Chapter 55
Chapter Fifty-Five
LUCA
Emilia slept naked on her stomach between us. A sheet tangled around her hips. Bastion was tracing her back with his hand.
I lit a cigarette, taking a deep inhale. The ache that came with it was grounding. Real. I held it, then lit another, passing it over.
Bastion took it without a word, pulling deep.
“She’s been asleep an hour,” he murmured, his voice low so not to wake her.
I exhaled smoke toward the ceiling, smirking faintly. “We did fuck her for nearly two.”
His mouth twitched. His eyes stayed on her, his hand moving down the slope of her waist to where the sheet clung. “She does good keeping up with both of us.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“She was made for us,” I said. Because it was true.
Bastion stroked her again, slower this time. “She really was.”
I inhaled deep. My chest was heavy, but not the kind that crushed. The kind that filled .
I glanced down at her, the faint curve of her lips even in sleep. My throat tightened.
“I can’t wait to see Alexander’s face,” I muttered.
Bastion’s jaw flexed, blowing smoke away from her.
In my head, I could already see it: Alexander’s composure fracturing, that perfect Adam steel snapping in half when he realized what we’d done. What we’d taken. No—what had always been ours.
I would finally rip apart the legacy he held so dearly. Not with fire. Not with blood. With ink. With vows. With her name on my skin and ours on hers.
She’d said it tonight. My husbands.
The sound replayed on loop in my skull. A fever. The taste of peace I hadn’t let myself imagine for three years. Knowing she would always be between us. That no matter how the city burned, we’d return to this bed and find her here.
My chest ached.
“Damius tomorrow,” Bastion said, breaking the quiet.
“After the merger is announced, we lock her down,” I answered.
“She won’t like it,” he muttered, his thumb brushing her skin.
“She’ll like it when we make her,” I said evenly, because there was no other option.
I leaned back against the headboard, watching smoke from Bastion’s cigarette, as his hand memorized her body by touch alone.
“We have to prep the city for when we’re gone,” I said.
Bastion nodded. “Vince and Nik will step in.”
“They’ll hold it,” I agreed, even as my jaw flexed. They’d hold it because they had no other choice.
“Even Kingston if we have to,” I added, my hand drifting down to stroke her hip. She shifted in her sleep .
“Yacht,” Bastion exhaled. “After the lock-in. For a few weeks.”
I smirked faintly. “Topical island. Bikinis.”
“Fucking her in every room we designed for her.”
My mouth twisted into something dark. “Staff who know when to disappear.”
“Then we take her home,” Bastion added, his voice lower now.
“She adapts to being a Crow Dynasty wife. Not an Adams daughter.”
He hummed. “Her representing us instead of them.”
The words settled heavy in the quiet. I glanced down at her again—still curled between us, cheek pressed into the pillow. She looked breakable, soft, nothing like the weapon we were planning to place in dynasty halls.
The city wouldn’t know what to do with her once she carried our crest. They’d see her as porcelain, too fragile to bear the weight. They’d never understand the truth: she’d survived enough to carry two dynasties on her back.
I lit another cigarette and took a long drag before speaking. “We’ve put business off all morning.”
Bastion gave a rough nod. “Yeah. We can’t any longer.”
“The new port,” I said, blowing smoke toward the ceiling. “West Villain. Hollis crews think they’ve carved a line through it. They’re testing us, inch by inch.”
“They won’t live long enough to make it a mile,” Bastion muttered.
I tipped ash into the tray on the nightstand. “And the syndicate cut. The Rourkes are pressing harder. They think Vince stepping back left a gap. They’re wrong.”
“They’ll learn,” Bastion said simply. He glanced down at her, his fingers still moving across her bare back. “But not tonight. We deal with it when she wakes. ”
I inhaled again. “Agreed.”
“Later, we walk through it,” His eyes cut to mine over her shoulder. A look that wasn’t about ports or syndicates.
I held his stare, knowing exactly what he meant. The Codex. Crow Dynasty law. The last set of chains we had to snap before we put her in our name.
I gave a nod. “Later.”
We sat there in silence, smoke hanging heavy in the air, the hum of the city like a low current beneath it. Her breathing steadied between us, the sound so soft it made something in my chest ache.
“After dinner,” I brushed her hair back from her face. My fingers lingered on her cheek. “We’ll tell her. Lay it out.”
She didn’t stir.
God, I wished she would wake up now. I missed her voice. Missed the way she softened even the hardest parts of me.
“She’ll be sore when she wakes up,” Bastion muttered, flicking ash into the tray before stubbing his cigarette out. “She’ll pretend she isn’t.”
My mouth twisted. He wasn’t wrong. She’d smile, shrug it off, pretend she was fine. Pretend we hadn’t broken her open for hours.
“We didn’t do proper aftercare,” Bastion tone lower. “She fell asleep.” He ground the last of the cigarette into the tray, final, certain.
“That just means we get more time when she wakes up.”
A strange comfort feeling ran through me. More time to fuss over her. To check every ache, every tremor. To run my hands over her body until she remembered she wasn’t a burden.
That was what I loved most—the ritual of care. The quiet after. The way she let us hold her when the fight drained out .
I leaned back against the headboard, and let myself look at her.
Our girl. Our angel. Our wife already in everything but law.
The city could burn. The syndicates could claw. The dynasties could circle while we were gone.
We’d still take her name, take her hand, and take her home.
And anyone who tried to take her from us would learn the same lesson we’d been teaching for years, no one survives trying to steal what belongs to the Crows.