The first thing he saw was the blood in the bathtub.

Bright against white porcelain, it looked obscene under the harsh light of the Manhattan bathroom. For one split second, Dominic Ashford thought it was his sister’s. His heart stopped, then kicked back to life with a violent jolt when he realized the small, broken body on the tile wasn’t Sophia.

It was Emma.

“Who did this to you?”

The words ripped out of him, low and rough, more growl than question, as he dropped to his knees on the cold floor of Sophia’s Upper East Side apartment. Emma Clark lay crumpled beside the tub like a discarded doll, her honey-blonde hair slick with drying blood, strands glued to her cheek. Deep purple bruises bloomed across her delicate face like poisonous flowers. One eye was swelling shut. Her lower lip was split. Her breathing came in shallow, shaky pulls, each one a stab to his chest.

But it was her eyes that undid him.

Those green eyes had haunted him for five years eyes he’d forced himself to avoid, to ignore, to treat as nothing more than his kid sister’s best friend’s. Now they stared up at him through a haze of pain and fear.

“Dom,” she whispered, the word almost lost in the sound of running water and his own pounding pulse. “I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.”

Dominic Ashford did not scare easily. As the head of one of the most powerful organized crime families on the East Coast a name that made people in New York City, New Jersey, and half of the Eastern seaboard lower their voices he’d faced down rival crews, federal investigations, and men who would happily put a bullet between his eyes.

But this?

Emma, bleeding on the bathroom floor of his sister’s condo off Park Avenue?

This was fear.

Real fear. Cold and clean and absolute.

“Sophia!” His shout shook the walls. He was already tearing off his jacket, wrapping it around Emma’s shaking shoulders, trying to cover how small she felt beneath his hands. “Call Dr. Morrison. Now.”

“I’m already on with him.” Sophia appeared in the doorway, phone pressed to her ear, her face going white when she saw the scene. “Oh my God, Emma…”

Her voice cracked. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Who did this?” Dominic asked again, quieter this time, which was far more dangerous. He slid one arm under Emma’s knees, the other behind her back, lifting her as if she weighed nothing at all. Too light. When had she gotten this thin?

Her fingers curled weakly into his shirt, smearing it with blood.

“Please don’t,” she breathed.

“Don’t what?” His jaw clenched. He carried her into the bedroom, laying her gently on the mattress as Sophia scrambled to pull back the covers.

“Don’t… don’t ask…” Her lashes fluttered. Tears spilled sideways into her hairline. “Please.”

“I’m going to ask,” he said, voice low as thunder over the Hudson. He leaned close, his face the only thing in her line of vision. “Tell me his name, Emma.”

She tried to look away. He caught her chin gently but firmly, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“His name.”

A broken breath shuddered out of her.

“Marcus,” she whispered. “Marcus Caldwell.”

The name hit his mind like a fist.

Marcus Caldwell. Investment banker. Old-money Manhattan. Clean suits, cleaner public reputation. The kind of man who sat on charity boards, smiled on the society pages, and moved obscene sums of money between Wall Street structures no one really understood.

The man Emma had been dating for a year.

The man Dominic had watched her fall for from the shadows of chic bars and quiet family dinners, while he played the role of the protective older brother, all amused tolerance and polite distance. The man he’d let her walk toward because he’d convinced himself she deserved someone “respectable,” not the man who ruled a criminal empire from a glass tower over the East River.

The man Dominic had ignored in order to keep his own heart in check.

Never again.

Three hours earlier, Emma had thought she knew what fear felt like.

She’d been wrong.

“You think you can just leave me?”

Marcus’s hand cracked across her face before the words even finished, the sound loud in the glossy silence of his high-end Kensington-style apartment overlooking Central Park West. For a moment she tasted copper and shock. The room tilted.

She stumbled backward into the wall.

“Marcus ” Blood filled her mouth where her teeth had cut into the inside of her cheek. “Please. You’re hurting me.”

He laughed. The sound was smooth, almost cultured, and it made her skin crawl.

“I’m hurting you?” He stepped forward, trapping her between his body and the wall. His cologne expensive, sharp, suffocating burned her nose. “After everything I’ve done for you? After I took you out of that nothing life and introduced you to people who actually matter in this city?”

Tears burned behind her eyes. “This isn’t about money, it’s about how you ”

His hand lashed out again. Pain exploded along her jaw. The room blurred at the edges.

“You are nothing without me,” Marcus hissed. “Don’t you dare pretend otherwise. You’re pathetic, Emma. Pathetic, just like your dead parents, trying to play in a world you don’t belong to.”

Something in her chest splintered.

She’d lost her parents in a car crash five years ago on a rainy night in New Jersey. One phone call from the state troopers had shattered her world, leaving her alone in a city that didn’t notice when people disappeared.

She’d clawed her way back, cobbling together shifts and night classes, leaning on Sophia, on the small lifeline Dominic had quietly extended through legitimate jobs at his clubs. She’d survived.

She would survive this.

She had told herself that tonight, she would finally break free. She’d arranged to meet Marcus at a restaurant in Midtown, planning to end things in public, where he’d be forced to keep the anger contained behind that charming smile.

He’d insisted they “talk properly” back at his place.

She’d known. Somewhere deep down, she’d known.

She’d gone anyway.

That was the part that made her stomach lurch now. Not just his rage, but her own blindness. The controlling comments that had seemed like concern. The subtle digs at her background. The way he’d encouraged her to see Sophia less, to stop working at Dominic’s club, to depend on him financially.

Guilt gnawed at her even as terror tried to take over.

“I invested a year in you,” Marcus snarled, his fingers fisting in her hair, dragging her head back. “You don’t get to walk away until I say so.”

Something snapped.

It wasn’t loud. It was quiet and cold, like ice forming over a lake.

Her body shook, but there was a hard line inside her now that would not bend. She had lost too much already. She refused refused to lose herself.

When he drew his arm back, fist clenched, aiming for her again, she moved.

Emma drove her knee up with every scrap of strength she had left.

She felt the connection, heard his strangled roar. His grip loosened. For a heartbeat, his face twisted in shock and pain.

She didn’t wait.

She ran.

Out of the bedroom, barefoot on polished floors, heart hammering. Down the hallway, ignoring his bellow behind her. Her shoulder slammed into the wall as she took the corner too fast. She crashed into the door, yanked it open, bolted into the hallway of the sleek Manhattan high-rise, and hit the elevator button so many times her fingers went numb.

Somehow, she made it out.

Down to the street. Into the cold night air. Past doormen and taxis and a city that didn’t care that her face was bleeding.

She didn’t remember the subway ride. Didn’t remember if she even paid. A blur of metal, lights, strangers. She might have taken a cab. She couldn’t have said.

She only remembered the building she ran to.

Sophia’s.

She remembered the burn in her ribs as she climbed the stairs to Sophia’s floor because of course the elevator was out of order tonight. She remembered knocking, her vision tunneling, the sound of her own pulse crowding out everything else.

She expected Sophia.

She got Dominic.

He filled the doorway, broad shoulders framed by the warm light of the apartment behind him. For a moment, he didn’t react. His storm-grey eyes took her in the blood, the bruises, the shaking limbs and something inside him turned to stone.

That look was the last thing she saw before her knees gave out and the world dropped away.

Now, back in the present, Emma lay on Sophia’s bed, eyes half-focused on the ceiling while Dr. Morrison worked in silence. The physician moved with the calm precision of a man who saw more than most people wanted to believe happened in a city like New York: mending wounds for powerful men with dangerous lives and the people tangled in their orbit.

Sophia sat on the other side of the bed, holding Emma’s hand so tightly their knuckles were both white, tears streaking down her face and dripping onto the blanket.

Dominic stood a few feet away, leaned against the wall, his arms crossed so hard his biceps strained the fabric of his black shirt. His knuckles were bloodless where he gripped his phone. His face was carved from granite.

“Three cracked ribs,” Dr. Morrison said finally, his voice clinical but not unkind. “Bruising on the jaw and cheek. Mild concussion from the blows to the head. The cut above her eyebrow is stitched. She’ll have a scar, but if she wants, I know a specialist who can minimize it later.”

Sophia made a strangled sound. Emma barely heard it.

“She needs rest,” the doctor continued. “Quiet. No stress. Someone should stay with her for the next forty-eight hours at least. If she has trouble waking, slurs her words, or if the headache gets significantly worse, you call me immediately and we go straight to the hospital. Understood?”

“She’s staying here,” Dominic said.

His tone brooked no argument.

Emma tried to push herself up on her elbows. Pain shot through her side. “Dom, I can’t ”

“You can,” he cut in. “You will.”

He straightened from the wall, crossing the room in three long strides. Up close, he was overwhelming height, heat, the low hum of restrained violence under his skin. But when he looked down at her, his eyes weren’t cold.

They were burning.

“You’re not going back to your apartment,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere near that man again. Do you understand me?”

“I have to… I need to call the police,” she said. Even as she said it, the words sounded thin.

“No police.” His voice turned to stone.

Sophia’s head snapped up. “Dominic ”

“No.” He didn’t look at his sister. His attention never left Emma’s face. “The police won’t protect her from a man like Caldwell. Money like his buys silence in this city. He’ll hire lawyers, spin stories, drag her through it twice over. She’ll be the one on trial.”

Emma swallowed. She knew he was right. She’d seen it on the news a hundred times: headlines, talking heads, women torn apart on live television while polished men claimed misunderstanding.

“So what?” Her throat felt raw. “What do I do? I can’t just pretend this didn’t ”

“You don’t have to pretend anything.” Dominic crouched beside the bed until they were at eye level. The position made him look less like a kingpin and more like the boy he had once been, though the steel never left his gaze. “You let me handle it. My way.”

Fear twisted in her stomach not of him, exactly, but of what “his way” might mean.

He seemed to sense it.

“Do you trust me?” he asked softly.

It was insane.

She should say no. Should be terrified of the man whose last name was whispered in New York back rooms. The man who could end someone’s life with one quiet command. The man the tabloids speculated about whenever a rival crew leader disappeared or a federal investigation mysteriously stalled.

But when she looked into his eyes, she didn’t see the ruthless crime boss everyone else feared.

She saw the man who had given her a job at one of his legitimate clubs after her parents died, when she was barely holding herself together and needed work that paid more than minimum wage. The man who’d had his accountant “accidentally” overpay her for weeks until she could catch her breath. The man who’d made sure her tiny Brooklyn apartment was in a safe building, even when she hadn’t asked how the landlord suddenly seemed so eager to please her.

Always from a distance.

Always careful not to cross lines.

She saw the man whose rare, fleeting smiles had gotten her through nights when grief was a living thing.

The man she’d been half in love with for five years.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I trust you.”

Something dangerous and fierce flashed across his face, there and gone in an instant. It wasn’t relief. It was possession. A vow.

“Good,” he said. He straightened, his decision made. “Sophia, stay with her. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

“Dom.” Sophia grabbed his arm as he turned toward the door. “What are you going to do?”

“What I should have done the moment she started dating him.” He gently but firmly removed her fingers from his sleeve. “I’m going to have a conversation with Marcus Caldwell.”

Marcus was drunk when Dominic’s men picked him up.

It was just after midnight on the Upper West Side, Manhattan lights glinting off the sleek glass of Caldwell’s building. He’d convinced himself a few scotches would help him sleep, drowning out the image of Emma’s face when she’d slammed her knee into him and run.

He never saw them coming.

One moment he was pacing his living room, muttering to himself. The next, the front door burst inward and two large men in dark clothes were on him. A hand clamped over his mouth as another wrapped around his middle, hauling him backward.

He tried to shout, to threaten, to remind them who he was and what kind of lawyers he had. The fist to the gut cut off his words.

The ride in the back of the SUV was a blur of pain, fear, and frantic calculations. He recognized the route only when the skyline shifted, Manhattan shrinking in the rear window as they crossed a bridge into the industrial sprawl of New Jersey.

They dragged him into an empty warehouse that smelled of oil and dust and cold metal. Harsh light flooded the space when someone flipped a switch. When they shoved him into a chair and bound his hands, the last remnants of alcohol-induced bravado evaporated.

He knew this place.

Not literally, maybe. But men like Marcus Caldwell grew up hearing stories about what happened in places like this buildings people drove past without looking twice at, where the wrong kind of secrets simply vanished.

Dominic Ashford stood a few feet away, unhurriedly removing his cufflinks.

He rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt with precise, controlled motions. The diamond glint of the cufflinks on the metal table looked strangely out of place beside the dull, ominous shape of the wooden bat resting there.

“Do you know who I am?” Dominic asked conversationally.

Marcus’s mouth went dry. “Mr. Ashford, I there must be some kind of misunderstanding. If this is about a deal, we can ”

“No misunderstanding.” Dominic picked up the bat, testing its weight with easy familiarity. “You put your hands on Emma Clark.”

Marcus’s stomach flipped. “I don’t know what she told you, but ”

“You hurt her.” Dominic’s voice stayed calm. “You hit her. You terrorized her. You made her bleed.”

Marcus swallowed hard. “She hit me too. I was just defending myself ”

The bat came down in a hard, accurate swing.

Marcus didn’t see it. He only felt the explosive pain as it connected with his knee, a brutal impact that sent a white-hot shock up his leg. His scream tore itself out of his throat, echoing in the cavernous space.

“Wrong answer,” Dominic said softly.

He took a step closer. The air seemed to thicken.

“Let’s try again.”

Tears burned in Marcus’s eyes. Sweat rolled down his temples. “Please,” he gasped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know ”

“You didn’t know what?” Dominic leaned in, close enough that Marcus could see the specks of darker grey in his irises. “You didn’t know she mattered? That she wasn’t just another pretty girl for you to break because you were bored?”

“I didn’t know she was… connected to you,” Marcus stammered. “If I had known ”

Dominic’s expression went icy.

“There’s your problem,” he said. “You’d have treated her better if you’d known she was mine.”

He let the word hang there, unforgiving.

“Let me make one thing very clear. Emma Clark is under my protection. She always has been. She was before you ever laid eyes on her. And you? You laid your hands on what I protect.”

“I’m sorry,” Marcus babbled, panic stripping away every bit of the polished charm he wore in boardrooms and on magazine covers. “I swear, I’ll never go near her again. I’ll leave the city. I’ll ”

“You’re going to do three things,” Dominic interrupted. “And you’re going to listen very carefully, because there will not be a second chance.”

Marcus nodded frantically, blood and tears mingling on his face.

“First,” Dominic said, “you’re going to disappear. You’re going to take your money, your tailored suits, and your smug smile, and you’re going to get out of New York. Out of the country. You’re going to build yourself a new life somewhere very far away, and if I ever see your face again on this side of the Atlantic, they won’t find your body. Do you understand?”

Marcus’s teeth chattered. “Yes.”

“Second,” Dominic continued, his tone almost bored, as if he were reciting a standard business clause, “you’re going to transfer half your personal assets to Emma. Not through some shady fund. Directly. You hurt her. You cost her safety, time, and sleep. You’re going to compensate her for every bruise you left on her skin and every nightmare you seared into her memory. I’ll have my people send you the account details. You will comply. Immediately.”

Marcus swallowed. “Half ”

The bat twitched in Dominic’s hand.

“Yes,” Marcus choked. “Yes, fine. Half.”

“Third,” Dominic said, lowering his voice. “You are going to forget she exists. You will not call her. You will not text her. You will not ask mutual friends about her. You will not look at photos of her on social media. You will not speak her name. You will not even think you’re allowed to think about her. Because if I get the slightest hint that you’ve tried to crawl back into her life, I will finish what I started tonight. And next time, there won’t be a doctor involved.”

Terror turned Marcus’s limbs to water.

He nodded until the motion became almost frantic. “I understand,” he sobbed. “I understand. I’ll leave. I’ll do everything you say. I swear ”

“Good.” Dominic let the bat hang loosely at his side. “Get him out of my sight.”

His men hauled Marcus up and dragged him toward the door, their movements efficient and impersonal. Marcus stumbled, half-hopping on his injured leg, still whimpering apologies to a man who’d already turned away.

Because Dominic didn’t feel triumph.

He felt nothing.

No satisfaction. No sense of justice done.

Only a hollow, roaring anger that no amount of violence could quench. Because no matter what he did to Marcus Caldwell in a New Jersey warehouse, it wouldn’t change the fact that Emma had lain bleeding on a tile floor in New York while he’d told himself staying away from her was the noble thing to do.

He’d been a coward.

Never again.

Two weeks later, sunlight spilled across crisp white sheets and woke Emma gently instead of harshly.

She blinked against it, disoriented for a moment by the unfamiliar ceiling a high, pale expanse with moldings too perfect to be in her Brooklyn apartment. The bed was too big. The linens too soft. The city sounds drifting faintly through the glass weren’t the ones she was used to; the hum here was higher, brighter, the rhythm of Midtown instead of her quieter neighborhood.

Dominic’s penthouse.

On the top floors of a tower overlooking the East River, with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge and a slice of the Manhattan skyline that looked like it belonged in a movie.

She’d been here for two weeks.

Two weeks of Sophia fussing, bringing trays with soup and tea and new books. Two weeks of Dr. Morrison checking her pupils with a penlight and asking about her nightmares. Two weeks of sleeping more than she had in months, her body finally allowed to rest in a place where no footsteps in the hallway made her flinch.

Two weeks of Dominic moving through his own home like a storm contained in glass, always near, never intrusive.

Most nights, he’d end up on the couch while she curled up with a blanket on the opposite end. He’d spread out paperwork, laptops, reports from his legitimate businesses clubs, restaurants, real estate deals while she read, the sound of pages turning mixing with the quiet murmur of his phone calls.

Sometimes they talked.

About books. About movies. About Sophia’s tendency to overshare on Instagram. Never about Marcus. Never about the warehouse. Not yet.

She pushed the covers back carefully, her ribs twinging but no longer screaming. The bruises on her face had turned from purple to sickly green and yellow, fading proof of what she’d survived. The stitches near her eyebrow itched.

The smell of coffee drifted under the bedroom door.

She found him on the terrace.

The wind was cool this high up, but the sun warmed the flagstones. Dominic stood near the glass railing, a mug in his hand, looking out over New York. He’d traded his usual tailored suit for dark jeans and a black T-shirt that clung to the muscles in his shoulders and arms.

Without the armor, he looked… younger. Not less dangerous. Just more human.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked without turning, as if he could sense her presence.

“Bad dream,” she admitted, wrapping her arms around herself. “Same one.”

“Him finding you,” he said, not asking.

“Yes.” The word felt small. She exhaled. “It’s stupid. I know I’m safe here. I just ”

“He won’t find you,” Dominic said, finally facing her. His eyes were darker than she remembered, but steadier. “He’s gone. Left the country three days ago. I made sure of it.”

“What did you do, Dom?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.

There was a beat of silence.

“What was necessary,” he said at last. He set his coffee down on the railing. “You don’t need the details. You just need to know that he won’t come near you again.”

Emma knew she should be horrified. She’d grown up knowing men like Dominic existed in New York’s underbelly, but she’d skirted the edges of that world, working in the legitimate corners he’d carved out. She’d heard rumors. Seen headlines that danced around the truth without naming it.

But all she felt now was relief.

And something else. Something that had been growing quietly in the two weeks she’d spent in his home, watching him move through the space like a caged storm.

“Why?” she asked softly. “Why did you help me?”

His jaw tightened. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer.

“At first?” he said slowly. “Because no woman deserves what he did to you. Because I protect what’s mine.”

Her heart skipped. “I’m not ”

“And then,” he continued, cutting her off gently, “because I’m in love with you.”

The words hung between them, fragile and heavy at once.

Emma stared at him.

She’d fantasized about hearing him say something like that more times than she could count, in ridiculous daydreams she’d shoved aside with embarrassment. But in all of those, she’d been in a dress, or a club, or at some quiet dinner. Not standing on his terrace with fading bruises on her face and scars blooming under soft cotton.

“I’ve been in love with you since the day Sophia brought you home from college,” Dominic said, his voice rougher than she’d ever heard it. “You were twenty-one. Grieving. Lost. So stubbornly determined to hold yourself together it made my chest hurt to look at you. And you were… beautiful.”

Her throat tightened.

“But you were my baby sister’s best friend,” he went on. “Ten years younger than me. Innocent. Everything I should never touch. So I did the only thing I could.” His mouth twisted. “I stayed away.”

Emma let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped for years.

“Dumb idea,” she said shakily.

“I told myself you deserved better.” He took a step closer but still kept a sliver of space between them, a man used to control fighting his own instincts. “Better than a man who grew up watching deals made in back rooms. Better than someone whose hands aren’t clean, no matter how many legitimate ventures he builds.”

“You’re not a monster,” she whispered.

“You don’t know half the things I’ve done,” he said. “And I’m not going to list them just to convince you you should run.” A humorless smile flickered. “So I watched you date other men. I watched you smile at them. I nearly lost my mind when you started seeing Caldwell. But I told myself you were happy. That you’d found something I could never give you. Normal. Safe.”

“I wasn’t happy,” Emma said. The truth felt like a confession. “I was trying to forget.”

Something sharpened in his gaze. “Forget what?”

“You,” she said simply.

The word dropped between them like a stone in water.

“I was trying to forget that I’d fallen in love with a man who would never see me as anything but his sister’s friend,” she went on, the dam breaking. “A man who kept me at arm’s length no matter how much I wanted him to notice me. So I chose someone who wasn’t complicated. Someone who wasn’t dangerous. Someone who wasn’t you.”

“Emma.” His name for her was half warning, half prayer.

“And I was wrong,” she said, tears blurring the city behind him. “So wrong. Marcus seemed perfect at first. Attentive. Charming. He said the right things. Then it started. Little comments. Little controls. Making me feel small. And I stayed, because I thought I didn’t deserve better. Because I thought the man I really wanted had already rejected me.”

“I never rejected you,” Dominic said hoarsely.

“You never gave me a chance to be rejected,” she shot back, her voice breaking. “You never saw me. Not really. Not as a woman who gets to decide for herself who she loves, and what risks she wants to take.”

The silence between them stretched.

Then Dominic moved.

In two strides, he was in front of her. His hands came up, hovering for a heartbeat as if still asking permission, before cupping her face with a gentleness that undid her completely.

“I see you,” he said fiercely. “God, Emma, I have always seen you. Every time you walked into a room, the rest of the world blurred. Every time you laughed with Sophia in the kitchen, every time you rolled your eyes at one of my terrible jokes, every time you sat at the end of my bar with your textbooks, I saw you. Do you know what torture it’s been? Wanting you so much it hurt to breathe, and knowing I had no right to reach out and take what I wanted?”

Her hands fisted in his shirt almost without her consent, clutching fabric like an anchor.

“You have the right now,” she whispered. “If you want it.”

His laugh was almost painful. “If I want it. Emma, I’ve wanted nothing else for five years.”

“Then stop talking,” she breathed. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Every scar on her skin and soul hummed with fear and hope. “And kiss me.”

He didn’t hesitate.

The first brush of his mouth on hers was gentle, almost reverent, like he was afraid she’d shatter. She felt him holding back, every line of his body tight with restraint.

She leaned in.

When she opened to him, every bit of control he’d been clinging to snapped.

The kiss turned hungry. Desperate. Five years of denial and quiet longing crashed together in a single moment, pouring into the space between their mouths. His hands slid into her hair, careful of the stitches, tilting her head to deepen the kiss. Her fingers bunched tighter in his shirt, pulling him closer, needing the solid heat of him.

It felt like coming home to a place she’d never actually lived in, but had always dreamed of.

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

“I don’t deserve you,” he said.

“Let me decide what I deserve.” She smiled through the tears clinging to her lashes. “I choose you, Dom. Darkness and all. I always have.”

“You’re sure?” His thumbs brushed the dampness from her cheeks. “Because once you’re mine, Emma, I won’t let you go. Not ever.”

“Promise?” she whispered.

“Promise.”

He kissed her again.

This time, there was no hesitation on either side.

Later, when they were sitting together on the couch her tucked into his side, his arm draped around her shoulders, the city spread out below like a glittering map of a life they might finally share Emma realized something simple and profound.

He hadn’t saved her.

She’d saved herself the night she’d run.

He’d just made sure the world understood she wasn’t alone anymore.

Six months later, the question that had started it all Who did this to you? felt like it belonged to another lifetime.

The Ashford family estate in upstate New York looked like something out of a wedding magazine that had been dropped into an American fairy tale. Acres of manicured lawn rolled out under a blue sky. White roses climbed trellises and spilled from stone urns. Twinkling lights were strung through old trees, ready to glow when the sun went down.

In the garden behind the house, rows of white chairs faced an arch draped in flowers. A string quartet tuned their instruments, notes drifting through the summer air. Staff moved like a quiet choreography, adjusting table settings beneath large white tents where guests would soon toast the couple.

Emma stood in an upstairs room that overlooked it all, staring at her reflection like she was seeing a stranger.

The wedding dress was simple and elegant ivory lace with sheer, delicate sleeves, a fitted bodice that hugged her newly regained strength, and a skirt that flowed around her legs like water. Sophia had woven fresh flowers into her upswept hair, small blooms peeking out like secrets.

“You look like a princess,” Sophia sniffed, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a tissue. “I can’t believe my best friend is marrying my brother.”

“I can’t believe he asked me,” Emma said, fingers grazing the diamond ring on her left hand. It was a family heirloom, heavy with history, that Dominic had slipped onto her finger three months earlier during a quiet dinner in his penthouse. No grand gestures. Just him, a bottle of wine, and a question that had turned her world right-side up.

“Are you kidding?” Sophia laughed, her voice thick. “The man has been obsessed with you since the day I brought you home from NYU. Last week at that charity gala downtown, he told one of his lieutenants he’d ‘deal with’ anyone who looked at you for more than three seconds.”

“He did not,” Emma said, scandalized and secretly a little giddy.

“He absolutely did.” Sophia grinned. “I heard him. It was very dramatic. Very ‘overprotective mob husband.’”

“Don’t call him that,” Emma murmured, though there was no real heat in it.

“Fine,” Sophia said. “Overprotective reformed mob husband.”

Emma laughed.

Sophia’s expression softened. “But seriously. Are you happy? Really, truly happy?”

Emma thought of the last six months.

Of moving into Dominic’s penthouse officially, no longer as a guest recovering, but as a partner. Of the framed photos he’d put up on the walls her with Sophia, her parents, candid shots of them at the club, on the terrace, at a diner in Queens at two in the morning.

Of the therapy he’d insisted on and attended with her, sitting silently beside her as she talked through nightmares and triggers, occasionally adding his own quiet admissions when the therapist turned to him. Of watching him slowly dismantle the most dangerous parts of his empire, redirecting his considerable reach and resources into legitimate businesses.

“This life doesn’t end well for most men like me,” he’d told her one night. “I want something different. For us. For any kids we might have one day.”

Of the way he held her when she startled awake from a bad dream, murmuring reassurances into her hair until the tremors passed. Of the way he made her laugh with unexpectedly terrible jokes, of the way he let her argue with him about everything from movie endings to real estate decisions.

Of the way he looked at her, like she was the center of a universe he’d once thought he owned but had only ever been wandering through.

“I’m happier than I ever thought I could be,” Emma said honestly. “He didn’t just pull me out of something ugly. He stayed. He did the work. He… he saved me in every way a person can be saved.”

“Good.” Sophia’s smile wobbled. “Then let’s go get you married.”

The ceremony was perfect in the way messy, real moments sometimes are.

Emma’s heart pounded as she walked down the aisle, her arm linked with Sophia’s it was only fitting that her best friend give her away to the man they’d both loved in different ways. Guests rose to their feet. Faces blurred. Somewhere, she heard the soft sniffle of Dr. Morrison in the second row.

Ahead, under the floral arch, Dominic waited.

He looked devastating in a charcoal suit, his tie slightly crooked like he’d tried to do it himself for once. His eyes never left hers as she approached. There was dampness at the corners of them, and the sight nearly undid her.

When she reached him, he took her hands, and she felt the faint tremor in his grip.

“You came,” he murmured, so soft only she could hear.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” she whispered back.

“I’m still afraid I’ll wake up and this will all have been one long dream,” he admitted.

The officiant cleared his throat gently. “Shall we begin?”

The vows were traditional, but the way he said them made them feel entirely theirs.

“I promise to protect you,” Dominic said, his voice steady but thick with emotion. “To cherish you. To love you for every day I have left on this earth. You saved me, Emma. From a life that was all power and no meaning. You made me want to be better. I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret choosing me.”

Emma’s own vows were simpler, but they rang with quiet certainty.

“I choose you, Dominic Ashford,” she said. “Today and always. You showed me what real love looks like. Fierce, protective, honest, and unconditionally ours. I love you. I’ll always love you. No matter how dark it gets outside these walls, I know where home is now.”

When the officiant pronounced them husband and wife, Dominic’s kiss was both tender and claiming, a promise sealed in front of everyone who had watched them bleed and heal and grow.

The guests erupted into applause.

Later, inside the big white tent glowing with lights and filled with the hum of talk and clinking glasses, Dominic pulled Emma onto the dance floor for their first dance.

The string quartet shifted to a slower melody. He drew her close, one hand on the small of her back, the other holding her hand against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat under her palm, steady and strong.

“Any regrets?” he asked softly, his breath stirring the loose curls near her ear.

“Not one,” she said. Then, after a beat, curiosity getting the better of her: “Though I do have to ask. What happened to Marcus? Really.”

Dominic’s expression cooled slightly, the protective edge slipping back into place for a moment.

“He’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “Last I heard, he was in Dubai, trying to rebuild whatever he can. The market hasn’t been kind to him. Strange how luck works.”

“Strange,” she agreed.

She didn’t press.

She didn’t need to know the details. That chapter of her life was closed, its pages read, its cover snapped shut. Whatever consequences had found Marcus now belonged to another story, one she had no interest in revisiting.

“I love you,” Dominic said suddenly, fiercely, as if the words were too big to stay inside. “In case I haven’t said it enough today.”

She laughed, the sound bubbling out of her. “You’ve said it at least fifty times.”

“I’ll aim for a hundred before midnight,” he said.

“I’ll never get tired of hearing it,” she replied.

“Good,” he murmured, pulling her a little closer. “Because I plan to tell you every day for the rest of our lives.”

As the music swelled and they moved together under the lights, Emma’s thoughts drifted back to the question that had first torn out of him in that Manhattan bathroom.

Who did this to you?

Marcus had hurt her body.

Life had hurt her heart long before that losing her parents on a dark highway, losing her sense of safety in a city that never slept. But Dominic had helped her heal, not by swooping in like some perfect prince, but by standing beside her as she put her pieces back together.

He’d shown her she was worthy of protection. Of devotion. Of a love that would stand in the doorway and demand names, that would cross state lines and continents to make sure no one laid a hand on her again.

She’d been broken.

But she wasn’t fragile.

The cracks in her weren’t weaknesses. They were the places where light had finally found a way in. Where love had rooted itself and grown into something fierce and beautiful.

“What are you thinking about?” Dominic asked, watching her with that focused intensity that always made her feel like the only person in the room.

“How grateful I am,” she said truthfully. “That I knocked on Sophia’s door that night. That you answered. That you didn’t look away. That you asked the right question.”

“Who hurt you?” he said quietly.

“Who hurt me,” she echoed.

“And then,” she added, her voice soft but sure, “you made sure no one ever would again.”

He smiled, that rare, unguarded smile she’d once only seen when he thought no one was looking. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Never again,” he promised. “You’re mine now, Emma Ashford. And I protect what’s mine.”

“I know,” she whispered. “That’s why I love you.”

They danced until the stars appeared over the dark outline of the trees, until the string lights blurred with the Milky Way and the world felt very small and very big at the same time.

Surrounded by friends and family by people who knew the worst parts of their story and had stayed to witness the best Emma and Dominic celebrated not just a wedding, but a beginning.

A future built not on fear, but on trust.

Not on power, but on partnership.

Not on fairy tales, but on something stronger: a love fierce enough to walk through darkness and come out the other side, hand in hand, ready for whatever the city, the world, and their own hearts would throw at them next.