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After they all leave, I lie in the quiet and let the truth I’ve been avoiding seep in.

I killed Bruno Caruso. Hands trained to heal took another life.

I brace for the horror, the guilt, and the shattering of my oath. What comes instead is a calm certainty that I would do it again to protect the man beside me and the baby inside me.

The compound has gone unusually still. No footsteps, no murmured voices, and no engines at the gates. Just the wind and the quiet that comes when the world has finally stopped holding its breath.

I sit on the edge of the bed, snug in a blanket that smells faintly of cedar, watching Marco pace.

A medic has checked him out, taped his ribs, cleaned the split lip, and closed the fresh gash above his right eye with butterfly strips. It’s a grim twin to the old scar that cuts through his left eyebrow.

The medic told him to take it easy, but he can’t seem to stop pacing back and forth in the small room. His bare feet are silent on the worn boards, and his hands open and close at his sides.

“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.” My steady voice cuts through the silence.

He stops before pivoting to look at me. The bruise on his face is already darkening, spreading from his cheekbone to his jaw. The cut on his lip still oozes shiny blood in a thread of red that he keeps wiping away with the back of his hand. But the intensity of his eyes pains my chest.

“I almost lost you.”

“But you didn’t.” I hold out my hand, palm up. “Come here. Please.”

He strides over and sinks onto the bed beside me.

I immediately lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder as he twines his arm around me. For a long moment, we just breathe, and the rhythm of our lungs synchronizes in the dark.

“I need to tell you something.” My words come out in the tone I use when I’m about to deliver urgent news to a patient. “About what Mason told me when I met him at the coffee shop.”

Marco stiffens beside me. “You don’t have to.”

“I do.” I pull back enough to meet his eyes. “He showed me evidence. I know now that the photos were doctored, but at the time, I didn’t.”

I stop to swallow against the tightness in my throat.

“He told me the Benedetti family was running the trafficking ring and that you’d been using me as a cover to make yourself look legitimate. He even said you were the one who killed Matteo.”

The color drains from Marco’s face so quickly that his bruises stand out like ink on paper. “Lucia, tell me you didn’t trust him.”

“I didn’t believe him.” I’m speaking quickly in my efforts to reach him before doubts creep in. “Not really. I’ve watched you build a life from nothing and seen you choose kindness when violence would be easier. But some part of me…some part that’s been waiting for you to hurt me since the beginning…listened, wondered, and asked, ‘What if.’”

His hands cup my face, gentle despite the blood still under his nails. “I would never.”

I lean into his touch, his palms warm against my cheeks. “I know that now. But I didn’t then. And that’s what I need you to understand. I was so scared of being hurt that I couldn’t let myself trust that the good in my life wouldn’t be snatched away.”

“Nothing’s taking me away.” His voice frays at the edges. “Lucia, you’re the only part of my life that’s ever made sense. You’re the only reason I know how to be anything other than what Bruno made me and the only reason I started believing I could be more.”

I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him, tasting salt from tears I didn’t know I was shedding. My heart pounds so viciously, the beat reaches my fingertips. When I pull back, his eyes are red and glistening in the dim light.

“I was going to tell you,” Marco falters, “about Mason. I wanted you to know he was working with Bruno. But I wanted to wait until after the wedding, and then I postponed it again, telling myself I was waiting until you were safe and mine. Then Bruno took you, and Mason died, and the truth felt like one more wound I couldn’t bring myself to inflict.”

He stops to take a shuddering breath. “I was scared you’d leave or look at me the way I’ve always looked at myself, like I’m just violence and danger.”

I cup his face, his stubble scratching my palms, his pulse beating beneath my fingers. “Never. You mean so much to me.”

“You don’t know everything about me, Lucia.” His voice, barely a whisper, is the confession of a boy who learned too young that love meant loss. “I’ve inflicted more pain than I can remember. Sometimes, I wonder whether I’m that much different from Bruno. Is this all just a looping ring of karma?”

I put my nose in the crook of his neck, inhaling his scent. “You aren’t what Bruno made you. There’s so much more to you than the armor everyone sees. I know who you really are when there’s nothing to perform and nothing to prove. You’re the man I married. The father of my child.”

His breath catches. “Our child.”