EPILOGUE Five Years Later“Some stories don’t end. They just learn how to rest.”~AdrianaFive years.Five years since Rafael fell to one knee in a garden strung with candlelight and roses.Five years since I told him I was pregnant again and he said. “Then let’s get married today.”Five years since I became Adriana Moretti.And every day since has felt like a slow dream come true.Our home is no longer the same cold estate we once returned to. It’s alive now and loud and messy snd full of laughter and sticky fingers and late night kisses in the hallway. The walls echo with family now. With piano music, bedtime stories and the soft scuffle of tiny feet racing down the marble floors.We have three children now. Three!! I still don’t know how that happened. Well I do because I married Rafael who happens to love the process of love making. The man never learned to keep his hands to himself.Our daughter Isabella, is now ten. She’s elegance and sass wrapped in grace still playing piano l
Adriana’s POVI never thought peace could feel like this. Not the loud kind and not the peace that comes with winning or conquering. But the soft kind. The one that slips into your bones slowly and gentlu like warm sunlight seeping through linen curtains in the morning. The one that makes you breathe deeper and sleep easier and laugh with your whole chest.That was what Rafael gave me now. That was what we had built. We had fallen into a rhythm so perfect it made the years we lost ache even more. But it was the kind of ache I could live with because it’s the the kind that only reminded me how far we’d come.Every day, I woke up next to him all warm and safe beneath the weight of his arm across my waist. I’d stretch lazily, pretend to still be asleep just to feel him kiss my shoulder before slipping out of bed to make coffee. Sometimes I’d follow him, barefoot and sleepy stealing his hoodie and wrapping my arms around his waist from behind while he made our cups.And Isabella (our litt
Rafael’s POVThe house felt alive now.It wasn’t the quiet fortress it had been after Adriana left. It wasn’t the cold palace where silence echoed louder than footstepsNo. Now it was warm with coffee mugs left out on the kitchen counter. Isabella’s laughter echoing down the halls. Adriana’s perfume lingering in the doorway after she passed through. Morning sunlight streaming into our bedroom and falling across her sleeping face as she curled into the sheets.And the routine. God, the routine!!! Mornings had become sacred.I woke first always because of years of discipline. But now instead of preparing for war, I prepared coffee that is strong for me, sweet and warm with oat milk and cinnamon for her just how she liked it. Sometimes if she wasn’t too sleepy or lazy she’d slip out of bed and join me in the gym. Wearing one of my oversized shirts and barefoot with hair messy while yawning dramatically like she’d been asked to carry the world. But she always smiled. Even hal -asleep, sh
Adrianna’s POVThe estate felt different now cause it was warmer and softer and more lived in not ruled. It still had its edges of marble floors and iron railings and shadows in corners where power once crouched. But now, it was quieter. Peace had pulled a blanket over the chaos tucking us in like a family finally allowed to rest.We returned to the private quarters after everything. After the confrontation and the reckoning and the unraveling of a legacy built on blood and deceit. Basha had fallen and Rafael had walked away hand in mine, jaw set with that same intensity he always carried but now softened at the edges with purpose. He didn’t speak much as we entered the suite he just held Isabella’s hand in his and my waist in the other. We moved like a unit. One heart with three bodies. His men had lined up outside the hall when we arrived but not like soldiers or weapons with growling faces. Just relief and joy, eyes shining with something deeper than respect loyalty rooted in lov
Rafael’s POVThe warehouse had been cleared for the meeting. We stripped it of its usual clutter meaning no crates, no shipments, no men standing in corners pretending they weren’t listening. Just polished concrete underfoot and that faint hum of fluorescent lights overhead, and one iron chair set in the center of the room like a damn throne for a man about to meet his ruin.Basha.He was still unconscious when they dragged him in all tied, bleeding and gagged for good measure. I hadn’t laid a hand on him. That wasn’t my job anymore.I stood to the far side near the broad iron doors, one arm wrapped tightly around Adriana’s waist anchoring myself to her like she was the only real thing in the room. Her palm rested against my chest sl steady and warm. The fabric of her dress was soft against my fingers but nothing compared to the softness of her skin beneath. I didn’t want her far from me. Not even for a second. Not when everything was finally coming together anz when everything I tho
Rafael’s POVThe air in the warehouse had that metallic tinge to it like blood and old promises all rusty and heavy nd impossible to ignore. I had just handed Adriana over to Nathan, whose face had gone rigid the second he realized the truth: his half sister, flesh of his blood was the girl I brought back from the shadows. The sister he never knew he had. Life really liked playing these cosmic jokes, didn’t it?He took her gently with an expression I’d never seen on him before equal parts softness and regret. I turned away. This was their moment now and I had a meeting to prepare for.I was going to meet Amris the Albanian queen, the ghost of my past, the woman whose blood ran through my veins and the woman whose pain had been carved by Basha’s hands for decades. She was my supposed mother and until recently, I hadn’t even dared to say that out loud. But now things had changed. I had my woman, my daughter and I had vengeance clawing its way up my throat like fire I couldn’t swallow.