothing ever touches you.”

“That sounds like another cage.”

“Perhaps.”

His arms tightened around her.

“But this time, you’ll have the key. You can leave anytime you want. I won’t stop you.”

“You say that now.”

“I mean it.”

He tilted her chin up to meet his eyes.

“I’m many things, Lily. A killer. A criminal. A man who’s done unspeakable things in the name of power. But I won’t cage you. I won’t trap you. You stay because you choose to. Or you don’t stay at all.”

She studied his face.

The scar through his eyebrow. The new bruise on his cheek. The silver hair that made him look distinguished instead of old. Sixty-two years of life and violence and loss had carved him into something beautiful and terrible.

And he was offering her freedom.

Even as everything in him screamed to keep her locked away where nothing could hurt her.

“I choose to stay,” she said.

Relief flooded his features.

“Why?”

“Because you’re the first person in three years who’s made me feel like something other than a burden or a servant or a daughter watching her mother die. Because when you look at me, I feel seen. Really seen.”

She touched his face, feeling the stubble scratch against her palm.

“And because I’ve never felt safer than when I’m with the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”

“You’re insane.”

“Probably.”

She smiled against his chest.

“But so are you for wanting me.”

“They said I was too old for love.”

His voice carried a note of wonder.

“Said I was too cold, too far gone, too much of a monster to feel anything real.”

He rolled them over until she was beneath him. His body sheltering hers. His eyes blazing with everything he felt.

“What do you say?”

“I say they were wrong. I say you were just waiting for someone brave enough—or foolish enough—to see past the monster to the man underneath.”

“And if I see both?”

His voice dropped lower.

“The monster and the man?”

“Then you’re the only one who ever has.”

He kissed her slowly. Thoroughly. Until she was breathless and aching.

“And I’ll spend every day proving I’m worth the risk you’re taking.”

They left the safe house the next morning.

The drive back to the city was different this time. Sal sat close, his hand never leaving hers, his thumb stroking circles on her palm. The security detail had doubled. Two cars ahead of them, two behind.

All of them filled with armed men whose job was now to protect her as fiercely as they protected him.

“I need to see my mother,” she said as they entered the city limits.

“Of course.”

He lifted her hand to his lips.

“We’ll go now. And Lily—she’s been moved to the best hospice facility on the East Coast. Better doctors, better care. Whatever time she has left, she’ll be comfortable.”

Tears pricked her eyes.

“You didn’t have to—”

“Yes, I did. She’s your mother. That makes her family. And I protect what’s mine.”

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