Chapter 6 - The Confession in the MoonlightBy two o'clock in the morning, the chaos at the Vance estate had cleared. The guests had fled like rats from a sinking ship, Victor Vance was sitting in a holding cell downtown facing thirty years behind bars, and the federal grand jury had officially dismissed every lingering inquiry into Moreno Hospitality with an apology.
Roman and I rode back to the Long Island estate in the back of the Maybach, the city lights blurring past the tinted windows.
Inside the car, the partition was raised, separating us from the driver.
Roman was unusually quiet. He sat staring out the window, his jaw tight, his broad shoulders slightly slumped from the sheer exhaustion of a war that had finally, permanently ended.
I reached across the leather seat and placed my hand over his.
He turned, looking down at my fingers, and then up into my eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he intertwined his fingers with mine, holding on as if he were afraid I might dissolve into the night air.
"You terrified me tonight," Roman murmured, his voice uncharacteristically vulnerable.
I raised an eyebrow. "Me? You were the one facing a federal takedown by a corrupt board member."
"Not the board," Roman said, shifting closer until our shoulders touched. "When you stood up at that table, wearing that dress, exposing your scars to a room full of vultures who would have used any weakness against you... I realized something terrifying."
"What's that?"
"I spent years believing that love was a liability," Roman whispered, his dark eyes searching mine with an intensity that stole the breath from my lungs. "I believed that letting someone close enough to see your scars was an invitation for them to destroy you. But watching you tonight... I realized you didn't survive because you hid your pain, Evelyn. You survived because your strength makes monsters look like children."
My throat tightened. For months, I had carried the weight of my past like a heavy iron chain. But hearing those words from the man everyone called a monster felt like the final lock clicking open.
"I'm not afraid anymore, Roman," I whispered.
He leaned in, closing the distance between us, and kissed me—not with the performative cruelty of our wedding day, not with the cold calculation of a mafia alliance, but with a fierce, burning tenderness that tasted like absolute freedom.
May you like
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine in the dark cabin of the car.
"Neither am I," he said.
