The first time Emma Clark saw her own blood on the warehouse floor in East London, she thought, absurdly, of home.

Of the way summer rain used to hit the kitchen window back in Chicago, the way her mom would call from the living room, “Em, you left the fridge open again,” like the world was safe and small and nothing truly bad could ever happen on their quiet American street.

Now the rain hammered against broken panes high above her head, icy London water seeping through cracks in the roof and dripping onto her face as she pressed herself against the freezing brick wall. Her breath came in ragged bursts, raw from running and screaming. A trickle of blood slid down from the cut above her eyebrow, warm against the cold.

She wiped it away with the back of her hand and left a streak of red there. It didn’t even look like it belonged to her anymore.

“Please,” she whispered, her voice barely there in the empty darkness. “Please, someone… help me.”

No one answered.

For three months, twenty-three-year-old Emma Clark from Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., daughter of a nurse and a mechanic, college dropout and would-be traveler had been trapped in Marcus Vulov’s world. His people had grabbed her outside a bar near Shoreditch, a simple night out with co-workers that turned into a nightmare when she stepped into the wrong alley at the wrong time. One black van. One needle. One blurred, spinning sky.

She’d woken up in an underground casino dressed in a black dress she didn’t own, told to smile at men who smelled like money and fear. She’d been watched every second since then. No phone. No passport. No outside world.

Tonight was supposed to be her escape. Her one chance.

She’d planned it for weeks, counting steps between cameras, memorizing guard routines, waiting for the moment the security door jammed halfway and one of the guards had to kick it open.

She’d slipped through that half-open door while the guard argued with someone on the phone.

But they’d found her.

“Basement’s clear!” a man’s voice shouted somewhere behind her now, echoing through the labyrinth of hallways. “She’s up here. Move!”

Emma’s legs shook so hard she could barely stand. She pushed away from the wall and stumbled forward, bare feet slapping against stained concrete. She hadn’t had shoes when she ran. There hadn’t been time.

The corridor opened into a heavier metal door, paint flaking, a faint hum of music and voices filtering through the cracks.

Emma didn’t think. She shoved the door with both hands.

It flew inward and suddenly she was somewhere else somewhere so different it felt like stepping through a movie screen.

Warm, golden light flooded her eyes. Crystal chandeliers hung from a high ceiling, scattering light across marble floors so polished she could see her own dirty reflection. Men in expensive suits and women in sparkling dresses clustered in small groups, champagne glasses in hand, London’s glittering elite gathered in one of the city’s most exclusive private clubs.

There was laughter, the soft clink of glass, the low murmur of business and secrets.

No one here knew that just behind the thick walls and private doors, an illegal casino spun like a rotten heart. No one knew about the windowless rooms or the locked doors or the girls with empty eyes counting chips while their dreams bled out somewhere on the cold floor below.

Emma stood in the doorway like a ghost that had clawed its way into heaven.

Her white blouse was torn at the shoulder, smeared with dirt and blood. Her hair, once smooth and glossy, hung in wild tangles around her face. Her bare feet left faint smudges on the marble, the rain and grime of the warehouse floor following her into this immaculate world.

For a second, no one noticed her.

She could have been a mirage just another shadow in the corner of someone’s eye.

Then one of Marcus’s men shoved through the door behind her, breathless and sweating, eyes locked on her like a predator spotting its prey.

“There she is!” he shouted.

The sound sliced through the room like a gunshot.

The conversation died. Heads turned. Crystal glasses froze halfway to mouths.

Emma ran.

Her legs didn’t feel like they belonged to her anymore, but they moved anyway. She sprinted across the marble, the cold stone biting at her feet. The music cut off. The murmur of voices turned into shocked silence. She felt a hundred eyes on her men, women, strangers who might have been her salvation in a different world.

Not one of them stepped forward.

“Please,” she gasped as she stumbled, gravity yanking her down. “Please, someone ”

Her knees hit the floor harder than she expected. Pain shot up her legs. Her body gave up before her mind did. The adrenaline that had kept her running evaporated, leaving behind nothing but bone-deep exhaustion and terror.

She collapsed in the center of the hall, surrounded by marble and money and indifference.

Tears blurred her vision as she lifted her head. Faces stared down at her like judges at the end of the world. Perfume and cologne and expensive aftershave filled her nose, so different from the cigarette smoke and stale beer smell of the casino.

“Please,” she sobbed, voice cracking. “Please… someone…”

“Bring her to my room.”

The voice cut through the air like a blade.

Deep. Commanding. Absolute.

It wasn’t shouted. It didn’t need to be. It was the kind of voice that didn’t ask it rearranged reality.

The crowd parted instinctively as a man came down the grand staircase at the far end of the hall.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, the kind of man who filled space just by existing. Dark hair swept back from a face that looked like it had been carved from stone and then refined by expensive barbers for the last twenty years. He wore a black three-piece suit that fit his body like it had been sewn onto him, probably by some tailor in Mayfair who only worked by appointment.

His eyes were gray. Not the soft gray of morning clouds over Lake Michigan. A cold, steel gray that looked like they’d seen too much and forgotten how to be gentle.

Those eyes locked onto Emma and the air left her lungs.

But it wasn’t just his face or his suit or the way he moved that told her he wasn’t like the others.

It was the way everyone else moved for him.

People stepped back as he passed, like the tide pulling away from a rock. Even Marcus’s men, who had stormed into the hall ready to drag her back downstairs, froze in the doorway.

The taller of the two swallowed hard.

“Mr. Moetti,” he said, and whatever swagger he’d had in the warehouse hallway evaporated. “This doesn’t concern you. The girl belongs to Vulov. We’re just… collecting what’s his.”

Dante Moetti.

Emma had heard the name in whispered conversations late at night when the casino was closing and the girls huddled together near the chip tables, talking in low voices to drown out the sound of their own fear.

The king of London’s underworld. The man who owned half the riverfront and a third of the city’s secrets. The man even Marcus Vulov spoke about with wary respect.

Emma’s heart hammered against her ribs as the man who ruled this glittering world reached her and crouched down.

Up close, the danger around him felt almost physical.

He smelled like clean soap and expensive cologne, a subtle scent that didn’t try too hard. A faint scar twisted through one eyebrow, another across his knuckles where he braced one hand on his knee. His jaw was shadowed with stubble, a little too rough for the polished suit.

He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket, soft and utterly out of place in this brutal moment, and gently wiped the blood from her cheek.

“Does she look like she wants to go with you?” he asked, his voice suddenly quiet.

Somehow, that made it worse. The softness. The control. The absolute certainty that every word he spoke would be obeyed.

“Boss, Vulov won’t like ” the shorter man began.

Dante didn’t look at him. His gray eyes stayed on Emma’s face, patient and unnervingly steady.

“Do I look like I care what Vulov likes?” he asked.

The silence was louder than the music had been.

“Tell your boss,” Dante continued, his fingers surprisingly gentle as they brushed a stray strand of hair from Emma’s face, “that if he wants to discuss property rights, he can come to me directly. But I promise you, he will not like how that conversation ends.”

There was no raised voice. No shouting.

Just a simple statement of fact.

The men hesitated for half a second. Then they stepped back.

They knew better than to challenge Dante Moetti in his own territory. Even Marcus Vulov, with all his cruelty and connections, didn’t have that kind of reach. Not in this building. Not on this floor.

Dante’s hand left Emma’s face. He shrugged off his jacket in one smooth motion and draped it around her shoulders. The fabric was heavy and warm, the lining still holding his heat. It smelled like his cologne and something darker underneath danger, power, a life lived in shadows.

“Can you walk?” he asked, his voice softer now.

Emma tried to stand, pushing against the floor. Her legs trembled and refused to hold her weight. Her ribs screamed in protest.

“I can’t,” she gasped, panic rising again. “I can’t go back there. Please, please don’t let them take me back, I’ll do anything, I swear, I’ll ”

Something flickered in his eyes. A crack in the stone. Recognition, maybe. Or memory.

Without answering, he slid one arm under her knees and one behind her back and lifted her like she weighed nothing. She clutched at his shirt instinctively, fingers tangling in the fabric. Her face pressed against his chest, and beneath the layers of cotton and muscle and bone, she heard his heartbeat.

Steady. Unhurried.

No one moved as he carried her toward the staircase. The crowd parted again, silent. Somewhere behind them, one of Marcus’s men muttered something about telling Vulov.

“No one,” Dante said, his voice low but carrying, “will ever touch you again.”

Emma didn’t know whether to believe him.

She passed out anyway.

She woke up floating.

For a moment, she thought she’d died and someone had put her in a cloud.

Then the cloud poked her bruised ribs and she winced, reality tearing back into her body.

She was lying in a bed. Not just any bed a massive one, the kind she’d seen in magazine spreads or movies. The mattress was so soft she sank into it like water. The sheets were cool and impossibly smooth against her skin.

For a disorienting second, she forgot where she was.

Then the memories came back in a rush. The warehouse. The run. The club. The man on the stairs. The way he’d picked her up like she wasn’t broken.

Emma bolted upright.

Pain knifed through her ribs, sharp enough to make her gasp. She clutched her side and took a moment to breathe through it, the world around her coming into focus.

Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched across an entire wall, revealing London spread out below in a glittering sprawl. The Thames cut a dark line through the city, lights reflecting off the water. Dawn was breaking, soft pink and gold seeping into the gray sky.

She was high up. A penthouse. Somewhere expensive.

She looked down at herself. Her torn blouse and stained skirt were gone. In their place, she wore an oversized gray t-shirt that fell almost to her knees. The fabric was soft and smelled faintly of laundry detergent.

Someone had wrapped bandages around her ribs and cleaned the cut on her forehead. Her hair was brushed back into a loose braid.

For the first time in months, she wasn’t cold.

The door opened with a soft click.

Dante Moetti stepped into the room carrying a tray.

In daylight, he was somehow worse.

The shadows from the chandeliers were gone, but the danger wasn’t. If anything, the sharp edges of his face, the precision of his movements, the calm in his eyes were even more obvious against the pale morning light.

“You’re awake,” he said.

His voice was the same. Deep. Steady.

He set the tray on the bedside table. Toast. Eggs. Fruit cut into neat pieces. A pot of tea, steam curling into the air, and a glass of water.

“Tea,” he said. “Toast. Fruit. Eat slowly.” His gaze swept over her bandages with clinical efficiency. “Dr. Romano checked you while you were asleep. Bruised ribs, minor cuts, dehydration. You’ll heal.”

“Thank you,” Emma whispered. Her throat felt raw, like she’d swallowed glass. “For… for last night. For… saving me.”

He pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat, elbows resting lightly on his knees, hands loose.

“Tell me your name,” he said.

“Emma,” she replied automatically. “Emma Clark.”

He nodded slightly.

“Well, Emma Clark,” he said, leaning back, his expression shifting into something harder. “You’ve created quite a problem.”

Her stomach turned cold.

“Marcus Vulov doesn’t take kindly to losing his assets,” Dante continued. “He’ll come for you.”

Emma’s heart lurched.

“Then I’ll leave,” she said quickly. The words tumbled out before she could stop them. “I’ll disappear. You won’t have to ”

“You won’t survive a day on your own,” Dante cut in flatly. “Vulov has contacts everywhere. Nightclubs. Airports. Police. The moment you step outside without protection, he will find you. And he will make an example of you.”

Her mouth went dry. Tears burned behind her eyes again.

“So what am I supposed to do?” she whispered. “Just… wait here until he finds me?”

“No,” Dante said.

He stood and walked to the window, hands sliding into his pockets. London stretched out below him like it belonged to him.

“You’re going to stay here,” he said. “Under my protection.”

Emma blinked.

“Why?” she blurted. “Why would you help me? You don’t even know me.”

He was silent for so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer.

When he finally spoke, his voice was rougher. Less controlled.

“I had a sister once,” he said. “Isabella.”

He stared out at the city. Emma stared at his back.

“She was nineteen,” he continued. “She wanted to see the world. She flew to New York. Took a bus to Chicago. Thought she was going to have an American adventure.” He let out a harsh breath. “She met the wrong people in a bar one night. Disappeared. It took me six months to find her.”

Emma’s chest squeezed. She didn’t ask what he’d found.

She didn’t have to.

“By the time I did,” Dante said, his jaw clenching, “I was too late.”

“I’m… I’m so sorry,” Emma whispered.

“I don’t want your pity,” he snapped, turning to face her.

The anger wasn’t really at her. She could see that. It burned in his eyes, but it wasn’t for this room, this moment. It was older. Deeper.

“I’m telling you this so you understand,” he said. “Vulov’s operation ends now. Not in six months. Not when some terrified girl’s name shows up on a list in a police station. Now.”

His gaze pinned her to the pillows.

“And to do that,” he said, “I need information.”

Her pulse jumped.

“You worked in his casino,” Dante continued. “You saw things. Heard things. You know where he keeps his ledgers. How his men move. Which police officers turn away at the right moments. You can give me what I need to burn him down.”

“And if I do?” Emma asked, her voice small but steady. “What happens to me after?”

“You’ll be free,” Dante said simply. “New identity. New life. Wherever you want to go. Back to the States. Some small town in Italy. A beach in California. It doesn’t matter. You’ll disappear properly this time. With my help.”

It was a bargain with the devil. She knew that.

But what choice did she have?

Stay alone and die. Or work with the most dangerous man in London and maybe live.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll help you.”

He nodded once. Businesslike again.

“Good,” he said. “Rest today. Eat. Tomorrow, we start planning.” He reached for the doorknob, then paused and looked back at her.

“And Emma,” he added. “While you’re here, you are under my protection. That means you are safe. But it also means you follow my rules.”

She swallowed.

“What rules?” she asked.

“You don’t leave this penthouse without my permission,” he said. “You don’t contact anyone from your old life. Not in Chicago, not here. No friends. No social media. No texts. No ‘I’m okay’ calls. Vulov will be listening for any trace of you.”

Emma’s throat tightened at the word Chicago. Her mom’s face flashed in her mind. Her little brother’s goofy grin. The half-finished message in her mom’s Facebook inbox: When are you coming home, honey?

“Understood?” Dante asked.

She lowered her eyes.

“Understood,” she said.

When the door closed behind him, she sank back into the pillows, exhausted. She had escaped one prison only to find herself in another.

But this one felt different.

This one felt like it might actually have a key.

The next two weeks passed in a strange blur.

Days were spent at Dante’s desk or at the long dining table, maps and blueprints spread out between them. Emma traced routes with her finger, remembering which hallway led to the counting rooms, where the security cameras had blind spots, which door always stuck and needed to be kicked.

She gave names. She hesitated at first, guilt flickering through her in brief flashes. Some of the men had been cruel. Others had looked away while cruelty happened.

But all of them had watched.

And none of them had helped.

At night, she lay awake in the guest room, listening to the hum of the city far below. Sometimes she would catch the faint sound of Dante’s voice through the walls, low and sharp as he barked orders into his phone in rapid Italian or clipped English.

She learned the rhythms of the penthouse.

An older woman named Lucia came in during the day to cook, fussing over Emma like a second mother. She spoke with a thick Italian accent and called Emma “cara,” pressing extra cookies into her hand when she thought Dante wasn’t looking.

“You are too thin,” Lucia would scold in her warm way. “London is cold. You need to eat.”

A man named Marco, broad-shouldered and quiet, lingered in the hallway most of the time. He pretended to be checking security feeds on his tablet, but Emma knew he was there for her. Dante’s silent warning system.

She also learned the rhythms of Dante.

He left early, often before sunrise, and came back late. Some nights, he didn’t return at all. On the days he stayed in, he moved like a storm in a suit, calls and meetings and men coming and going, always with that same controlled intensity humming under his skin.

He was cold in business. Efficient. No wasted words.

But he always asked if she had eaten.

Always made sure Lucia brought her tea when her hands shook from going over yet another floor plan. Always checked her bandages himself the first week, fingers surprisingly gentle as he inspected the healing bruises along her ribs.

He never touched her without warning.

He never raised his voice at her.

But she could feel the weight of his presence whenever he walked into a room. The air changed. Her lungs forgot how to work properly for a second.

“Emma,” he said one evening as they bent over the casino blueprints together, his sleeve brushing her forearm. “You’re staring at the wrong entrance.”

She jerked, pulled back from her thoughts.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“You’re staring,” he repeated calmly. “But not at the blueprint.”

Her cheeks heated.

“You stare, too,” she shot back before she could stop herself.

He didn’t even pretend to be embarrassed.

“You remind me of her sometimes,” he said instead.

“Isabella?” she asked quietly.

He nodded.

“The way you bite your lip when you’re thinking,” he said. “The way you keep going even when you’re terrified. She was like that. Stronger than she ever believed.”

“I’m not her,” Emma whispered.

“I know,” Dante said. His eyes lifted from the table and met hers. For a moment, all the steel and stone dropped away, and she saw something raw there. “That’s the problem.”

Before she could untangle that, his phone rang, vibrating sharply against the wood. He snatched it up, his expression closing off again.

“Moetti,” he said.

Emma watched his face as the person on the other end spoke. It tightened. Hardened.

“When?” he snapped. A beat. “Are you sure?”

Marco appeared at the office door like he’d been summoned by the change in the air.

“Increase security around the penthouse,” Dante said into the phone. “Double the men on the garage and the elevators. No one in or out without my authorization.”

He ended the call and looked at Emma.

“What is it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Vulov knows you’re here,” he said. “He’s threatening war if I don’t return you.”

The word war made her stomach twist. She’d seen enough in that casino to know that the things these men called “war” didn’t involve flags and speeches. They involved body bags.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Dante stood, already reaching for his jacket.

“Finish this,” he said. “Tonight. We have everything we need now names, locations, routes. My men will hit Vulov’s casino, warehouses, safe houses. By morning, Marcus Vulov will be either in custody, in the ground, or running so far he’ll wish he never heard your name.”

“Let me come with you,” Emma blurted.

His head snapped toward her so fast she flinched.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “You stay here. With Lucia and Marco. You lock the doors and you do not open them for anyone except me. Do you understand?”

“I need to see it end,” she said. Her voice shook, but she forced the words out anyway. “I need to face him. I need to know it’s done.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Dante said sharply. “You’re not ”

“I’ve been in danger every day for three months,” she said, standing. Her ribs protested, but she ignored them. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I’m not some helpless victim in the corner anymore. I’m the one who helped you find his weak spots. I’m the one who knows what he did. I’m a survivor. Let me help end this.”

He stared at her, chest rising and falling slowly.

Then, to her shock, he smiled.

Not the cold, thin curve she’d seen when he’d threatened Vulov’s men in the club. A real smile. It transformed his face, taking years off him, softening sharp lines into something almost boyish.

“You are remarkable, Emma Clark,” he said quietly.

He walked to the safe built into the wall, pressed his thumb against a scanner, entered a code. The heavy door opened. He pulled out a black bulletproof vest and tossed it to her.

“You stay by my side,” he said. “Every second. You do not wander off, you do not play hero, and if I tell you to run, you run. Deal?”

She looked down at the vest in her hands, then back up at him.

“Deal,” she said.

The casino didn’t look like a palace of nightmares from the outside.

Just another building in East London. Brick. Steel. A neon sign that flickered above the door advertising some fake business. To any passerby on the uneven sidewalk, it was just another shadow.

Inside, it was chaos.

Dante’s men moved with a precision that made Emma’s breath catch. They weren’t random thugs they were organized, each one knowing his role, speaking in low, calm tones over earpieces as they swept through rooms.

“South entrance secure.”

“Main floor cleared.”

“Girls located. Bringing them out.”

Gunfire cracked in the distance, sharp and terrifying, but not near them. Dante kept Emma tucked against the wall beside him as they moved. His hand stayed on the small of her back, guiding her, always between her and the danger.

Every shout. Every running footstep. Every terrified cry from somewhere in the labyrinth jerked at her nerves.

They freed the girls first.

Emma watched as a door she’d never been allowed to open swung wide.

Faces peered out. Young. Old. Terrified. Hope and disbelief warred in their eyes as Dante’s men ushered them out in groups, wrapping blankets around shaking shoulders, pressing water bottles into trembling hands.

Some of the girls clung to Emma when they realized who she was.

“You got out,” one whispered, her accent Eastern European, eyes wide. “You really got out. We thought you were dead.”

Emma squeezed her hand.

“Not dead,” she said. “And neither are you. Go. Now.”

They found Vulov in his office.

It was larger than Emma had expected. Leather chairs. Dark wood. A wall of CCTV monitors showing various angles of the casino. A desk covered in open drawers, papers strewn everywhere.

Marcus Vulov, the man who’d kept her trapped for three months, looked less like a monster now and more like a rat caught in a flood.

His hair, usually slicked back perfectly, hung damp and messy across his forehead. Sweat stained the collar of his expensive shirt. He was frantically shoving papers into a small metal trash bin, lighter in hand.

When he saw Emma behind Dante, his face twisted.

“You,” he snarled. “You ungrateful little rat. You think he can protect you forever? You think you’re special? You are nothing. I own you. Do you hear me? I own ”

“No,” Dante said calmly, stepping forward. “You don’t.”

He didn’t raise his gun. He didn’t have to. Three of his men were already behind him, weapons drawn and trained on Vulov.

“She’s everything you’ll never be,” Dante said, voice like ice. “She’s brave. She survived. And she’s the reason your little operation is going up in smoke tonight.”

The lighter fell from Vulov’s hand.

Emma watched as Dante’s men moved in, cuffing Marcus’s hands behind his back, yanking him away from the pile of half-burned papers. The urge to slap him, to scream at him, to spit in his face surged up inside her.

But when their eyes met, all she felt was… tired.

So tired.

“It’s over,” Dante said after Vulov had been hauled out, the chaos behind them receding into echoes. He turned to her, his hand coming up to cup the back of her head, guiding her face against his chest again. “It’s finally over, Emma.”

She let herself lean into him, her fingers curling into his shirt. Tears came hot and fast, spilling down her cheeks. Tears for the last three months. For the nights she’d spent awake staring at the ceiling. For the girls whose names she didn’t know but whose faces she’d never forget.

Not tears of fear this time.

Tears of something else. Relief. Release.

“Come on,” Dante murmured into her hair. “Let’s go home.”

Home.

The word caught in her chest.

When had his penthouse become that?

Days later, she stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, London spread out below her like a map she might one day choose to leave.

She could. In a few days, she’d have her new identity. New passport. New bank accounts set up with more money than she’d ever seen in her life, money Dante had wired into an American bank in her new name.

She could go back to Chicago if she wanted. Knock on her mom’s door. Listen to her scream and cry and hug her until they both couldn’t breathe. Sit on the back porch with a cheap beer and watch the freight trains roll past at sunset.

Or she could go somewhere else entirely. California. Florida. Some small town where no one knew her name and the only thing that mattered was showing up for work on time and paying rent.

Anywhere.

“Can’t sleep?” Dante’s voice came from behind her.

She turned.

He stood in the doorway of his office wearing only dress pants and an unbuttoned shirt. The stark lines of his chest and stomach were visible under the open fabric. He looked tired, dark circles smudged under his eyes, his hair slightly mussed.

“Too much adrenaline, I think,” she said. “Feels like my body hasn’t caught up yet.”

He walked over and stood beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him.

“I spoke to my contact at Scotland Yard,” he said. “Vulov will be in prison for the rest of his life. No deals. No easy way out. And the girls… the ones we pulled out… they’re being taken care of. Safe houses. Counselors. Doctors.”

Emma exhaled, some knot inside her loosening a fraction.

“You’re free, Emma,” he said, looking out at the city. “Truly free now.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. The words felt too small for what he’d done. “For everything.”

“Your new documents will be ready in three days,” he continued, voice carefully neutral. “I’ve set up accounts for you. Enough to start over wherever you choose. You won’t have to look over your shoulder again.”

“Wherever I choose,” she said softly.

She looked up at him.

This complicated, dangerous, impossible man who was both the worst and best thing that had ever happened to her. The man who’d walked into her nightmare and turned it into something else.

“What if I don’t want to leave?” she heard herself ask.

His breath hitched almost imperceptibly.

“Emma,” he began. “I know what you think you’re feeling right now, but ”

“I know exactly what I’m feeling,” she said quietly. “And I know what you’re going to say. That you’re dangerous. That I deserve a normal life. That I should run as far from this world as humanly possible.”

“Yes,” he said bluntly. “You should.”

She stepped closer, tipping her chin up to keep his gaze.

“I’ve spent the last two weeks watching you,” she said. “The real you. Not the stories in the papers. Not the rumors in the casino. You are ruthless with your enemies, yes. But you’re fair with your men. You treat Lucia like she’s your mother. You made sure every single girl got out of that place before you went after Vulov.”

She swallowed, her heart pounding.

“You donate millions to charities that help trafficking victims,” she added. “I saw the files on your desk. The receipts. The reports. You do it quietly. You don’t put your name on any of it. You didn’t have to save me. You didn’t have to risk war with Vulov over some girl from Chicago you’d never met.”

His jaw clenched.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. “I have done terrible things, Emma. I have blood on my hands that I will never wash off.”

“And I have scars,” she said. “Inside and out. We’re both broken, Dante. But maybe…”

Her voice softened.

“Maybe we can be broken together.”

He looked at her like she was speaking a language he’d forgotten.

“If you stay,” he said hoarsely, “there is no going back. You will be in my world. All the time. There will always be enemies. Always be threats. I can protect you, but I cannot give you ‘normal.’ I cannot give you barbecues in the suburbs and PTA meetings and Christmas in a Chicago snowstorm.”

“I don’t want normal,” she said. She reached up, hesitated for half a second, then cupped his face between her hands. The stubble on his jaw scratched her palms. “I want real. I want you. Just you. The man who saved me. The man who terrifies half of London but still flinches when Lucia cries at sad movies in the kitchen.”

Silence stretched between them.

Then, slowly, something in his eyes fractured. All the control. All the distance. All the layers he’d built.

“I am falling in love with you, Emma Clark,” he said, voice raw. “And I hate myself for it. I tried not to. I tried to keep you at arm’s length. But you are brave and stubborn and smarter than half the men I work with, and you make me want to be… better.”

“Then be better with me,” she whispered. “That’s all I’m asking. Not perfect. Just… honest.”

“Stay,” he said. It was both a plea and a command. “Stay with me. Not because you need my protection. Because you choose to. Because you want this. Want me.”

She didn’t hesitate.

“I choose you,” she said. “I choose this. I choose us.”

Whatever restraint he’d been clinging to snapped.

He pulled her against him and kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t polite. It was desperate and fierce and full of everything he hadn’t said in the last two weeks.

Emma kissed him back with equal intensity, fingers curling in his hair, all her fear and gratitude and strange, wild love pouring into that one moment.

When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, he rested his forehead against hers.

“Then you are mine,” he whispered.

A year later, the garden behind Dante’s London estate didn’t look anything like the warehouse where she’d first bled on the floor.

It was all white roses and twinkling lights strung between trees, the air soft and warm. The murmur of conversation drifted through the dusk, filled with laughter and glasses clinking. It smelled like flowers and grilled food and the faintest hint of cigar smoke.

Emma stood in front of a mirror in an upstairs room, adjusting the neckline of her simple lace wedding dress. Lucia fussed with her veil, muttering in Italian about hairpins and photographers.

“You look beautiful,” Lucia said finally, eyes shining. “Like an angel. A very stubborn angel.”

“Thank you, Mama Lucia,” Emma said.

She meant it. Somewhere in the last twelve months, she had gone from “Miss” to “cara” to “family.”

The year had been full.

Dante had kept his promise about changing his world. Slowly, carefully, he’d shifted more and more of his business into legitimate enterprises. Construction. Real estate. Investments. The darker deals, the businesses like Vulov’s, he dismantled or handed off to people he trusted outside London always with strict conditions and stricter consequences.

Emma discovered she had a knack for strategy. For reading people. For turning negotiations her way with a tilt of her head and a well-timed silence. She sat in on meetings, asked questions, pushed back when something felt wrong.

She also started a foundation.

With Dante’s money and her experience, the Moetti-Clark Foundation opened its first safe house three months after Vulov’s arrest. Then another. They partnered with organizations in the U.K. and the U.S. Chicago, New York, Los Angeles places where girls like her had disappeared. Where they could now have somewhere to land when they fell out of nightmares.

She spoke on panels. Gave interviews. Told her story in careful pieces on American morning shows and British documentaries, never naming Dante, always focusing on the girls.

Somewhere in there, he’d taken her to Chicago.

They’d walked down her old street. She’d hugged her mother on the front porch while Dante watched from a few steps back, something like regret and relief mingling in his eyes. He’d shaken her brother’s hand, sat awkwardly on a couch with a plastic cover while her mother insisted he eat a second slice of deep-dish pizza.

Now he was downstairs in a tuxedo, probably pretending not to be nervous while Marco made sure every guest had been scanned and every bottle of champagne inspected.

“You are ready,” Lucia said, patting Emma’s cheeks lightly. “And look, you do not even cry. Good. Mascara stays.”

Emma laughed.

The music started outside a soft swell of strings over speakers.

She walked down the garden path lined with white petals.

Dante waited at the end of it, framed by roses and fairy lights. His tuxedo fit him like every suit he owned perfectly. When he saw her, that real smile appeared. The one that never showed up in newspaper photos. The one that made him look like the boy he’d once been before the world turned him into something else.

“Hi,” she whispered when she reached him.

“Hi,” he whispered back, taking her hands. His palms were warm and slightly rough. “You sure about this? Last chance to run.”

“I’m not running anymore,” she said. “I’m exactly where I belong.”

The ceremony was short by design. Neither of them liked long speeches. Their officiant an old family friend from Dante’s childhood kept it simple. He talked about second chances and chosen family, about love growing in unlikely soil.

When he finally said, “You may kiss the bride,” Dante cupped her face like she was something precious and kissed her with such tenderness that tears sprang to her eyes.

“I love you, Mrs. Moetti,” he murmured against her lips.

“I love you too,” she said. “My dangerous savior. My impossible love. My home.”

As they walked back down the aisle together, guests tossing white petals into the air, Emma looked up at the string lights and thought about the girl who’d collapsed on a marble floor, begging strangers to help.

She hadn’t known, in that moment, that the most dangerous man in London would be the one to pick her up. The one to risk everything to keep her safe. The one to stand beside her while she rebuilt not just her life, but the lives of others like her from London to the U.S. and back again.

She hadn’t known that the devil in the three-piece suit could become her guardian angel.

Sometimes the most terrifying path out of the dark was the only one that led anywhere at all.

What would you do if the most dangerous man in London was your only way out?

Emma Clark, the girl from Chicago who ran through a London warehouse with blood on her face and rain in her hair, found her answer in the one place she never expected.

In his arms.

In his home.

In the life they built between the shadows and the light where fear finally loosened its grip, and love, stubborn and unexpected, refused to let go.