Epilogue #2
The chaos of the Costa family swirls around me.
For the first time in my life, I do not want to run from it.
I want to anchor right in the middle. I spent years building walls and assuming everyone was out for themselves.
Enzo tore those walls down with terrifying, calculated precision and replaced them with the kind of devotion that has its own armed perimeter.
Enzo sets me down on the edge of the marble island. He picks up the espresso cup and holds it to my lips. I drink the bitter, scalding liquid. It wakes up the exhausted corners of my brain.
He finishes the second cup himself. He sets it down with a sharp clink.
"Come with me," he says.
"Are we going to bed? Because my legs are officially on strike."
"In five minutes."
He takes my hand. The warmth of his calloused palm sends a rush of heat low through my belly. He leads me out of the kitchen, down a different hallway. We pass his usual study. We bypass the main staircase. He takes me to the sealed north end of the East Wing.
This section of the East Wing has been closed off since I arrived—separate from the chapel and the family suites, walled away behind its own set of doors.
Dust motes dance in the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows.
White canvas sheets cover antique furniture.
The air smells like old wood and disuse.
He stops in front of a pair of towering double doors. He pushes them open.
The room is cavernous. It used to be a ballroom, maybe a century ago. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the sprawling, fortified back gardens. The space is empty, save for a drafting table sitting directly in the center.
Enzo walks me to the table.
Blueprints cover the surface. Dozens of them. Detailed architectural drawings, electrical schematics, and material swatches.
I lean over the table. My brow furrows. I study the lines and measurements. I expect to see tactical choke points, reinforced steel doors, or camera placements. That is what the Fixer does. He builds cages. He builds traps.
But these are not traps.
I trace a finger over a vaulted room labeled on the paper. "Library. Custom mahogany shelving. Climate-controlled."
I look at the next sheet. "Greenhouse. Automated irrigation. Reinforced glass."
I look at the master suite schematic. A sprawling, open-concept space with a stone fireplace, dual offices, and a walk-in closet the size of my old apartment.
I look up at Enzo. He stands still. He watches my face with an intensity that borders on agonizing. His hands are shoved deep into his pockets. For the first time since I met him, the brilliant, calculating mafia strategist looks nervous.
"What is this?" I whisper.
"This is the East Wing," Enzo says. His voice is dangerously quiet. "It has been empty since I was ten. Sealed the night my mother and father were killed. Dominic locked it up. No one comes in here."
My throat tightens. The gravity of the room suddenly presses down on me.
Enzo steps closer to the table. He points to the greenhouse on the blueprint.
"You need a place for your basil and mint.
The litigation hours killed every herb you tried to keep on your apartment windowsill.
When you run your practice from this house, you will need somewhere to step away from the casework.
You need your own dirt. Your own sunlight. "
He points to the library. "You have sixty-four boxes of legal texts currently sitting in a storage unit downtown. The climate control is terrible. The humidity will ruin the bindings. They need a permanent home."
He points to the dual offices. "You refuse to stop working.
I respect that. But you are not going back to a corporate firm that treats you like a disposable asset.
You will run your own practice. Out of this house.
For the family, and for whoever else you deem worthy of your absolute, terrifying intellect. We work side by side."
I stare at the blueprints. The scale of it. The permanence of it.
I have spent my entire life moving. Upgrading apartments, changing firms, outrunning my own crushing debt. I never unpacked my boxes. I never bought real furniture. I treated my entire existence like a temporary holding pattern, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I look at the date stamp on the corner of the master blueprint.
Drafted four months ago. He has been building me a home since before he ever walked into Il Corvo.
Enzo Costa did not just pay off my debt.
He did not just protect me from hitmen. He sat down at a drafting table and designed an entire world to my specifications.
He calculated every variable of my happiness, and he drafted it into reality.
"Enzo," I choke out. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. I violently refuse to cry, blinking rapidly to clear my vision.
He pulls his hands out of his pockets. He steps around the drafting table. He stops right in front of me.
He reaches for my left hand. He touches the diamond ring on my fourth finger. The ring that started as a lie. The ring that forced me into his world.
He slides it off my finger.
Panic spikes through me. A sudden, irrational certainty that the contract is being voided in the wrong direction grips me. My hand feels instantly naked. The phantom metal leaves a cold ring around my skin.
"Wait," I say, my voice cracking.
Enzo drops to one knee.
The air in the empty ballroom vanishes. My lungs cease functioning.
The cold, ruthless Fixer. The man who treats people like pawns on a chessboard. The strategist who just put a bullet in a man in a maintenance bay and collapsed the West Loop transit hub to keep me safe. He kneels on the dusty hardwood floor, looking up at me with quiet surrender.
He holds the ring up between his thumb and index finger.
"The contract is void," Enzo says. His voice echoes in the empty room. "The operation is blown. Jeff is in our custody. The file tying your name to the laundering is gone. You owe me nothing. You are completely free to walk out of these gates and never look back."
I stare down at him. My heart slams against my ribs like a caged animal.
"But you are not walking out," he continues, his tone shifting from a statement of fact to a dark, possessive vow.
"Because I am keeping you. I calculated every angle of my life.
I planned for every contingency. I never planned for a chaotic, cynical, fiercely beautiful lawyer to stride into Il Corvo and ruin every plan I thought was perfect. "
He takes my bare left hand. He presses a hot, firm kiss to my knuckles.
"I do not want a variable," Enzo says. "I want a constant. I want my woman. I want you terrorizing my brothers, stealing my shirts, and telling me I am wrong for the rest of my miserable, violent life."
He looks directly into my eyes. The calculation is still there—every variable, every angle—aimed exclusively at me now. The man and the fixer are the same thing in this room.
"Marry me, Natalia. For real. Let me build this house for you. Let me give you everything."
A single tear escapes my eye. It tracks hot and fast down my cheek. I wipe it away aggressively. I am Natalia Kim. I do not swoon.
"You are a menace, Enzo Costa," I manage to say. A watery, brilliant laugh bursts out of my chest. "You walk into a collapsing multimillion-dollar transit hub, you ruin six months of mafia strategy, and then you try to bribe me with a custom library?"
"Is it working?" he asks, deadpan.
"Yes," I say. I drop to my knees right in front of him. I fist both hands in the front of Enzo’s black button-down—his shirt, now mine—and use my grip on the fabric to drag myself flush against his bare chest, pulling him into a fierce, desperate kiss. "Yes. God, yes. Put the ring back on."
Enzo groans into my mouth. He slips the diamond back onto my left ring finger. He pushes it past my knuckle, seating it firmly where it belongs. It fits. It always did.
He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me tight against him. We kneel together on the floor of the empty ballroom. Sunlight floods through the windows, bathing us in bright, golden warmth.
I look at the ring. Then I look at the man who gave it to me.
I spent my career dealing in contracts, loopholes, and escape clauses. I always looked for the exit. But sitting here on the floor of a mafia fortress, wrapped in the arms of a man who would burn a city to the ground to keep me warm, I finally realize the truth.
There are no escape clauses here. There is no exit.
And for the first time in my chaotic, cynical life, I do not want one. The Fixer built a trap, and I walked right in, and I am never, ever leaving.
The End