Chapter 10 - Forever Bound
One year later, the city of Chicago was at peace—or at least as peaceful as a city could be under the absolute reign of the Ferrante syndicate.
The Coretti family had been dismantled, its assets liquidated or absorbed into legitimate shipping enterprises. Lorenzo had been sent to a private, heavily guarded compound in Sicily, never to return to American soil.
The morning sun streamed brightly through the floor-to-ceiling windows of our new penthouse overlooking Millennium Park.
In the dining room, Gabi sat eating blueberry pancakes, wearing a blue university hoodie from Columbia where she had just been accepted on a full academic scholarship.
“If you two don’t stop staring at each other like teenagers, I’m going to throw my syrup at you,” Gabi groaned, rolling her eyes as she flipped a page of her textbook.
Luca, seated at the head of the table in a sharp navy suit, merely chuckled, lifting his espresso cup in a mock toast. A heavy gold wedding band gleamed on his left finger, catching the sunlight.
I walked over, setting a fresh folder of shipping documents in front of him. On my left hand, a five-carat emerald-cut diamond sparkled beside a platinum band.
“What’s this?” Luca asked, glancing up at me with an arched brow.
“The updated quarterly projections for the lake transport fleet,” I replied with a professional smirk. “Cleaned, certified, and fully legitimized. I believe my contract requires me to deliver these by the first of every month.”
Luca reached out, catching my hand and pulling me down onto his lap with effortless strength. I gasped softly, wrapping my arms around his neck as he nuzzled the soft skin beneath my ear.
“I thought we established that you don’t work for me, wife,” he murmured, his thumb stroking my jawline with the same fiery tenderness that had captured my soul a year ago.
“I like keeping you in line, Ferrante,” I smiled, tilting my head back to meet his hazel eyes. “Someone has to make sure you don’t spend all our money on private armies and vintage gelato.”
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“You are the only army I need,” Luca said softly, his voice full of the quiet, unshakable devotion that had rebuilt my entire life from the ashes.
He leaned in, capturing my lips in a deep, slow kiss that tasted of sweet coffee, morning light, and a love forged in gunfire. Outside, the city was vast and perilous, but inside our walls, beneath the shadow of his protective wing, I was finally, irrevocably home."
