“Keep her.” Those were the two words I heard my mafia husband say about another woman on our fifth wedding anniversary,

Forty-eight hours later, the storm had passed.

In a secluded cliffside villa overlooking the sapphire expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the only sound was the steady hum of a heart monitor.

Elena sat in an armchair by the floor-to-ceiling windows, holding a sleeping Aurelia against her chest. The baby’s cheeks were rosy, safe and untouched by the horrors that had unfolded beneath Palermo.

Behind her, the bedsheets rustled.

Elena turned her head. Adrien was awake. His chest was heavily bandaged, twenty-four surgical stitches holding his torn flesh together, but the fever had broken. His obsidian eyes, clear and fiercely lucid once more, rested upon Elena and their daughter.

"Come here," Adrien whispered, his voice still rough like crushed stones.

Elena stood up, carefully walking over to the bedside. She laid Aurelia gently in the small bassinet beside him, then sat on the edge of the mattress. Adrien reached out with a trembling, heavily bruised hand and cupped her face. His thumb stroked her cheekbone, tracing the faint bruise near her temple.

"You should have let me die in that crypt," Adrien said quietly, his gaze filled with an agony deeper than physical pain. "You risked Aurelia. You risked yourself. Lucian was right about one thing—I brought the darkness to your doorstep."

Elena leaned into his touch, her eyes glistening, but her voice was steady. "You don't get to decide when our story ends, Adrien Hudson. For five years, I thought you were a cold, calculating monster who married me for a treaty and kept another woman in the shadows. But you bled for me. You endured hell so that Lucian wouldn't find us."

"Vanessa Cole was Lucian's courier," Adrien admitted, his fingers tangling in Elena's hair. "When she tried to defect, Lucian threatened to detonate dirty bombs across our shipping lines. When I said *'Keep her'* on our anniversary, I was ordering my men to lock her in a black site until we broke the encryption. But I couldn't tell you. If Lucian knew how much I loved you... he would have used you to destroy me five years ago."

"And now?" Elena whispered, placing her hand over his heart, feeling its steady, stubborn beat.

"Now, the masquerade is over," Adrien said, his jaw tightening with cold resolve. "Lucian is dead beneath Palermo's ruins, but the men who financed him—the Obsidian Council—still hold power. They control the ports, the banks, the governments. They think because I was broken in that crypt, the Hudson family is finished."

Adrien slowly pushed himself up against the pillows, wincing slightly, but his eyes shone with terrifying majesty.