Epilogue - Samira
I used to measure my life in survival.
In small moments where nothing bad happened. In the absence of pain.
That was enough for me once.
Enough to wake up, breathe, get through the day without being noticed. Without being hurt. Without giving anyone a reason to remind me of my place.
I didn’t think life could be more than that. I didn’t think I was allowed more than that.
Before him, my world was small. Carefully contained. Carefully controlled. Every step calculated, every word weighed. I learned early that safety wasn’t something you were given—it was something you tried to carve out in the spaces people forgot to watch.
And even then—it never lasted.
The past always had a way of finding me again. Closing in. Reminding me that I wasn’t free. That I never would be.
Until Marcello.
He didn’t come into my life gently. He didn’t knock. He didn’t ask permission. He stepped into it like he had always been meant to be there—and somehow, everything I had known before him shifted.
Not all at once. Not in some sweeping, impossible way.
At first, it was unsettling. The way he looked at me.
Like he saw everything I tried so hard to hide—and didn’t turn away from it.
Didn’t pity it. Didn’t dismiss it. He just…
stayed. Even when I didn’t understand why.
Even when I didn’t trust it. Or when every instinct I had told me that nothing this steady, this unwavering, could possibly be real.
I tested it. Pushed against it. Waited for the moment it would break. It didn’t. He didn’t.
And then—the world changed again.
Not around me. For me. The things that haunted me… stopped. The shadows that followed me… disappeared. The past that had wrapped itself around my throat for so long finally loosened its grip.
At first, I didn’t understand it. Didn’t believe it. Freedom felt foreign. Too wide. Like standing at the edge of something I didn’t know how to step into.
But Marcello—Marcello didn’t ask me to face it alone.
He didn’t push me forward. He didn’t force me to move faster than I could.
He stayed beside me. Every step. Every breath.
Every memory that tried to drag me back into what I had been.
He was there. Holding me through it. Grounding me when my thoughts turned too loud, too sharp, too close to what they used to be.
He never told me to forget. Never asked me to pretend it didn’t happen. He let me feel it. Let me break. And then he put me back together again—piece by piece, in a way that felt like me, not something rebuilt to please the world.
He slayed my monsters. Every last one of them.
Not just the men who hurt me. Not just the ones who thought they could own me. But the ones inside my own mind. The ones that whispered I wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t safe. That I wasn’t allowed to want more.
He proved them wrong. Over and over again.
In the way he looked at me and touched me. In the way he stayed.
He would do anything for me. He has. And for the first time in my life—I don’t feel like I have to earn that. I don’t feel like I have to shrink myself to keep it.
The house feels different now. No longer big and empty. It feels… lived in. Warm. There are voices in it. Laughter. Movement. People who look at me like I belong here, like I’ve always had a place among them—even when I don’t quite know how to stand in it yet.
I’m learning. Slowly. But I’m learning. What it means to sit without fear. What it means to laugh without waiting for it to be taken away. What it means to be loved.
I think back sometimes to the girl I used to be. The one who measured her life in survival. The one who believed that was all there was. And I wish I could tell her—there’s more. So much more.
The door remained open. So did the distance. And somewhere between the two, our fate held its breath.
I didn’t understand it then. I understand it now.
The door was never just escape. It was possibility. And the distance—it wasn’t something to fear. It was space. Room to grow. Room to step into a life that didn’t belong to my past.
Now, when I look ahead— I don’t see something waiting to hurt me. I see something waiting to be lived. With him. And for the first time—I’m not afraid to walk toward it.
IZZY and RAZE are up next in book 3! Read it here:
Beautiful Ruins
Chapter 1 - RAZE
Water dripped somewhere in the dark, slow and steady, like the building itself was bleeding out.
The concrete floor was uneven, cracked in places, slick with damp that had no business existing this far underground.
I took one careful step, then another, watching my boots more than the men waiting for me.
Italian leather didn’t deserve this kind of abuse.
If I scuffed them for this deal, someone was going to lose a kneecap.
The space had once been part of an old factory—manufacturing something harmless; buttons, if I remember correctly. Now it was stripped down to bare bones and shadows, with rusted support beams and crates stacked haphazardly like they’d been dropped and forgotten.
The men across from me were Bratva. Five of them, packed into heavy coats that didn’t quite hide the guns beneath them.
Their thick accents weighed down every word, and their eyes never stopped moving as they surveyed their surroundings for threats.
Paranoid bastards. I would be too, if I were meeting with me.
They were armed, badly trained, and sweating through their collars.
It felt like this meeting mattered more to them than it did to me. Which meant it probably did.
“You bring what you promised?” The leader asked. The scar through his eyebrow gave his face a permanent scowl, and his hand hovered at his gun like it needed reassurance. With fingers that jittery, he’d probably put a bullet in his own thigh before I gave him a reason to use it.
I nodded once.
The case snapped open at my feet. Inside was order in a place that rarely deserved it—compact charges fitted snugly, the wiring color-coded and fancy, detonators secured and ready. Clean. Controlled. Beautiful in a way only precision could be.
Art.
The Bratva leader leaned closer, eyes lighting up despite himself.
“Military grade?” he asked.
I nodded once, wordless, but my eyes obviously held all the answers he needed.
The grin split his face, slow and greedy. “You enjoy this.”
I lifted one shoulder, easy. “Some people paint. Some people cook. I like things that go boom.”
A few of his men chuckled, the sound thin and unsure. The one in front didn’t join in. His gaze never left my hands, tracking every small movement like he expected me to explode out of sheer enthusiasm.
We were mid-negotiation when I heard a sound that didn’t belong to either side.
Neither, I realized, did it belong to the rats that claimed this basement as their kingdom.
It was too pronounced. A soft scrape, like metal kissing metal, even though it seemed like someone was trying very hard not to be heard.
I went still, my body coiling with tension.
So did my men. Their shoulders tightened, hands drifting lower, closer to their weapons. The air in the room changed, thickening, sharpening. It always did in that split second before violence stepped out of the shadows and decided who it liked.
Then the interruption came again. But this time, it was so much more.
It was a short breath. Shallow, controlled, and definitely human.
And so wrong in this scenario.
I didn’t wait for confirmation. Nor did I give anyone time to speak or reach for their weapon or panic.
I moved. One moment I was standing by the case. The next, I was gone.
I crossed the space in two long strides, any concern for my leather boots abandoned as they sloshed through the water pooling across the concrete. Expensive, yes. Replaceable, also yes.
I didn’t stop to think. Thinking was slower.
Instinct took over, quick and ugly and entirely familiar.
The stacked crates along the wall rose out of the darkness.
I kicked one aside without ceremony and reached into the narrow gap behind it, my fingers closing on fabric and flesh at the same time—soft where it mattered, solid where it counted.
Whoever was hiding there sucked in a sharp breath, like they’d been foolish enough to believe the shadows would protect them, before they let out a yelp.
I dragged her out and shoved her into the open, my hand locking around her throat just tight enough to keep her upright, to keep her quiet.
She was a girl. A woman. Young enough that it hit wrong in my chest before I could stop it.
Too young to be here.
Her eyes were wide, glassy with panic, mouth parted like she couldn’t decide whether to scream or beg. Fear rolled off her in thick waves, sharp and consuming. Her hands came up slowly, shaking, palms open like she believed surrender might save her.
It wouldn’t.
“What the hell is that?” one of the Bratva men snapped.
“A problem,” another said, already lifting his gun, finger tightening on the trigger like he’d been waiting for an excuse.
He was aiming at her head.
I smiled.
It wasn’t a friendly thing, and it didn’t reach my eyes. It was the kind of smile that made people misjudge how much time they had left.
“Put the gun down,” I ordered.
The gun didn’t lower.
“She saw too much,” the man insisted, voice tight, trigger finger already twitching.
“Relax. She saw crates and concrete,” I replied, my grip on her throat adjusting by a fraction. Not enough to hurt. Enough to remind her who decided whether she breathed.
The vein in the woman’s neck was slamming against my palm. I felt every beat—fast, erratic, desperate. Panic, not discipline. No trained operative let fear run like that. If she was a spy, she was the worst one I’d ever met.
Which made her dangerous in a different way. Because it made her interesting.
I leaned closer, lowering my voice so only she could hear it.
“Who sent you?”
Her lips parted. Closed. Trembled.
“I—I—”