Pretenddd you’re my wife. Dance with me now.”

Giovanni looked down at me, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscle twitched beneath his scar. His amber eyes were dark, stormy, swimming with a pain he had buried beneath billions of dollars and decades of ruthlessness.

“You think this was just a contract to me?” I demanded, stepping into his personal space, refusing to let him retreat into his cold fortress. “You think I spent the last two weeks watching you protect my daughter, watching you treat her with more gentleness and honor than her own father ever possessed, and felt *nothing*?”

“I did what any decent man would do!” Giovanni growled, his voice rising, breaking through his legendary composure for the first time.

“No, you didn't!” I yelled back, tears finally spilling freely over my cheeks. “Tyler had money! Marcus Vance had money! They were monsters! You tore down half the city’s elite to keep my little girl safe! You sat on the floor and built Lego castles after working twelve hours on corporate mergers! You bought Barnaby a sweater, Giovanni!”

Giovanni blinked, taken aback, his chest heaving. “It was cold. The rabbit only has one ear.”

“You love her!” I choked out, a sob catching in my throat. “And she loves you. She asked me this morning if you were going to be her daddy forever. Do you know what that did to my heart? Knowing that in your mind, this was just an administrative transaction?”

Giovanni’s breath turned ragged. His hands rose slightly, hovering near my shoulders as if he wanted to hold me, but was terrified of shattering the illusion.

“Jessica,” he whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, agonizing vulnerability. “Look at me. Look at my life. I am forty-two years old. My family is a pit of vipers. My past is filled with violence and regret. I have lived in an emotional bunker for twenty years. You are twenty-nine. You are bright, you are pure, you have your entire life ahead of you. You deserve a real marriage. You deserve a man who can give you poetry, moonlight, and an unburdened heart. Not a scarred cynic who bought your hand in a ballroom.”

“I don't want poetry, Giovanni,” I whispered, taking his large, calloused hands and pressing them against my heart. “I want you.”

Giovanni shuddered. His fingers curled against the fabric of my shirt, feeling the frantic, wild beating of my heart beneath his palm.

“I don't care about your past,” I said, looking straight into his soul. “I don't care about your scars. I love your honor. I love your strength. I love the way your eyes soften when Lily smiles at you. I love you, Giovanni. And if you tell me to walk out that door tomorrow, I will go. But do not lie to me and say you feel nothing.”

The silence that followed was deafening. The entire city of New York seemed to hold its breath forty floors below us.

Giovanni stared at me, his amber eyes searching every inch of my face, stripping away the doubts, the defenses, the decades of ice he had wrapped around his soul.

“God help me,” he rasped.

He moved with the sudden, breathtaking violence of an avalanche.

His hands framed my face, his fingers tangling into my hair, and he pulled me to him. His mouth crashed down on mine, hungry, desperate, fierce with a passion that had been denied for too long.

A gasp tore from my lips, but it was swallowed by his kiss. The heat was instantaneous, an explosion of pure fire that melted every lingering doubt. I threw my arms around his neck, pulling myself flush against the hard, unyielding wall of his chest. He groaned into my mouth, his arms wrapping around my waist, lifting me completely off my feet, pressing me against him as if he could absorb me into his very bones.

The kiss was not polite. It was not a contract. It was possession, devotion, and a desperate surrender. He tasted of mint, dark coffee, and raw hunger. When his lips finally moved to my jaw, trailing searing kisses down the sensitive skin of my neck, my head fell back against his shoulder, my fingers clutching his hair.

“I have wanted you since the second you put your hand in mine on that dance floor,” Giovanni whispered against my throat, his voice thick with emotion. “I watched you stand up to that coward, and I knew I would burn the entire world to the ground before I let anyone hurt you again.”

He set me down gently, his hands resting on my hips, his forehead resting against mine. We were both breathing heavily, our foreheads pressed together, our eyes locked in the dark.

“You are not leaving this penthouse, Jessica,” Giovanni declared, his voice trembling with a fierce, possessive tenderness. “You are not taking that brownstone. You are my wife. In law, in heart, and in every breath I have left.”

I smiled through my tears, lifting my hands to cup his face. “Then tear up the contract, Mr. Fierro.”

Giovanni smiled—a slow, breathtaking smile that transformed his entire face into something radiant.