CHAPTER NINETEEN #3
The adrenaline of the confrontation had faded, leaving behind a hollow, aching void. The men who had orchestrated the destruction of her family were dealt with, but the closure brought an agonizing realization. The scales were balanced, but her father and brothers were still dead.
Zina stared out at the silver light catching the cypress trees, a silent tear tracking down her cheek.
Sandro tightened his arms around her, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head. "Where is your mind, Sherezine?"
Zina took a slow, trembling breath. "They are still there, Sandro."
He frowned slightly, resting his chin against her hair. "Who?"
"My father. Farzin. Rostam," Zina whispered, her voice fracturing in the quiet room.
"When we fled the estate in the Middle East...
we had to leave them on the floor. I never got to bury them.
I never got to say goodbye. The men who killed them are gone, but my family is still resting in an unmarked grave somewhere in the ruins. "
She turned her face into his chest, her fingers gripping his shirt. She looked up at him, her dark eyes pleading, filled with a desperate, heartbreaking vulnerability.
"Sandro... can we go back?" Zina asked, a sob catching in her throat. "Can we go back to Romania? My mother’s homeland. I want to bring them there. I want to give them the funeral they deserved. I want to lay them to rest."
Sandro looked down at the woman who owned his soul.
He saw the agonizing weight of the unburied ghosts haunting her eyes.
He didn't hesitate. He didn't consider the logistical nightmare of recovering bodies from a hostile, ruined territory, or the diplomatic strings he would have to pull.
He only knew that he would move heaven and earth to give her peace.
He cupped her face, wiping the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. "Yes," Sandro promised fiercely, pressing his forehead against hers. "I will take care of everything, Zina. I will find them, and I will bring them home. You have my word."
It took months of intense, exhaustive diplomacy, bribes, and the full weight of the Moretti intelligence network to accomplish, but Sandro kept his promise.
He mobilized elite extraction teams, located the remains of Emir, Farzin, and Rostam Kazan and the rest of the family who perished in that massacre, from the ruins of their former empire, and secured their transport across international borders.
***
Finally, more than a year after the massacre that had shattered their world, the survivors returned to lay their dead to rest.
They did not return to the Middle East. They traveled to the lush, rolling green hills of Romania, to an ancestral Kazan estate nestled in a mist-shrouded valley—a place of haunting beauty that belonged to Roxana’s bloodline.
The morning of the funeral was cool and somber, a thick white mist rolling slowly over the damp earth.
The magnificent, polished mahogany caskets rested on brass biers beneath the sprawling branches of ancient oak trees. The ceremony was intimate, elegant, and breathtakingly quiet. There were no politicians, no rival Dons, only the people who truly mattered.
Roxana Kazan stood tall and resolute at the head of the gravesites, dressed in immaculate mourning black.
She did not weep openly, but the sorrow etched into her beautiful features spoke of a love that would outlast time.
Beside her, Meryam leaned heavily on a silver cane, weeping quietly into a lace handkerchief, murmuring soft Persian prayers into the misty air.
Reza stood bravely, wearing a tailored black suit, holding tightly to Zina’s left hand. He stared at the caskets, finally understanding the permanence of his loss, but drawing strength from the unbreakable grip of his sister.
On Zina’s right side stood Alessandro Moretti.
The Don of Milan stood like a pillar of granite, a silent, immovable fortress of strength.
He held Zina’s hand in his, his large fingers interlaced with hers, his grip warm and unyielding.
Throughout the entire somber, beautiful ceremony, as the priest delivered the final rites and the caskets were slowly lowered into the earth, Sandro did not let go of her hand for a single second.
Zina watched the dark earth cover the mahogany wood, the finality of it washing over her in a wave of agonizing closure. The nightmare was truly, finally over. The ghosts of her father and her brothers were at peace.
As the ceremony concluded and the family began to slowly walk back toward the estate, Zina stopped. She looked down at the fresh graves, a soft, sad smile touching her lips, and whispered a final goodbye into the quiet Romanian breeze.
Sandro stopped beside her, wrapping his arm securely around her waist, pulling her close against his side.
He kissed the top of her head, anchoring her to the present, to the future they were building together.
Zina leaned her weight into him, breathing in the scent of cedar and rain, and allowed the man she loved to lead her away from the graves, out of the shadows, and finally back into the light.