Chapter Fifteen: Return to Power

The Lake Como estate was quiet in a way the mansion back home never had been — no scorched east wing, no yellow tape, no ghosts built into the walls. Just water, stone, and the low hush of staff who'd learned not to hover. Eve sat on the edge of the bed in the master suite, watching Alex sleep off the last of the sedatives the private doctor had given him, his bandaged shoulder rising and falling in a rhythm she'd counted a hundred times since the flight.

She should have felt safer here. Instead the silence just gave the guilt more room to breathe.

Alex stirred near midnight, golden eyes opening slow and unfocused before they found her. "You're still up," he murmured, voice rough with sleep and painkillers.

"Couldn't sleep." She reached out, brushing his hair back from his forehead. "How's the shoulder?"

"Manageable." He caught her wrist before she could pull away, holding it there against his skin, like he needed the contact more than he needed the answer to his own question. For a long moment he just looked at her, some of the usual command stripped out of his face, replaced by something younger and far less certain. "Can I ask you something. And I need you to actually answer it. Not the version you give everyone else."

Eve's stomach tightened. "Okay."

"Tonight. Taking that bullet." His thumb moved slowly over her pulse point, like he was checking it was still there. "Was it enough? To prove it. That I'd do anything — that there isn't a version of losing you I'd survive without trying to stop it first." His jaw worked, and for once the billionaire who ran boardrooms like weather systems sounded almost afraid of the answer. "Because I need you to actually believe that, Eve. Not just hear it."

The use of her real name — not Sophia, not amore, just Eve— landed like a stone dropped straight through her chest. She wasn't sure if it was a slip born of exhaustion and blood loss, or if some buried part of him already knew a truth he hadn't let himself name yet.

"It was enough," she whispered, and hated how true it felt, and how little that truth was worth given everything she still hadn't told him. "You didn't have to prove anything, Alex. I already knew."

He pulled her down against his good side, careful of the sling, and pressed his mouth to her temple like a vow he didn't trust himself to say out loud twice. "Then stay," he said. "Just stay. I'll handle the rest."

She lay there long after his breathing evened out again, staring at the dark ceiling, turning his slip of her real name over and over in her mind like a coin that wouldn't stop spinning.

Near two in the morning, unable to hold still any longer, she eased out from under his arm and slipped onto the terrace, needing air that didn't smell like antiseptic and fear. The lake below was black glass under the moon, utterly still.

Her phone buzzed once in her pocket. A number she didn't recognize. No country code she could place.

Nice villa. Even nicer view of the terrace from the water. Did you really think Como was far enough?

Eve's blood went cold. She spun toward the dark treeline at the edge of the estate, heart slamming — and for one suspended second, she was almost certain she saw a shape move against the shadows near the boathouse, gone before she could be sure it had ever been there at all.