Chapter 52
Chapter Fifty-Two
LUCA
Near midday, the bedroom was too quiet.
Bastion was dead asleep, arm flung across the tangle where she should’ve been, his hand still clamped on a pillow like his body refused to let go even in dreams. We’d stayed up too late in the war room, building a life on screens and paper, routes, redlines, safe corridors, a plan with teeth. It should’ve eased the ache.
It didn’t.
My chest hurt in that old, familiar way—like the finish line was finally in sight.
I slid out of bed without waking him. Her phone sat on the nightstand, black screen, no new notifications—because I’d made sure no one could reach her direct this morning. Not Alexander. Not the advisors who wanted to drown her in paper and call it duty.
I didn’t do it to control her. I did it to protect her. Her mornings were to be peaceful, sacred.
The bathroom door was open. The shower running. I stepped inside and found her standing in front of it, arms crossed tight over Bastion’s shirt, staring at the water .
She looked wrecked.
“I can’t be bothered standing in there,” she didn’t look at me.
“Awe, baby.” I cupped her face. Her eyes were swollen.
I reached past her and switched the shower off. Then I turned to the marble tub and twisting the taps. Last night I had ordered the final adjustments on our penthouse to be completed this week. I wanted her in a palace.
“You don’t have to do that, Luca,” she murmured, the apology already forming out of habit. “I’m sure you have more important things to do this morning.”
I didn’t answer her apology. I only adjusted the hot water.
In my head, I saw the spa nestled into the new penthouse, programmed with her presets. Light-dim at 40%. Temperature 38.5°C. Sound filters that drown the city into a hush. A built-in lavender release that releases in the air the moment the sensor reads her pulse above ninety.
Every small piece designed to quiet her body when the world wouldn’t.
And when she couldn’t tell us what hurt, the house would.
Vitals to our phones. Overhead thermal if she fell asleep in the tub.
Alerts if her breathing shifted, if her steps dragged, if she spent more than ten minutes staring at a mirror without moving.
It wasn’t to be creepy or to smoother her.
It was just another kind of love because we didn’t trust the world to be kind.
“Nothing more important than you,” I said finally, because she needed to hear it out loud. “You know that, Em.”
Her mouth trembled once. She looked like she wanted to argue and couldn’t find the energy to pretend.
I went to my knees in front of her. Slow. No hurry. I hooked my thumbs under the waistband of her panties and eased them down her thighs, careful not to make the world spin. Then I undid the buttons of Bastion shirt on her, one by one—sliding it off her shoulders until it dropped to the floor.
“So fucking beautiful,” I said, reverent, because truth should never need volume.
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “You can’t still say that after seeing me so many times.”
My chest tightened. Alexander had taught her to grade herself as if love were a contract to be met. The dynasty had drained her so slowly she thought this—this ache behind her eyes, was what being alive felt like.
I kissed her forehead. Then the bridge of her nose. “Every time,” I told her. “Every time I’ll tell you.”
I dimmed the lights, just enough that the sting left her eyes. The water was ready; I tested it with my wrist, then my palm. Good. Not a degree off.
“Come here,” I said, and slid my arms around her. She melted against me.
I lifted her and stepped into the tub with her, lowering her down with me. I sat with my back against the bath and drew her onto my chest.
“Sorry,” she exhaled. “About last night. About… all of it. I shouldn’t have?—”
“No.” I pressed a kiss to her temple.“You don’t apologize to me for telling the truth. You’re not a burden. You’re ours.”
Her shoulders relaxed against me.
“Do you trust me?” I asked softly. “Do you trust us , baby?”
She nodded, flinching at the movement. Pain flickered across her face and was gone as she tried to bury it.
“Okay.” I kissed the crown of her head, slow.
“Then here’s what you’re going to do for me.
For us . Leave it with me for a few hours.
We’re going to handle everything we talked about.
Every clause, every man, every move. We’ll tell you how and when later.
But right now I need you to hand me the weight and focus on exactly one thing. ”
She stayed very still. “What thing?”
“My hands.”
I reached for her left hand under the water, found her palm, and set my thumb in the center. Slow pressure. Circles. The pattern I use when her mind won’t quiet. It looks like nothing. It’s not.
“Focus on this,” I murmured, working my thumb into the tension until it softened. “Count breaths and follow it. Four in. Six out. Again.”
Her fingers twitched. Then loosened. The tight line of her mouth eased.
“Luca, I should?—”
“No.” I kissed her temple. “You should sit. You should breathe. You should let me touch you and remember that the world gets small when we ask it to.”
I turned the dimmer a bit more until the ceiling glow spread soft.
“We’ll tell you everything when your eyes aren’t aching and your head isn’t pounding. We’ll lay it all out on the table. No tricks.”
“You promise?”
“On my brother’s name. On mine.”
She let herself sink back until her head resting on my shoulder.
Her breathing evened. The frown that had lived between her brows for days smoothed. I shifted my hand to her wrist and then up into her forearm. Little, slow victories.
Through the wall, Bastion turned over in his sleep. I could tell by the way the building’s silence changed. He sleeps like a man holding something he refuses to drop.
“Luca? ”
“Mm.”
“Do you hate him?” She didn’t say the name. She didn’t need to.
“I hate anyone who told you to carry this alone. But I’m not giving them time in this room. Not right now. They can wait their turn.”
She let out a tiny laugh. My thumb kept moving. The top of her foot slid against my shin under the surface.
“Tell me something not dynasty,” she said after a while, voice gone soft. “Something that won’t make my head hurt.”
I thought of the penthouse, of the things she doesn’t know we programmed because some part of me is always ten minutes ahead of her pain.
“In the new place. The bath remembers you. It won’t run if the water’s too hot.
It will start draining if your heart rate drops too low.
The speakers won’t play anything louder than rain if you’re in here past midnight.
The light in the bedroom is set to warm so your eyes don’t sting when you wake up.
And if you ever stand in the shower for more than five minutes without moving, the mirror sends me a message that says, ‘She’s stuck. Come get her.’”
She made that soft noise in her throat. “That’s… a lot.”
“It’s enough,” I kissed the edge of her hair. “It’s what we should have been doing since the first night.”
“I was the one?—”
“You were the one who’d been told love meant shutting up and standing still.” I worked a knot under her thumb until it let go. “We’re rewriting the book.”
She was quiet after that. I felt her muscles unwind one by one. The water did the rest.
I slid my hands up to her shoulders and pressed slow circles into the tight muscle until she sighed and let her head tilt to give me more access .
By the time the room clock blinked twelve-thirty, her breaths had lengthened into that almost-sleep rhythm, and the weight of her against me had turned trusting and heavy.
I tightened my arm around her waist because I could. Because I wanted to. Because I will never again trust this city not to reach over a wall and take what I love.
Bastion appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, hair a mess, T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, eyes flicking once to me and then locking on her.
She blinked up at him, fighting a smile she didn’t have energy for.
He leaned against the frame a second like his knees needed help. Then he came to the tub and crouched—his face soft in a way only she ever saw.
He held her gaze. “How’s your head?”
“Not trying to kill me,” she said around a yawn.
“Good.” He dipped his fingers into the water, testing heat like I had. “He get it right?”
“Perfect,” she said, eyes fluttering shut again.
We shared a look over her hair. That twin look—the one that carries a whole language: the war room plans, the thirty-day clock, the blackmail packet ready to snap around the Adams throat, the call to Damius scheduled for dawn that would change the shape of our family.
The part where, for once, we were ahead of a dynasty instead of clawing to keep pace.
We’d done it.
Not all of it. Not the vows, the island. But the worst lay behind us.
“Stay,” Bastion said to her, like he was asking for a promise and giving one. “Stay in today. Let us do the ugly.”
She made a little hum that meant yes without moving her mouth .
He leaned in and kissed her temple. I felt the press of it through her body where her shoulder rested on my chest. He rested his forehead there a beat, then pulled back and smoothed her damp hair from her cheek.
“Coffee?” he asked me, voice low.
“Later,”
He nodded. We both kept our hands on her—even for that—like if one of us let go the room might tilt.
She drifted. I watched her throat move with swallowing and then settle again. Bastion sat on the edge of the tub and let his fingers trail in the water, drawing lazy shapes that brushed her ankle. Her lips curved at the touch. Not a smile, but something softer.
After a while, I shifted her hand in mine and let my thumb find the spot it had been working since we got in. The rhythm was slower now; her body had learned again how to let go.
Bastion leaned back and watched the two of us with a look I know in myself but never see on my own face: not triumph. Just an animal kind of gratitude for breath and the privilege of proximity.
We had done it—this piece. The piece where safety looks ordinary.
Where caring for her isn’t strategy; it’s temperature and light and hands that don’t stop.
Soon there will be signatures. A public announcement.
Thirty days of pretending patience while we make impolite moves beneath velvet words.
A helicopter at noon that goes where only we can land.
A ring she doesn’t expect because the vault ring isn’t worthy of her and I won’t insult her with history that isn’t ours.
But for now it was water and her cheek on my shoulder.
She drifted toward sleep again. The last thing she did was reach for Bastion blindly with her free hand. He caught it and kissed her knuckles, slow.
“Good girl,” he said kissing her knuckles.
Her mouth curved. She didn’t open her eyes.
We watched her breathe, the way men do when they know they’ve finally put the right kind of weight on the right kind of scale. The part of me that keeps lists ticked one more line: get her through this day .
The part that keeps knives made a different list I didn’t say out loud: the men who will never make it to our door.
Bastion met my eyes over her again. Ready? he asked without sound.
Ready, I answered.
We really had done it—the first impossible thing.