47

Louis’s POV

The next seventy-two hours were a blur of grim, necessary transactions. The police, the FBI, the endless questions. My lawyers and Adrienne formed a seamless wall, channeling the narrative. Victor Hale, a disgraced and unhinged former associate, seeking revenge. A tragic, violent end to his own making. The heroic, coordinated rescue by private security working in tandem with law enforcement. The brave mother who ran into the line of fire for her child.

The press ate it up. The story had everything: a billionaire, a kidnapping, a maternal lioness, a clean resolution. My “confession” broadcast was framed as a desperate, clever ruse to buy time. Our stock barely twitched. If anything, the brand gained a layer of gritty, resilient legend.

Through it all, Sierra was a pillar of fierce, quiet competence. She gave one brief, tearful statement on the steps of our home, clinging to my arm, her voice breaking just enough to be authentic, her gaze steady enough to show strength. Then she retreated inside and didn’t come out. She was with Katie.

Our daughter was sleeping in our bed, a tiny fortress between us. She had nightmares, waking up screaming about bad men and loud noises. Sierra or I would be there instantly, holding her, singing softly, our voices blending in the dark in a harmony we hadn’t found in months. In those moments, the past and the future ceased to exist. There was only the warm, trembling child, and the two broken guardians who would die for her.

On the third night, Katie finally slept deeply. I found Sierra not in the bedroom, but back in her test kitchen. She stood at the central island, not baking, just staring at her hands. They were clean, but she was looking at them as if they were still stained.

She didn’t jump when I entered. She just said, “I almost shot a man today.”

“You protected your child,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.

“I wanted to kill him,” she clarified, her voice flat. “I looked at him, and I saw a obstacle to remove. I thought about it. I calculated it. Just like you do.”

“There’s a difference between calculation in a boardroom and in a room with your terrified child.”

“Is there?” She finally looked at me, her eyes hollow. “It felt like the same muscle. The one that decides a threat must be eliminated. You’ve just had more practice.”

I walked into the room, stopping a few feet away. “That muscle kept her alive. That calculation brought her home. Don’t hate it in yourself. It’s part of you now. It’s the part that makes you strong enough to survive my world.”

“Your world,” she repeated with a bitter twist. “It keeps crashing into mine. And now I’ve got the rubble all over me. And the worst part is, I’m good at navigating the rubble. I negotiated with terrorists today, Louis. I looked a monster in the eye and I didn’t blink. What does that make me?”

“It makes you my equal,” I said, the truth of it settling in my bones. “Finally.”

She let out a shaky breath, turning to grip the edge of the marble counter. “Your mother’s offer. Europe.”

My heart stalled. “What about it?”

“Is it still on the table?”

“Of course.” The words tasted like ash.

“I don’t think I can take it.”

The silence that followed was louder than any gunshot. Hope, treacherous and wild, flared in my chest. I crushed it. This wasn’t about me. “Why not?”

She turned around, leaning back against the counter, facing me fully. “Because running to another continent doesn’t change what I am. What we are. I used to think the problem was the blood on your hands. Now I have my own. Not literal, but it’s there. The willingness. The capability.” She shook her head. “I can’t run from myself. And I can’t raise Katie to think that the solution to a problem is to flee from it. She needs to see strength. Real strength. Not just a change of scenery.”

“What are you saying?” I asked, needing to hear the words.

“I’m saying the Europe deal is off. I’m staying.” She held up a hand before I could speak. “But not like before. Not the cold war. That’s a luxury we can’t afford anymore. It’s a weakness. Victor proved that. He saw the crack between us and he tried to hammer a child into it.”

She pushed off the counter and took a step toward me. “So we try something else. We build something new. Not a marriage. Not a love story. A partnership. A real one. Not just for the public. For us. For her. We use that same muscle we used today. We strategize. We protect. We build. Together. As a unit. No more walls. Just a clear, operational understanding.”

It was the most unromantic, clinical proposal imaginable. It was also the most honest thing we had ever said to each other. She was offering me a merger. A hostile takeover of our failed marriage, resulting in a new corporate entity with a shared, precious subsidiary: our daughter.

“And the past?” I asked, my voice rough. “The grave?”

“We build over it,” she said, her eyes never leaving mine. “We don’t dig it up. We don’t put flowers on it. We pour concrete and we build something so heavy and so solid on top of it that it can never be unearthed. We acknowledge it’s there, and we move forward. Because the alternative is letting it poison the ground we’re trying to plant our daughter’s future in.”

It was a brutal, pragmatic peace. A treaty written in blood and signed with mutual exhaustion. It required me to give up the hope of ever having her love me again. It required her to give up the luxury of hating me. We would meet in the numb, efficient middle.

“What are the terms?” I asked, the CEO in me needing the contract.

“One. Absolute transparency. No more secrets. About business, about threats, about everything. We are a single intelligence unit.

Two. Unified front. For Katie, for the public, always. In private, we can be… whatever we are. But the face is unified.

Three. We share a life. We attend events together. We have family dinners. We present a home. Not a show home. A real, functioning one.

Four. We do not involve other people. Romantically. It’s a distraction and a security risk.

Five.” She paused, her throat working. “We protect what we have with every resource, every strategy, every dirty trick in the book. But we do it together. No more unilateral decisions in the dark.”

I considered her terms. They were smart. They were sustainable. They offered a structure where we could both exist without destroying each other or our child. They offered a kind of respect, even if it was born from mutual destruction.

“And us?” I asked quietly. “The… physical arrangement?”

A faint flush colored her cheeks, the only sign of discomfort. “That is a separate negotiation. One we table for now. The foundation comes first.”

I nodded. It was fair. More than fair.

“Do you accept?” she asked, extending her hand not for a caress, but for a deal.

I looked at her hand, then back at her face. This was the woman who had faced down a kidnapper, who had strategized with me in a war room, who had looked into the abyss of my soul and had not flinched. She was my match in every way that mattered. The love I felt for her was a tangled, ruined thing, but the respect was absolute.

I took her hand. Her grip was firm, cool.

“I accept,” I said.

We stood there in the quiet kitchen, sealed in our new, terrible pact. It was not a happy ending. It was an armistice. A strategic alliance with a lifetime term.

Later, I went to check on Katie. She was still asleep, her stuffed bunny clutched to her chest. I sat on the edge of the bed, watching her breathe. Sierra appeared in the doorway, a silhouette against the hall light.

“She’s safe,” I whispered.

“She is,” Sierra said. “We’ll keep her that way.”

The ‘we’ was no longer a prison sentence. It was a vow.

We had lost the battle for a loving marriage.

But together, we might just win the war for a family.