Epilogue #2
Adam tugs on Damian's jacket, and when Damian kneels down, Adam throws his arms around his neck. "Are you my real daddy now?" he asks loudly enough for everyone to hear.
"I've been your real daddy for weeks," Damian tells him, his voice rough with emotion. "Now it's just official."
"Good," Adam says matter-of-factly. "Can we have cake now?"
The laughter from the guests is warm and genuine, and I feel my heart swell with happiness. This is it—everything I could have wanted, all the joy I could possibly have wished for. We’re here, together, despite everything, and I couldn’t possibly ask for more.
The reception is held in the grand ballroom of the mansion, decorated with more fairy lights and roses, and catered with a menu that Mrs. Horvat oversaw personally.
It’s intimate and warm and everything I could have asked for out of a wedding.
And through it all, Damian is next to me, his hands never leaving me for long.
He’s always touching me—holding my hand, brushing my waist, touching my hair.
He’s relaxed in a way that I’ve never seen before, and it makes my heart ache to see it, in the best possible way.
When the dancing begins, he spins me around the floor like we've been doing this for years, holding me close and whispering things in my ear that make me blush and laugh, promises for our wedding night that I can’t wait to capitalize on.
But it's the moments with Adam that really get to me.
Damian dances with him too, lifting him up so Adam can stand on his feet, spinning him until he's dizzy with giggles.
Later, when Adam gets cranky and overwhelmed, Damian scoops him up without hesitation, settling him against his chest where Adam promptly falls asleep, thumb in his mouth.
"He's getting heavy," I murmur, moving to take Adam from him.
"I've got him," Damian says softly, adjusting his hold so Adam is more comfortable.
"He's fine." He holds him until Mrs. Horvat appears to sweep Adam away for the evening, leaving Damian and me to enjoy the remainder of our reception.
Konstantin finds me at one point when Damian briefly leaves to get us a fresh round of drinks, watching him with a brotherly amusement.
“Take care of him,” Konstantin says, glancing over at me, and I smile back.
"Always," I promise.
"And let him take care of you, too. He needs to feel useful."
I laugh. "Trust me, he's very useful. In more ways than one."
Konstantin groans. “I don’t need to know. In fact, get that man upstairs. He hasn’t taken his hands off of you all night.”
It’s clear, when Damian returns, that he has the same idea. We have another round of drinks, dancing until his hands start to roam over my hips, and I grin up at him.
“Upstairs?”
“We don’t even have to go that far. Perks of living in a mansion,” he says with a grin.
“Are we going to stay here permanently?” We haven’t really talked about it, and I’m happy no matter what. But a small part of me would like to have our own home, something that we pick out, just the two of us.
“We can talk about it,” Damian assures me. “I’m happy with whatever you want, Sienna. Truly.”
He sweeps me up into his arms then, carrying me out of the ballroom to the claps and cheers of the guests, all the way upstairs to the room that was mine, and is now ours. He puts me down and turns me gently, his hands finding their way to the buttons of my dress, eager to undo them.
“Thank you,” I murmur softly, as his fingers glide down my spine, a shudder of pleasure rippling through my body .
"For what?" he asks curiously, deftly undoing another button.
"For today. For all of it. For giving me a dream wedding."
Damian leans in, kissing me softly on the side of my neck. "Thank you for saying yes. Again."
"I'll say yes as many times as you ask." I turn halfway, meeting his lips. “Always.”
"Even when I'm old and gray and can barely walk?" He chuckles, returning to my buttons, and I laugh.
"Especially then. Though I have a feeling you'll still be dangerous at ninety."
He undoes the last of the buttons, reaching up to slide the shoulders of my dress down, his touch hungry and purposeful. "Probably. Will you still love me when I'm a decrepit old mobster?"
I turn in his arms as my dress slides down my body, reaching for his tie as I see hunger light his expression. "I'll love you through everything, Damian. That's what forever means."
"Forever," he repeats, like he's testing the word. "I like the sound of that." He pulls me into his arms, kissing me firmly, his tongue sweeping over my lower lip. “I should have meant it the first time.”
“You mean it now, and that’s what matters.” I tug his tie loose, quickly going to work on his buttons. “I love you, Damian.”
“And I love you, Sienna. My wife. My little wildcat.”
He kisses me again, soft and sweet and full of promise.
Outside, Miami gleams in the darkness, this city that I came to love, that I thought sometimes would swallow me whole, that gave me this man.
This husband that I never saw coming, who I can’t imagine living without.
As he scoops me up again and carries me to our bed, I know with absolute certainty that this is just the beginning.
It's not the life I ever imagined for myself, but it's perfect. We’re perfect, and there’s no part of this life that I would change, or any part of him.
He’s my strength, and I’m his softness. And together?
Together, we’re magic.
Forever.
I hope you enjoyed Lethal Devotion!
Ready to meet the characters of your next dark romance obsession?
Bloody Vows follows Simone Russo, the heiress to her family’s empire, left vulnerable after her father’s death. With no allies and no arranged marriage to protect her, Simone braces for the worst, until the Irish mob sends Tristan O’Malley.
Her new husband. Her potential killer. Her only chance at survival.
But when enemies are forced to share a bed, the line between hate and heat starts to blur…
Filled with the tropes you love:
? Virgin Heroine
? Marry Me or Die
? Touch Her and Die
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Now, for the sneak peek of Lethal Devotion …
Chapter One
Simone
My father is dead, and someone will come for what is mine.
My father is dead.
Those four words beat around the inside of my skull until it aches as I stand in the middle of the grand entryway to my childhood home, a dull grief settling somewhere in the core of my being.
Not for my father, exactly. I don’t have any warm memories of him. There are no recollections of hugs or dolls or fatherly nicknames for me to recall as I stand here, looking around a house that’s far too big for one person.
I was never his princess or his tesoro . Never anything other than a means to an end, an only child that should have been a son, if he was only going to get one. A child that could inherit all of this, carry on his name, his empire, his legacy.
But I?—
I’m just something that can be bartered away. And since that deal was never closed, since no one put a ring on my finger before my father died, my position is both uncertain and dangerous.
There were potential suitors, of course. One, even, who nearly got as far as signing the paperwork for the betrothal. But before ink could be put to paper, my father blew it all up in the name of greed.
Acid burns in my gut at the thought of what he did.
I walk through the entryway, past the spiral staircase, my heels clicking on the marble as I stop in front of the door to his office.
I reach into my pocket, fishing for the ring of house keys that will open this door—previously closed to me. My keys, for now.
Not for long.
Someone will come to claim what I can’t. Inner strength doesn’t matter; whatever toughness I’ve cultivated over a lifetime of being not good enough won’t save me. I’m swimming in bloody waters, and the sharks will come.
Someone will swallow me whole and devour what my father built. And I have no way of stopping it. My father’s men are dead or scattered. I didn’t care for the man who could have been my husband; I know he won’t offer me any agency in all of this. And I can’t hold it on my own.
Money. Power. An empire.
I’m the key to all of it—to taking it legitimately, without blood or war. Any man who marries me claims the Russo empire .
My father’s office smells uniquely like him—wood, smoke, leather, the faint whiff of his cologne still lingering in the air. I pause in the doorway, still feeling some childish inclination that I’ll be in trouble if I’m caught snooping in here, but I shake it off.
My father has been dead for three days. In a coffin, in the ground, beneath piles of earth. He can’t control me any longer—but I also don’t have his protection.
I’m alone.
I step into the office, the click of my heel against the polished wood feeling like something momentous, a brief speck of time where my world is my own and no one has any claim on my agency but me.
I walk past the bookshelves slowly, sliding my fingers across the spines, tracing the back of my hand over one of the leather chairs in front of his desk, and finally circle around it to what was left there just before he died.
Paperwork, neatly stacked. A nonfiction book on the American economy at the turn of the 20th century that he must have been reading. A half-smoked cigar resting in a crystal dish. I stand there for a long moment, trying to picture what he must have been doing before he left.