“Gone.”

“Gone.”

I studied his face.

“You can’t erase your past.”

“I know.”

“You may still answer for things.”

“I know.”

“You’re okay with that?”

He looked toward the water.

“No.”

At least he was honest.

Then he looked back at me.

“But I’m done pretending power is worth what happened to you.”

He moved his chair closer.

“The day you got shot, I thought I could control everything.”

His jaw tightened.

“Then you were bleeding in my hands, and I couldn’t buy one extra heartbeat.”

I swallowed.

“Dante—”

“No. Let me finish.”

That was new.

Usually he was the one interrupting people.

“I don’t want you because you saved my mother.”

He took my hand.

“I want you because you insult my coffee. Because you tell me when I’m being an idiot. Because my mother laughs more when you’re in the house.”

His voice dropped.

“And because when you walk into a room, I remember I’m still capable of wanting something that isn’t based on fear.”

Then he reached into his coat.

I stared.

“Do not tell me you’re proposing while I still walk like somebody’s grandmother.”

He laughed.

Actually laughed.

Rosa shouted through the open door.

“Say yes anyway!”

I covered my face.

Dante looked toward the house.

“You were listening?”

“Of course.”

He opened the ring box.

Simple diamond.

No ridiculous mansion-sized rock.

Thank God.

“I’m not asking you to forget who I was,” he said.

“I’m asking if you’ll stay long enough to see who I become.”

I looked at the ring.

Then at him.

“Only if I’m allowed to keep throwing therapy equipment at you.”

“Deal.”

But one final piece of the old world still had to fall.

PART 8: The traitors lost everything, and I walked away free

“Dominic looked straight at me in court and called me the reason his life was ruined.”

Six months after the shooting, I sat behind federal prosecutors in a Manhattan courtroom.

My scars still pulled when I twisted too quickly.

My shoulder still hated cold weather.

But I walked in without help.

That mattered.

Dominic Rossi looked older.

No custom suit.

No gold watch.

No men opening doors for him.

Victor Russo sat three seats away with his attorneys.

The government had security footage from the hospital garage.

Bank records.

The diner recording.

Phone messages.

And testimony from one of Russo’s own drivers.

Enough.

Dominic took a plea after the first week.

Victor fought longer.

Lost anyway.

Their assets were seized.

Their political connections disappeared.

Men who once rushed to shake their hands suddenly swore they barely knew them.

Funny how loyalty works when subpoenas arrive.

Dante faced consequences too.

He surrendered financial records, paid enormous penalties, gave up several companies tied to illegal activity, and spent months answering investigators through his attorney.

He wasn’t magically declared innocent.

I wouldn’t have respected a lie like that.

But he cooperated.

He walked away from the organization.

Tommy took a legitimate security position with one of the shipping companies after passing enough background checks to make him complain for weeks.

Rosa kept improving.

By spring, she could cross the kitchen with a cane.

She still cheated during exercises.

Some people never change.

As for me?

I reopened a small rehabilitation clinic in Queens.

My name on the lease.

My rules.

Dante offered to buy the building.

I told him absolutely not.

He bought the coffee machine instead.

I allowed that.

One Saturday morning, I stood outside the clinic while contractors installed the final sign.

Cars crawled through traffic.

A police siren wailed several blocks away.

Someone across the street carried bagels in a paper sack.

Normal New York.

Dante stood beside me in jeans and a dark jacket.

No bodyguards.

No armored convoy.

Just him.

Rosa waited in the passenger seat, honking because we were apparently taking too long.

Dante glanced at me.

“You regret taking the job?”

I thought about my old apartment.

The eviction notice.

The first night in Oyster Bay.

The garage.

Five bullets.

His blood-covered hands shaking over mine.

“No.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Not even the shooting?”

“That part gets a bad Yelp review.”

He laughed.

Then his expression softened.

“I love you.”

There was a time when hearing those words from Dante Marino would have terrified me.

Now?

I looked at the man beside me.

Not a king.

Not a monster.

Not a headline.

Just a flawed man who had finally understood that protecting people meant more than owning enough guns to scare the world.

“I love you too.”

Rosa leaned on the horn again.

“GET IN THE CAR!”

I laughed so hard my side hurt.

Dante opened my door.

And for the first time since my father got sick, I wasn’t counting bills.

I wasn’t running from anything.

I wasn’t trying to save anyone.

I was simply going home.

And behind us, the people who had tried to destroy that future were sitting in cells, stripped of their money, their influence, their reputations, and every ounce of power they once believed made them untouchable.

I carried five scars.

They carried sentences.

I could live with that.