threats.
Dr. Bellini visited twice a week until Alessia threatened to stab him with his own thermometer if he checked her stitches one more time.
The scar at her side healed into a thin pale line.
Niko hated it.
Alessia did not.
“It proves I lived,” she told him one morning.
They were in the garden, where white roses climbed the stone walls and the city noise felt distant. Niko stood beside her in shirtsleeves, looking out of place among the flowers.
“You should not have had to prove that.”
“No,” she said. “But I did.”
He turned toward her.
The rose-gold necklace rested at her throat, catching the sunlight.
“You kept it,” he said.
She touched it with two fingers.
“I considered throwing it at you.”
“I would have deserved that.”
“You still might.”
A rare smile tugged at his mouth.
“There she is.”
Alessia studied him.
The most feared man in the city. The shadow king. The man people crossed streets to avoid. The man who had carried her through rain with blood on his hands and terror in his eyes.
She took his hand.
His fingers closed around hers carefully, as though even now he was afraid of holding too tightly.
“I am staying,” she said.
Niko’s expression shifted.
“Because you choose to?”
“Because I choose to.”
“And if one day you choose differently?”
“Then you will let me go.”
The answer came instantly.
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“Good.”
He leaned down until his forehead rested against hers.
For once, he did not look at the city.
He did not look at the empire he had built, the enemies waiting beyond the gates, or the blood price that always came due in his world.
He looked at Alessia.
The woman who had entered his house as payment for a debt.
The woman who had refused to break.
The woman who had become the one truth no enemy could use against him because he no longer cared who knew.
“I love you,” he said.
The words sounded rough, unfamiliar, almost dangerous.
Alessia’s eyes filled, but she smiled anyway.
“I know.”
His brows drew together.
“That is your answer?”
“For now.”
He gave a low laugh, the kind no one in his organization would have believed possible.
Then she kissed him again among the white roses, and somewhere beyond the walls, the city continued whispering about the mafia boss who destroyed his own bloodline for a maid.
But inside the garden, Alessia knew the truth.
He had not destroyed anything for her.
He had finally chosen what was worth saving.
