“CAN YOU COME GET ME?” AN ABUSED WOMAN CALLED THE MAFIA BOSS SHE LEFT THREE YEARS AGO—AND HE ARRIVED BEFORE HER HUSBAND COULD FIND HER

“CAN YOU COME GET ME?” AN ABUSED WOMAN CALLED THE MAFIA BOSS SHE LEFT THREE YEARS AGO—AND HE ARRIVED BEFORE HER HUSBAND COULD FIND HER

The wedding band was playing a love song when Nebula crouched behind a stone planter in a torn bridesmaid dress, one hand pressed against her swelling jaw.

Rain soaked through the thin silk and ran down her bare arms. Her knees were scraped. Blood salted the corner of her mouth.

A few feet away, her husband searched for her in the dark.

“Nebula,” Richard called. His voice was soft enough to sound reasonable to anyone standing inside the country club. “I checked the restroom. You aren’t there.”

His shoes crunched across the wet gravel.

“You’re making a scene, darling.”

Nebula pressed herself against the freezing brick wall and tried not to breathe.

Less than ten minutes earlier, Richard had punched her beside the patio doors. He had watched her fall onto the stones, adjusted his cuffs, and told her to clean herself up before the wedding cake was cut.

If she disobeyed him, he had promised, the punishment at home would be worse.

Now he was coming back to collect her.

“Come out,” he said, moving closer. “I’ll only lock you in the guest room tonight.”

Nebula closed her eyes.

“Make me search for you, and I’ll break the other side of your face.”

She shifted her weight, preparing to run even though she knew she would never reach the road in silver heels.

Then the driveway filled with light.

Three black SUVs tore through the rain in tight formation. The lead vehicle swung toward the patio and stopped so sharply that gravel sprayed across the steps.

Richard turned, raising an arm against the glare.

“Hey!” he shouted. “You can’t park there. This is a private event.”

The doors opened.

Large men in dark suits stepped into the downpour. They moved without confusion or wasted motion, spreading around the driveway while one of them opened the rear door of the lead SUV.

Gilbert Mercer emerged.

The man Nebula had called was not a police officer, a lawyer, or a relative.

He was the man federal agents had spent years trying to imprison.

He was also the man she had once loved.

Gilbert ignored the umbrella offered to him and walked directly into the rain.

His gaze moved across the patio, passed over Richard, and searched the shadows.

“Nebula.”

She made a broken sound before she could stop herself.

Gilbert found her behind the planter.

For one brief second, the absolute control in his face disappeared.

He crossed the patio and lowered himself into the mud in front of her. He did not grab her. He did not demand an explanation. He kept both hands where she could see them.

“I’m here,” he said.

Nebula looked at him through rain and tears.

“You came.”

“Of course I came.”

Three years earlier, she had walked away from Gilbert because she believed his world was too violent to survive.

Tonight, that violent world had reached her before anyone respectable had even noticed she was missing.

Gilbert removed his overcoat and draped it around her shoulders. The heavy wool carried the scent of cedar, tobacco, and cold night air.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded and gripped the lapels.

Behind him, Richard recovered from the shock of being ignored.

“Excuse me,” he snapped. “Who the hell do you think you are? That is my wife.”

Gilbert rose.

He positioned himself between them before turning around.

“Your wife,” he repeated.

“Yes, my wife.” Richard pointed past him. “Nebula, get over here. Right now. I don’t know who this thug is, but you are embarrassing me.”

Gilbert took one step toward him.

Two men near the SUVs slipped their hands inside their jackets.

Richard stopped moving.

“You hit her,” Gilbert said.

“She fell.”

Gilbert studied him in silence.

“She was drinking,” Richard added quickly. “She slipped on the wet stones.”

Gilbert glanced at the swelling along Nebula’s jaw.

“That injury came from a concentrated impact,” he said. “Not a fall.”

Richard swallowed.

“Who are you?”

Gilbert closed the distance between them.

“I’m the consequence.”

His hand locked around Richard’s throat and drove him against the brick wall. Richard’s breath escaped in a strangled wheeze.

Gilbert held him there without raising his voice.

“Look at me.”

Richard clawed at his wrist.

“You are going back inside,” Gilbert said. “You will sit at your table. You will smile for the photographs and eat the wedding cake. If anyone asks about Nebula, you will say she felt sick and left.”

Richard’s face was turning red.

“You will not call her. You will not approach her. You will not send anyone to find her.”

Gilbert leaned closer.

“And if I learn that you tried, I will make you regret every locked door you ever stood behind.”

Richard’s eyes watered.

“Blink if you understand.”

He blinked frantically.

Gilbert released him.

Richard collapsed onto the grass, coughing and clutching his throat.

Gilbert turned away as if the man had ceased to exist.

He offered Nebula his hand.

“Let’s go.”

She looked down at Richard.

For three years, he had seemed enormous inside their house. His moods controlled the temperature of every room. The placement of his shoes, the sound of his key in the front door, the way he set down a drinking glass—each detail had warned her what kind of night was coming.

Now he was on his knees in the rain.

Nebula put her hand in Gilbert’s.

His palm was warm.

Only an hour earlier, the country club ballroom had been filled with champagne, white lilies, and carefully arranged happiness.

Her younger sister Chloe had been radiant in white satin, dancing with her new husband beneath amber lights. Guests laughed around the open bar. An ice sculpture glittered near the dance floor.

Nebula had sat at the head table beside Richard with her hands folded in her lap.

To everyone else, Richard Trent was charming, successful, and generous. He was an architect who designed hospitals and donated to charities. He had paid for part of the wedding and charmed Nebula’s parents with stories about clients and travel.

Under the tablecloth, his fingers had been buried in her thigh.

The grip was not affectionate. His nails pressed through the silk of her dress, warning her not to move without permission.

“You’re quiet tonight,” he had murmured. “People are going to think you aren’t happy for your sister.”

“I’m happy.”

“Then smile.”

She smiled.

The pressure on her thigh increased until a gasp escaped her.

No one noticed.

No one ever noticed.

“I need the restroom,” she whispered.

Richard had watched her face, deciding whether to allow it.

“Five minutes. Don’t talk to anyone on the way. You’ve had enough wine.”

Nebula had not touched her glass.

She crossed the ballroom while relatives waved and smiled at her. She nodded back, pushed through the mahogany doors, and entered the empty corridor beyond.

Instead of going to the restroom, she walked to a secluded smoking patio.

She needed air that did not smell like Richard’s cologne.

The freezing drizzle had cleared some of the fog from her mind. She stood beneath the awning, wrapped her arms around herself, and counted the hours remaining before she would have to leave with him.

Then the door clicked shut behind her.

“I thought I said five minutes.”

Richard stood between her and the ballroom.

“I needed air.”

“Air?” His public smile had disappeared. “Or were you hoping that bartender would follow you?”

“He offered me water.”

“You made me look like a fool.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

His fist struck the side of her jaw.

The blow snapped her head against the brick wall. White light burst behind her eyes, followed by a violent ringing that swallowed the music and rain.

She fell onto her hands and knees.

Richard looked down at her with cold annoyance.

“Look what you made me do. You ruined the dress.”

She tasted blood.

“I’m going back inside,” he said. “You have ten minutes to clean yourself up. If you aren’t at the table when they cut the cake, we’re going home.”

He paused at the door.

“And we both know what happens when we go home angry.”

After he left, Nebula remained on the wet stones.

She touched her jaw and imagined the drive to the suburbs. The dark house. The locked doors. The basement stairs.

A certainty settled through her.

If she got into Richard’s car that night, he was going to kill her.

Nebula pulled out her cracked phone.

She did not call the police.

They had come twice before.

Each time, Richard had greeted them as a worried husband. He had said Nebula drank too much, suffered depressive episodes, and sometimes hurt herself when she became confused. He had spoken calmly while she stood in the background, terrified of what would happen after they left.

The officers had asked whether she felt safe.

Richard had stood close enough to hear the answer.

Nebula had said yes.

The police needed statements, evidence, and time.

She had none of those things.

She had ten minutes.

Her fingers dialed a number she had sworn to forget.

Gilbert answered after two rings.

He did not say hello.

Nebula could hear silence on his end and the faint movement of men in a distant room.

“Can you come get me?” she whispered.

Gilbert recognized the damage in her voice before she explained it.

“Where are you?”

“Oakridge Country Club. Outside, near the patio.”

“Are you alone?”

“Right now.”

“Stay out of sight. Do not go back inside.”

“He gave me ten minutes.”

Her voice broke.

“I’m so cold.”

“Look toward the road,” Gilbert said. “Keep your eyes there. I’ll be the headlights.”

At that moment, Gilbert had been seated in a windowless room beneath one of his restaurants. A man who owed him money knelt on a tarp while an enforcer waited nearby with a wrench.

The debtor had been begging for another week.

Gilbert had been deciding whether to give it to him when Nebula’s number appeared on his phone.

Three years of silence vanished in a single breath.

After the call, Gilbert stood.

“Clean this up,” he told his men.

The enforcer glanced toward the kneeling debtor. “What should we do with him?”

“Put him in the alley.”

“And the debt?”

“Forgiven.”

The debtor stared in disbelief.

Gilbert headed for the door.

“I don’t have time to kill him tonight.”

He had somewhere more important to be.

Now, inside the SUV, Nebula sank into a leather seat and pulled Gilbert’s coat around her ruined dress.

The door closed, shutting out the rain.

Gilbert sat beside her but left space between them. He opened a compartment, removed a first-aid kit, and activated a chemical cold pack.

“May I?”

Nebula nodded.

He moved a strand of wet hair away from her face. His scarred hands were careful as he placed the pack against her jaw.

She flinched.

“Hold it there,” he said. “Fifteen minutes on, fifteen off.”

The SUV moved away from the country club.

Nebula watched the lights slide across the tinted window.

She had left her husband. She had abandoned her sister’s reception. She had called a man accused of controlling half the city’s criminal economy.

All she felt was relief.

“You didn’t ask what happened,” she said.

“I saw your face.”

“He told people I had a drinking problem. That was his explanation for the bruises. I was clumsy. I fell. I imagined things.”

Gilbert looked toward the windshield.

“Isolate the victim. Discredit the witness. It’s an old tactic.”

“I wanted a normal life.”

The words hurt more than her jaw.

“When I left you, I said I couldn’t live with the guards and secrets. I wanted a house with a lawn. A husband who went to an office. Something boring and safe.”

Gilbert turned back to her.

“You found another monster,” he said. “He was simply better at pretending.”

Nebula lowered her gaze to her muddy knees.

She had mistaken legality for decency. She had believed a clean résumé meant clean hands.

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

“My apartment?”

“You no longer have an apartment.”

His tone was firm, but he did not touch her.

“You are staying at my house tonight. The windows are reinforced. The elevator is private. Armed security controls every entrance. You will sleep, and tomorrow we will decide what comes next.”

For the first time in years, an order did not feel like a threat.

Nebula leaned against the headrest and let exhaustion take her.

Morning light found her beneath a heavy gray duvet.

She woke without moving.

During her marriage, every morning had begun with an assessment. Richard’s breathing. His posture. Whether his shoes had been kicked off or placed neatly beside the bed. Whether he had been drinking. Whether the silence meant calm or punishment.

Now the room was still.

Nebula crossed the large bedroom and entered the bathroom.

The mirror showed the truth Richard had taught her to hide.

One side of her jaw was swollen and purple. Yellow bruising had begun to spread down her neck. A small cut marked her temple.

She stared at herself until the face in the glass stopped looking like someone else’s.

When she entered the main living area, Gilbert was seated at a long oak table surrounded by laptops and folders. His white shirt sleeves were rolled to his forearms.

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” he said. “And eggs.”

A plate waited beneath a glass cover.

Nebula poured coffee and sat across from him.

Gilbert looked at the bruises.

Only a slight tightening around his mouth betrayed him.

“Does it hurt?”

“Only when I breathe.”

He closed the folder in front of him.

“My lawyer filed for an emergency protective order. A team is collecting your belongings from the house.”

Nebula lowered her mug.

“Richard will never let them in.”

“Richard is at work.”

“He’ll call the police.”

“He can call anyone he likes.”

Gilbert slid another folder toward her.

“The house is being repossessed.”

“You can’t just take his house.”

“I hold the mortgage through one of my companies. He signed an agreement he never bothered to read carefully. He is in default.”

“Gilbert.”

“He’s lucky I stopped at the house.”

She stared at him.

He stood and walked to the windows.

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

There was no accusation in the question. That made it worse.

Nebula held her coffee in both hands.

“Because calling you meant admitting I was wrong.”

Gilbert remained facing the city.

“I stood in this room three years ago and told you that your world was toxic. I said I couldn’t build a family with a criminal. I wanted to prove I could choose a good man.”

Her throat tightened.

“Richard built hospitals. He attended charity dinners. He spoke softly to my parents. I ignored the way he treated waiters. I ignored how hard he held my arm when he was angry.”

She looked down at the table.

“By the time he hit me the first time, we were married. I was ashamed. I thought leaving would prove that I had failed again.”

Gilbert pulled out the chair beside her and sat down.

“You didn’t fail.”

“I stayed.”

“You survived.”

“I feel broken.”

“You’re injured,” he said. “There is a difference.”

She looked at him.

“The bruises will fade. The fear will take longer. You’ll eat. You’ll sleep. You’ll make decisions when you’re ready. Until then, no one reaches you without going through me.”

“Why are you doing this after everything I said?”

A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth.

“Because when you left, I believed you were right. I thought you deserved a safer life than I could offer.”

The smile disappeared.

“But if that safer world did this to you, then I’m done standing aside.”

The next four days passed in structured quiet.

Nebula wore soft clothes Gilbert’s staff left outside the bedroom. She moved through the penthouse slowly, carrying tea from room to room while the bruises changed from purple to yellow.

Gilbert worked nearby without hovering.

He did not ask her to describe every blow. He did not demand gratitude. He did not touch her without permission.

He simply began dismantling Richard’s life.

Nebula heard fragments of phone calls. A supplier terminated its contract with Richard’s architectural firm. Creditors appeared. Accounts were frozen. Business partners discovered liabilities they had previously overlooked.

Gilbert used influence the way other men used knives: precisely and with little wasted motion.

Three years earlier, that power had frightened her.

Now she watched from the kitchen island and felt no sympathy for Richard.

Gilbert ended a call and noticed her staring.

“You’re quiet.”

“I was thinking about the difference between you and him.”

“What difference?”

“Richard hurt me because it made him feel larger. He chose my clothes. Controlled who I spoke to. Counted my drinks even when I wasn’t drinking. Everything he did was meant to make me smaller.”

Gilbert waited.

“You control entire neighborhoods,” she continued. “You ruin people. But you never tried to ruin me.”

“I am not a good man, Nebula.”

“I know.”

“I destroy what stands in my way.”

He crossed the kitchen and placed a new phone beside her tea.

“But you were never in my way. You were the only thing I ever wanted to build.”

Nebula looked down at the device.

“Your old phone is gone,” he said. “My number is first. Security is second. No one else has this number unless you give it to them.”

“Did anyone call?”

“Your sister.”

Nebula’s stomach tightened.

“What did Richard tell her?”

“That you suffered a breakdown. That you began drinking, ran away with a dangerous stranger, and needed psychiatric treatment.”

Nebula closed her eyes.

It was exactly the story he had been preparing for years.

Her moods. Her supposed drinking. Her alleged accidents. Each lie had been placed like a brick in a wall.

“My family will believe him.”

“What they believe matters less than what you can show them.”

Gilbert nodded toward the phone.

“Call Chloe.”

Nebula stepped onto the balcony and dialed.

Her sister answered immediately.

“Hello?”

“Chloe, it’s me.”

“Nebula? Oh my God. Where are you? Mom has been crying. Richard is frantic. You disappeared from my wedding.”

“I didn’t disappear. I escaped.”

A pause.

“What are you talking about?”

“Richard is dangerous.”

“Nebula, he said you were having an episode. He said you were drinking again.”

“I wasn’t drinking.”

“He loves you. He’s been at Mom and Dad’s every day trying to find you.”

Nebula opened the camera on her phone.

She took a photograph in the hard daylight, making no attempt to soften what Richard had done.

Then she sent it.

Silence filled the call.

Chloe gasped.

“Did you get it?” Nebula asked.

“Oh my God.”

“He punched me on the patio during your reception because a bartender offered me water.”

Chloe began to cry.

“If I had gotten into his car that night,” Nebula said, “I don’t think I would have survived the weekend.”

“He was sitting in our kitchen yesterday. I hugged him.”

“Don’t tell him we spoke. Lock your doors. He is losing control, and that makes him dangerous.”

“Are you safe?”

Nebula turned toward the glass.

Inside, Gilbert sat at the table cleaning a weapon with methodical care. He looked up and found her watching him.

“Richard said you were with a monster,” Chloe whispered.

Nebula held Gilbert’s gaze.

“I am,” she said. “But he’s the reason I’m alive.”

By the sixth day, the penthouse began to feel too quiet.

Nebula asked to walk to a neighborhood coffee shop.

Gilbert did not forbid it. He put on his coat and accompanied her, remaining half a step behind while two guards followed at a distance.

The sidewalk was crowded with commuters and tourists. Nobody knew that Nebula’s first ordinary purchase in nearly a week felt like crossing an ocean.

She ordered a latte and carried it outside.

“Better?” Gilbert asked.

“Much.”

They turned toward the building.

“Nebula.”

The voice cut through the street noise.

Her cup slipped from her fingers and burst across the pavement.

Richard stepped out of an alley.

His polished appearance was gone. His suit was wrinkled and stained. His hair hung over bloodshot eyes. A bruise shaped like Gilbert’s grip darkened his neck.

Gilbert moved in front of Nebula.

“You have three seconds to step back,” he said.

Richard tried to look around him.

“Nebula, they took my firm. My accounts are frozen. The bank seized the house. This man is destroying my life.”

“Two,” Gilbert said.

“You think you can leave me?” Richard shouted. “I am your husband.”

Pedestrians moved away.

Richard lunged.

Gilbert caught his wrist and turned with the momentum.

The crack was sharp and final.

Richard fell to his knees, clutching his broken arm while Gilbert’s guards pulled him upright.

“Call the police!” Richard screamed. “He broke my arm!”

Gilbert straightened his cuffs.

“You were warned to stay away.”

Nebula stepped out from behind him.

Her legs trembled, but she remained standing.

Richard looked smaller than he ever had inside their house.

Without locked doors, prepared lies, or a woman too frightened to speak, he was not powerful. He was a desperate bully.

“Nebula,” he gasped. “Please. Look what he’s doing to me. Tell him to stop.”

She said nothing.

“I’m sorry I hit you. I was stressed. I didn’t mean it.”

Nebula touched the fading bruise along her jaw.

“You aren’t sorry you hit me,” she said. “You’re sorry someone stopped you.”

She turned to Gilbert.

“I’m ready to go home.”

Gilbert offered his arm.

This time, she took it by choice.

Inside the elevator, he told her Richard would be removed from the city and warned never to return.

Nebula leaned her head against Gilbert’s shoulder.

“Thank you.”

His arm settled around her waist.

“You never have to thank me for answering your call.”

Winter arrived, covering the city in gray frost.

Nebula’s jaw healed. The visible damage vanished first. The rest remained in habits she could not immediately break.

She still startled when doors closed too loudly. She apologized for using the kitchen. She sometimes woke at three in the morning convinced she had heard Richard’s key in the lock.

Gilbert never mocked those moments.

If she woke from a nightmare, he sat nearby without touching her until she remembered where she was. If she wanted space, he gave it. If she wanted company, he stayed.

He opened an account in her name and deposited more money than she could imagine spending.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Back pay.”

“For what?”

“The years he stole.”

Nebula did not touch the money.

She began walking each afternoon with David, one of Gilbert’s guards. He was a large, quiet man who treated every crosswalk like a military operation but learned which bakery sold the tea she liked.

The boundaries around her life were still visible—guards, reinforced doors, secure elevators—but they did not shrink her. For the first time, she was involved in deciding where they stood.

Gilbert kept his business out of the penthouse.

Weapons went into a biometric safe near the foyer. Orders remained in the secured office downtown. By the time he returned at night and rolled up his sleeves in the kitchen, he was simply Gilbert.

One evening in December, Nebula sat near the fireplace pretending to read.

Gilbert arrived late, poured two glasses of bourbon, and sat across from her.

“Rough day?” she asked.

“Port Authority disputes. Bureaucrats demanding a larger share of something they didn’t build.”

“You have enough money to disappear. You could buy an island.”

“I don’t do this for money.”

“Why, then?”

“Control.”

He looked into the fire.

“When you control the board, no one else can move the people you care about.”

His knuckles brushed her healed cheek and stopped, waiting.

Nebula leaned into his hand.

The small movement made him go still.

“I was naive,” she said. “I thought monsters only lived in alleys. I thought a man with a good watch and a respectable career was safe.”

“You wanted peace.”

“I found it here. In a fortress built by a criminal.”

Her smile carried no humor.

“With a man who broke my husband’s arm without blinking. What does that make me?”

Gilbert set his glass aside and knelt in front of her.

“It makes you someone who survived.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No. It isn’t.”

He took her hands.

“My world has a cost. I won’t lie to you about that. Staying with me means guards, enemies, and choices that will never look clean from the outside.”

“And leaving?”

Gilbert’s fingers loosened.

“Leaving is always your choice.”

The words struck deeper than any promise of protection.

Richard had called imprisonment love. Gilbert, for all his violence, opened the door.

“I spent three years being told every choice was dangerous,” Nebula whispered. “What I wore. Who I called. What I said. Even when I slept.”

Gilbert waited.

“I don’t want another man choosing my life for me.”

“Then choose it yourself.”

She studied him for any hint of manipulation.

There was none.

Nebula lifted his hand and pressed it against her cheek.

“I’m choosing to stay.”

Gilbert closed his eyes for one breath.

When he opened them, the control had returned, but not completely.

He kissed her gently.

There was no demand in it, no claim disguised as affection. It tasted of bourbon, patience, and the grief of three lost years.

Weeks later, Nebula met Chloe at a private restaurant Gilbert owned.

The dining room was closed to the public. Guards remained near the entrance, visible enough to reassure Nebula and terrify her sister.

Chloe sat with both hands around a glass of water.

“Mom and Dad still don’t understand,” she said. “They know Richard hurt you, but they think this is… extreme.”

“This?”

She glanced toward the guards.

“Living with Gilbert Mercer.”

Nebula sat back.

“Richard hurt me for three years.”

“I know.”

“No, Chloe. You know about the bruise you saw. You don’t know about the doors he locked, the money he hid, or the nights I slept on the bathroom floor because it was the only room with a bolt.”

Chloe’s face crumpled.

“He convinced everyone I was unstable. He did it so carefully that when I finally needed help, nobody believed I was capable of telling the truth.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I called the police twice. They left me with him.”

Chloe wiped her eyes.

“And Gilbert?”

“Gilbert came.”

“He’s a criminal.”

Nebula did not argue.

“Yes.”

“You’re not afraid of that?”

“Sometimes.”

Chloe stared at her.

“Then why stay?”

“Because Gilbert has never lied to me about what he is. Richard built a beautiful life as camouflage. Gilbert’s world is dangerous, but the danger is not hidden behind my bedroom door.”

She reached across the table.

“When Richard hit me, everyone inside that wedding kept dancing because they couldn’t see it. Gilbert saw my face once and stopped it.”

“That doesn’t erase what he’s done.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

Nebula’s voice remained calm.

“I’m not asking you to approve of him. I’m asking you to understand my decision. I will never return to the suburbs and pretend everything is normal.”

Chloe looked toward the entrance, then back at her sister.

“Are you happy?”

Nebula considered the quiet mornings, the private elevator, the guards, and the man who never touched her without waiting for permission.

“I’m safe,” she said. “Right now, that matters more.”

Chloe reached for her hand.

“I should have known.”

“You couldn’t have. Richard was an architect. Building convincing facades was what he did best.”

For the first time since the wedding, the bitterness between them began to loosen.

That evening, Nebula stood on the penthouse balcony while the city lights appeared one by one below.

The glass door opened behind her.

Gilbert stepped into the cold without a coat and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“How is your sister?”

“Terrified.”

“She’ll adjust.”

“She understands that I’m not going back.”

Gilbert held her closer.

Nebula rested her hands over his forearms.

The city below was violent, beautiful, and indifferent. Somewhere in its streets, Gilbert’s orders moved through warehouses, restaurants, courtrooms, and docks. His empire was not noble, and loving him did not make it so.

But he had never asked her to call darkness light.

He had only answered when she called from it.

Nebula turned in his arms and pressed a kiss against his neck.

“Thank you for coming to get me.”

Gilbert framed her face between his hands. His thumbs moved over the place where the bruise had once darkened her skin.

“I would have torn the city apart looking for you,” he said. “You only had to call.”

He kissed her beneath the winter sky.

Three years earlier, Nebula had believed safety meant choosing a man the world respected.

Now she understood that appearances had never protected her.

A choice had.

In the rain outside her sister’s wedding, bruised and nearly out of time, she had finally chosen herself—and the monster who came for her had been the first man who let her remain free.