Dr. Reed frowned. “Excuse me?”
“She’s being moved.”
“No, she is not.” The doctor’s spine straightened. “She just came out of major surgery. Transporting her now would be reckless.”
“Leaving her here would be suicidal,” Dante said. “The men who shot her were professionals. If whoever ordered this learns she survived, they will come back before she can speak.”
Dr. Reed’s face hardened. “You don’t get to make that decision.”
“I own a private medical facility three miles from here. Full ICU capability. Trauma surgeons. Advanced life support transport. Security that can stop more than an angry visitor without a badge.”
Patricia stared at him. “You have a private hospital?”
“I have what I need.”
Dr. Reed studied him as if deciding whether arrogance or truth stood before him. “I want credentials. I want my people with her for at least twenty-four hours. I want the right to bring her back if she destabilizes.”
“Done.”
“And if she dies because of this, Mr. Morelli, I will spend the rest of my life making sure the city knows you killed her.”
Dante met his eyes.
“If she dies, Doctor, you won’t have to. I’ll know.”
Twenty-eight minutes later, Grace was wheeled through the service corridor surrounded by machines, nurses, and a private medical team in dark blue uniforms. Dante saw her for the first time since the shooting and nearly stopped breathing.
She looked too small beneath the white blankets. Grace Bennett was not a small woman in life; she filled rooms with practical energy, sharp compassion, and a kind of warmth that made people confess fear without shame. But on that gurney, with oxygen taped beneath her nose and wires running from her body to machines, she seemed reduced to the thin line of a pulse and the stubborn set of her mouth.
Dante walked beside her long enough to touch her hand.
“Grace,” he said quietly, though she could not hear him. “You called me. I’m here.”
Her fingers did not move.
The ambulance that took her away looked ordinary from the outside. Inside, it carried enough equipment to shame half the hospitals in upstate New York. Dr. Reed climbed in with Patricia. Dante followed in his car, but before he left, two detectives intercepted him near the emergency bay.
One was a compact woman with a navy coat, alert eyes, and a badge held steady at chest height. The other was taller, broad-shouldered, with the resigned exhaustion of a man who had seen people lie in every possible accent.
“Mr. Morelli,” the woman said. “Detective Sarah Collins. This is Detective Michael Reeves. We need to ask you about your relationship with Grace Bennett.”
“My lawyer will arrange a conversation.”
Reeves glanced toward the departing ambulance. “You just moved a shooting victim from a crime investigation.”
“I moved a patient at risk of a second attack to a secure medical facility with the approval of her surgeon.”
Collins did not blink. “A facility you own.”
“Yes.”
“And why does a pediatric nurse have you listed as her emergency contact?”
Dante looked past them, toward the taillights disappearing down the street.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But I intend to find out.”
By dawn, Grace was inside Dante’s facility in Tribeca, a renovated brick building that looked from the street like expensive lofts and contained behind reinforced walls a medical center built for men who could not safely enter public hospitals. Dr. Rebecca Sloan, Dante’s chief surgeon, took over with the calm authority of a woman who had left Johns Hopkins after declaring insurance bureaucracy more dangerous than bullets.
“She survived the transfer,” Dr. Sloan told him outside Grace’s room. “Her vitals are fragile but acceptable. Dr. Reed’s work was excellent. We’ll keep her sedated and monitor for infection. If she makes it through the next two days, her odds improve.”
Dante nodded. “Can I sit with her?”
“For a few minutes. Do not touch anything connected to her body. Do not issue medical orders. Do not frighten my staff.”
Under other circumstances, Marco might have laughed. Dante only entered the room.
Grace lay beneath soft lighting, less swallowed by machines now, though the machines still owned the rhythm of the room. Dante pulled a chair to her bedside. His phone buzzed every few seconds: Tony sending partial plates, Marco confirming security rotations, lawyers asking for statements, business partners demanding explanations. Dante silenced them all.
He took Grace’s hand carefully.
“I don’t know why you put me down as your contact,” he said. “Maybe you thought I could protect you. Maybe you were desperate. Maybe I’m flattering myself and you simply had nobody else close enough in the city. But whatever the reason, you were right to call me.”
He looked at the bruises on her arm where IVs entered skin that had once steadied frightened children.
“I’m going to find out who did this. And then I’m going to do something I should have done a long time ago. I’m going to decide what kind of man I’m still capable of becoming.”
The investigation moved quickly because money, fear, and loyalty moved quickly when Dante commanded them. By noon, Tony had names for the shooters: Alex Petrov and Nikolai Sokolov, former military contractors now working for Victor Koval, a Russian crime boss whose Brighton Beach clubs laundered money through restaurants, import companies, and political donors. Petrov was found dead in a Red Hook warehouse before dinner, shot once in the back of the head. Sokolov disappeared.
“Cleanup,” Tony said over a secure call. “Koval’s tying off loose ends.”
“And Daniel Pierce?”
“Corporate attorney at Whitman & Lowe. Scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury about Senator Harwood’s campaign finances. He had records tying Harwood to Koval money, but there’s a complication.”
Dante stood beside the window outside Grace’s room, watching evening gather over Manhattan. “What complication?”
“Some of the money passed through charitable accounts attached to St. Anne’s pediatric programs. One of those accounts has Morelli in the name.”
Dante went still.
“Say that again.”
“The Morelli Children’s Relief Fund,” Tony said carefully. “Your anonymous donation channel. Before you ask, I know your money was clean when it entered. But somebody inside Morelli Harbor Holdings appears to have allowed outside deposits to route through related accounts before distribution. Harwood’s people used the charity as a wash station.”
Dante’s hand tightened around the phone.
“Who inside?”
“I’m working on it.”
“No. Work faster.”
For six months, Dante had believed his money was the one clean thing he sent into Grace’s world. An apology without words. A distance-safe form of gratitude. If that channel had been polluted, if the fund bearing his family name had helped paint a target on Grace’s back, then the distance he had clung to was not protection. It was ignorance wearing a noble suit.
That night, the detectives arrived at the facility with warrants drafted narrowly enough that Dante’s lawyer advised cooperation and Dante, to everyone’s surprise, agreed.
Detective Collins stood in the conference room while Catherine Walsh, Dante’s attorney, read every line before allowing questions.
“Grace Bennett may be the key surviving witness in an attempted murder tied to public corruption,” Collins said. “We need access when she wakes.”
“You’ll have it,” Dante said.
Reeves looked skeptical. “That easy?”
“That easy.”
“Forgive me if I don’t trust easy from a Morelli.”
Catherine’s eyes sharpened. “Detective.”
Dante raised one hand. “He’s right not to trust me. Trust this instead: whoever shot Grace used a charity linked to my name to hide money. That makes them stupid, careless, or arrogant. I dislike all three.”
Collins studied him. “Are you saying your organization is involved?”
“I’m saying someone used a legitimate charitable fund attached to my business holdings. I want the records found as much as you do.”
“Found by law enforcement,” Reeves said.
Dante smiled without humor. “Of course.”
Collins did not smile back. “Mr. Morelli, if you handle this in the street, you’ll bury the case with the bodies. If you want the senator exposed, if you want Koval charged, if you want Ms. Bennett safe beyond your personal reach, then you need evidence that survives a courtroom. Not rumors. Not fear. Evidence.”
Dante looked through the glass wall toward the hallway that led to Grace’s room.
For years, evidence had been something he destroyed, purchased, or redirected. Courts were slow. Police were compromised. Politicians were masks wearing flags. In his world, justice arrived only when someone powerful enough forced it to. But Grace’s world did not work that way. Or maybe it was supposed to, and people like Dante had helped break it.
“What do you need?” he asked.
Collins looked surprised for half a second before she hid it.
“Start with the fund records. All of them.”
Catherine turned toward him sharply. “Dante.”
He did not look away from Collins.
“You’ll have them.”
By the third day, Grace woke.
Dante was in a lower-level office reviewing bank ledgers when Dr. Sloan appeared in the doorway. The doctor was not a woman who wasted words.
“She’s conscious. Weak but lucid. She asked for you.”
The ledgers slid from Dante’s hands onto the desk.
Grace was propped slightly against pillows when he entered. The breathing tube was gone, replaced by a thin oxygen cannula. Her face was pale, her lips dry, and dark shadows bruised the skin beneath her eyes. But her eyes were open.
Those clear gray eyes found him immediately.
“Dante,” she whispered.
He stopped three feet from the bed because if he came closer too quickly, he feared something inside him might break.
“You’re safe,” he said. “You were shot three nights ago outside St. Anne’s. You had surgery. You’re in my medical facility.”
Her brow tightened. “Daniel?”
Dante took the chair beside her. “I’m sorry.”
Grace closed her eyes. A tear slipped into her hairline. “He pushed the envelope into my hand. He said, ‘If I fall, give it to the only man Harwood can’t buy.’ Then the shots started.”
Dante leaned forward. “What envelope?”
Her eyes opened, and confusion moved through them. “I don’t know. I had it. I remember blood on my hand. I remember crawling. There was a donation cart near the staff entrance. Stuffed animals for the kids. I think I pushed it inside a yellow bear before I blacked out.”
Dante’s phone was in his hand before she finished.
“Marco,” he said. “St. Anne’s west entrance. Donation cart. Yellow stuffed bear. Find it before anyone else does.”
Grace watched his face. “They told me I kept saying your name.”
“Yes.”
“I put you as my emergency contact two weeks ago.”
“Why?”
“Because Daniel told me powerful people were watching. He said if anything happened, my official contacts could be delayed, scared, or controlled. My mother is in Vermont and has a heart condition. My friends are nurses and teachers. Good people, but not people who could stop a senator.” She swallowed painfully. “I thought of you because of Noah. Because you looked like a man who would burn down the world for a child you loved. I wasn’t sure you cared about me, but I was sure you hated anyone hurting innocent people.”
Dante looked down at their hands. He had not realized he had taken hers.
“I care,” he said.
Grace’s fingers trembled against his. “Then tell me the truth. Am I here because you care, or because my evidence might protect your family name?”
The question hit harder than accusation.
“Both at first,” Dante admitted. “When the call came, I only knew you were hurt. I would have come if there were no evidence, no senator, no fund. But now I know my charitable account was used. I don’t know by whom yet. I don’t know how far it goes. So yes, I need the truth because my name is in it. But Grace, if protecting my name requires burying what happened to you, then my name deserves to burn.”
She searched his face as if looking for the lie.
Dante let her.
At last she whispered, “Good. Because I’m tired of powerful men deciding what truth is allowed to survive.”
Marco found the yellow bear forty-six minutes later. It had already been moved from the donation cart to a locked volunteer storage room. Inside, beneath cheap stuffing, was a slim flash drive sealed in a plastic medication bag.
Tony accessed it on an isolated computer while Dante, Catherine Walsh, Marco, and Detective Collins watched.
The files were devastating.
Harwood campaign donations. Koval shell companies. Hospital charity grants. Emails between Daniel Pierce and a whistleblower inside Morelli Harbor Holdings. Transfer logs showing that money had entered and exited the Morelli Children’s Relief Fund in ways Dante had never authorized. Then the final file opened: a recorded call between Senator Richard Harwood and the man who had approved the laundering.
Vincent Carver.
Dante’s chief financial officer.
A polished Yale graduate with silver hair, charity board memberships, and a talent for making criminal money look respectable. Dante had trusted him with the legitimate side of the empire because Carver was boring in the safest way: married, careful, allergic to street theatrics. For years, Carver had warned Dante that philanthropy needed layers, committees, outside accounting. For years, Dante had signed where he was told because clean work bored him and dirty work demanded his attention.
On the recording, Harwood’s voice was tense.
“The nurse asked my daughter about home visits. She’s looking too closely.”
Carver answered with cold irritation. “Then remove the risk before Pierce reaches her.”
Harwood said, “Koval’s people can handle it.”
Carver said, “Make it look like robbery. No connection to the fund. No connection to Morelli. If Dante learns his name was used, he’ll tear the city apart looking for who touched it.”
Nobody spoke after the recording ended.
Then Marco said softly, “Boss.”
Dante’s face revealed nothing, but inside him something old and poisonous tore loose. He had spent years insisting there were lines. Civilians were not targets. Children were not bargaining chips. Hospitals were neutral ground. He had believed his people understood because fear made understanding unnecessary.
Vincent Carver had not misunderstood.
He had calculated.
“Where is he?” Dante asked.
Tony’s hands moved over the keyboard. “Carver left his office an hour ago. Private car headed north. Probably trying for Westchester Airport.”
Detective Collins stepped closer. “Dante, listen to me. If you take him, we lose him as a witness. If he disappears, Harwood claims the recording is manipulated and Koval blames dead shooters. Let us arrest him.”
Dante looked at her.
Every instinct he had trained into himself over decades screamed against it. Carver had used Dante’s name, endangered Grace, murdered Daniel Pierce, and brought blood into a hospital parking lot. Men had died for less.
Grace’s voice came from the doorway.
“Let the detective take him.”
Dante turned.
She stood there in a robe over hospital clothes, one hand gripping an IV pole, Dr. Sloan behind her looking furious enough to sedate everyone in the room.
Grace was pale and trembling, but her eyes were steady.
“You should be in bed,” Dante said.
“You should be choosing what kind of man you are,” she answered. “So I guess we’re both ignoring medical advice.”
Catherine muttered, “I may retire after tonight.”
Grace moved one careful step into the room. “If Carver disappears, people like Harwood win. They’ll say it was mob violence. They’ll say Daniel was corrupt, I was confused, and you were protecting yourself. But if Carver is arrested, if records come out, if parents learn their children’s charity was used as a sewer for campaign money, then the truth gets bigger than fear.”
Dante looked at the frozen image of Vincent Carver on the screen.
“I can make him talk.”
“I know,” Grace said. “That’s what scares me. Not because I think you’re a monster. Because I think you’re a man who has survived by believing force is the only language power respects.” Her voice softened. “But I’m asking you to try mine.”
Dante stared at her, this woman who should have been sleeping, healing, retreating from the violence that nearly killed her. Instead she stood there asking him not for revenge, but restraint. Not weakness. Restraint.
The hardest kind of strength.
He looked at Collins. “You have ten minutes to get federal marshals on that car. Marco will provide location updates. My people will not touch him unless he escapes law enforcement.”
Collins did not waste time asking whether he meant it. She was already on her phone.
Carver was arrested on the tarmac at Westchester Airport with two passports, three hundred thousand dollars in cash, and a laptop containing enough mirrored records to make his cooperation inevitable. By morning, Senator Richard Harwood’s office was surrounded by reporters. By noon, federal agents executed warrants at three Koval businesses in Brighton Beach. By evening, Harwood held a press conference denying everything with the stiff terror of a man reading from a sinking ship.
Grace watched from her hospital bed, Dante seated beside her.
The news anchor said, “Sources close to the investigation suggest the corruption probe now includes campaign finance violations, charity fraud, obstruction of justice, and possible conspiracy in the attempted murder of a St. Anne’s nurse and the killing of attorney Daniel Pierce.”
Grace closed her eyes.
“Daniel had a wife,” she said. “Two daughters. He told me that when he called. He said if he sounded scared, it was because he was, but he wanted his girls to know someday that he didn’t look away.”
Dante turned off the television.
“I’ll take care of them.”
Grace opened her eyes. “No.”
His expression tightened. “Grace—”
“Not like that. Not as hush money. Not as guilt money. If you want to help, establish a public fund in Daniel’s name for whistleblowers and families harmed by political corruption. Transparent board. Outside auditors. No hidden Morelli hands moving anything.”
The corner of Dante’s mouth almost moved. “You were nearly murdered and you’re already giving orders.”
“I’m a nurse. We give orders when men pretend they’re too important to follow instructions.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “All right.”
“And one more thing.”
“Should I be afraid?”
“Yes.” She held his gaze. “Do not send me away.”
Dante’s faint almost-smile disappeared.
“I was going to offer options.”
“You were going to call it protection and make it sound generous.”
“It would be protection.”
“It would be exile.” Grace’s voice remained weak, but the steel beneath it was unmistakable. “I know the risks are real. I know being near you complicates my life in ways I can’t fully understand yet. But my life is mine. Harwood tried to decide I was disposable. Carver tried to decide I was acceptable damage. Koval’s men tried to decide whether I got to keep breathing. Don’t you dare make the same mistake in a nicer suit.”
Dante stood and walked to the window. The city below was bright with morning, indifferent and alive.
“My father used to say love was leverage,” he said. “He said if enemies knew what mattered to you, they owned you. So he cut away everything human piece by piece until nobody could hurt him. By the end, nobody loved him either.”
Grace said nothing, letting silence do its work.
“I kept away from you because I thought distance kept you safe,” Dante continued. “But distance only kept me ignorant. My name was being used in your hospital while I admired myself for not standing too close to you. If I had paid attention to the clean side of my life, if I had cared enough to look closely, maybe Carver never would have had room to do this.”
“That’s guilt talking.”
“It might also be truth.”
“Then use it,” Grace said. “Don’t drown in it.”
He turned back to her. “You don’t know what staying means.”
“Then teach me. Don’t command me.”
“It means security. Drivers. Background checks. No casual routines. It means the police will question you, reporters may stalk you, and people in my world will think you’re a weakness.”
“I am not a weakness.”
“No,” Dante said quietly. “You are the first thing in years that made me want to be stronger for a reason other than survival.”
Grace’s face softened.
He returned to the chair beside her bed.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted. “Care for someone without trying to control every variable. Protect someone without turning protection into a cage. Tell the truth without dressing it up until it looks harmless.”
“Then we start there,” Grace said. “With the truth.”
The legal storm lasted months.
Carver cooperated after prosecutors showed him the recording and the financial trails Daniel Pierce had preserved. Senator Harwood resigned before his indictment and was arrested two weeks later. Victor Koval fled New York and was caught in Miami under a false name, carrying diamonds sewn into the lining of a jacket that cost more than most nurses made in a year. Newspapers feasted on the scandal: a senator, a children’s hospital, a murdered attorney, a nurse who survived, and a billionaire with alleged mob ties who had turned over records from his own companies.
Dante was not praised.
He did not deserve to be.
Federal investigators circled Morelli Harbor Holdings for months, and Dante’s lawyers spent long nights negotiating the difference between cooperation and self-destruction. Several of his legitimate executives resigned. Two of his older captains accused him of going soft. One tried to move money without authorization and found himself retired to Florida with a pension and a warning that retirement was healthier than ambition.
The old Dante would have answered betrayal with blood.
The new Dante still wanted to.
That was the part nobody put in newspaper profiles. Choosing better did not make the darker choices vanish. It only meant he had to choose again the next morning, and again the morning after that, often with his jaw clenched and Marco watching him like a man witnessing either a miracle or a breakdown.
Grace recovered slowly.
She hated needing help to stand. She hated the security detail outside her door. She hated that her shoulder ached before rain and that loud noises made her breath catch. But she did not hate Dante’s visits, even when she pretended to complain about them.
He brought books for the children’s ward because she missed reading aloud. He brought terrible coffee because she said good coffee in medical facilities was proof of suspicious priorities. He sat through physical therapy without offering advice after Grace threatened to throw a resistance band at his head. Once, when nightmares woke her shaking, he sat on the floor beside her bed until dawn and told her the truth about his childhood: his mother’s death, his father’s cold lessons, the first time he understood fear could be inherited like a family business.
In return, Grace told him about the first child she had lost as a nurse, a seven-year-old boy who loved dinosaurs and had asked if heaven had museums. She told him she had almost quit three times. She told him she stayed because grief was heavy, but abandoning families to carry it alone felt heavier.
They were not opposites, as Dante had once believed.
They were two people shaped by emergencies. Grace had run toward suffering with medicine in her hands. Dante had run toward danger with violence in his. One healed. One controlled. Both had mistaken endurance for peace.
Three months after the shooting, the Daniel Pierce Children’s Justice Clinic opened in the Bronx.
It was funded by seized assets, court-approved settlements, and a new Morelli foundation structured so tightly that Dante joked even he could not steal from it without filling out three forms. Grace served as clinical director. Patricia Boyd joined as nursing supervisor. Dr. Reed volunteered one day a week. The clinic provided pediatric care, legal referrals for families facing medical debt, and a small whistleblower support office named for Daniel Pierce.
On opening day, Grace stood before reporters with a faint scar visible near her collarbone and Dante standing in the back row where cameras could catch him only if they tried.
“This clinic exists because too many families learn that systems meant to protect them can also be used against them,” Grace said. “Children should never become cover for corruption. Hospitals should never become hunting grounds. And good people should never have to be fearless before they are allowed to be heard.”
Her eyes found Dante’s for one brief second.
He did not smile. Not publicly.
But he placed one hand over his heart, a gesture so small only she understood it.
That evening, they returned to the secure Tribeca apartment Dante had once intended as a temporary hiding place and Grace had slowly transformed into a home. There were plants by the windows, children’s drawings on the refrigerator, medical journals on the coffee table, and a locked security panel behind a watercolor of the Hudson River. It was not normal. It was theirs.
Grace stood near the window, watching city lights shimmer against the glass.
“You were quiet today,” she said.
“I was trying not to frighten donors.”
“You frighten donors by breathing.”
“Then I was very restrained.”
She laughed, and the sound still moved through him like sunrise entering a room he had kept closed for years.
Dante came to stand beside her. “You were extraordinary.”
“I was terrified.”
“I know.”
Grace glanced up. “You do?”
“You kept touching your scar before you spoke. Then you saw Daniel’s daughters in the front row and stopped.”
Her expression softened. “You notice everything.”
“I missed too much before.”
“Not anymore.”
He looked out over the city. “Harwood’s lawyers offered another statement today. They’re going to claim he was manipulated by Carver and Koval. A grieving father under pressure because of Emily’s illness.”
Grace’s mouth tightened. “Emily is a child. I hate that they’ll use her pain again.”
“So do I.”
“What will happen to her?”
“I arranged through Catherine for her care to continue privately, no publicity. No Morelli name attached. No leverage. Just treatment.”
Grace turned fully toward him.
Dante shrugged slightly. “You told me to use guilt instead of drowning in it.”
She touched his hand. “That was good.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised. I’m proud.”
The word struck him harder than accusation ever had.
For a long time, Dante had measured success by territory held, debts collected, enemies discouraged, investigations survived. Pride had meant fear in other men’s eyes. But Grace’s pride felt different. It asked more of him. It offered less applause and more responsibility. It made him want to deserve it, which was inconvenient and probably dangerous.
“Victor Koval said something before he ran,” Dante said. “He told one of his men people like me don’t get happy endings.”
Grace leaned her shoulder carefully against his arm. “Maybe people like you don’t get handed happy endings. Maybe you have to build one honestly enough that it doesn’t collapse.”
“I don’t know if honest is a word anyone will ever use for me.”
“Then start with honest moments.”
He looked at her. “Here’s one. I love you.”
Grace went still.
Dante had faced guns, indictments, betrayals, and men who smiled while plotting murder. None of it felt as dangerous as those three words sitting in the quiet apartment between them.
Grace’s eyes filled, but she did not look away.
“Another honest moment?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“I love you too. But if you ever use that as an excuse to make decisions for me, I’ll haunt you while alive.”
A laugh broke out of him, rusty and surprised. “That sounds fair.”
“And if I ever pretend I’m not scared just because I fought hard to stay alive, you remind me I don’t have to be brave every second.”
“I can do that.”
“And if the darkness comes close again?”
Dante took her hand, careful of the healing weakness that still visited her fingers on cold nights. “Then we face it together. Your way first, when your way can work. My way only when there is no other choice. And even then, I’ll remember what you said.”
“What did I say?”
“That truth has to survive bigger than fear.”
Grace rested her forehead against his shoulder.
Outside, New York moved in all its restless contradictions: sirens and lullabies, corruption and kindness, wealth stacked beside hunger, danger turning corners where children still laughed on stoops. It was not a city easily saved. Dante knew that. Grace knew it too.
But a clinic had opened where a laundering channel once hid. A murdered attorney’s daughters had watched his courage become a doorway for other families. A senator who thought nurses were disposable had learned that one wounded woman with evidence could shake a statehouse. A man raised to believe love was leverage had discovered it could also be a compass.
Months earlier, Grace Bennett had lain bleeding in a hospital parking lot and whispered Dante Morelli’s name because some part of her believed he would come.
He had come with money, power, rage, and every old weapon he knew.
But saving her had required the one weapon he had never trusted.
Mercy.
And in choosing it, not perfectly, not easily, not once but again and again, Dante did not become innocent. He became accountable. He became reachable. He became a man standing beside a woman who refused to be hidden, building something clean from everything that had tried to destroy them.
Grace squeezed his hand as the city lights trembled like stars trapped in glass.
“Do you think we’ll be okay?” she asked.
Dante looked at their reflections in the window: the nurse with scars, the mob boss with secrets, two impossible lives overlapping without erasing each other.
“No,” he said softly. “I think we’ll be more than okay. I think we’ll be honest. And for us, that might be the bravest ending there is.”
THE END
