"The mafia boss returned home early after 364 nights—and caught his wife collapsed on the cold chapel stone."

Dante Caruso sat on the low oak pew, his hand pressed firmly against the dressing on his left shoulder. His storm-gray eyes—eyes that had stared down rival syndicate bosses, federal prosecutors, and armed assassins without a flicker of emotion—were fixed entirely on the floor beneath his feet.

There were two distinct, smooth depressions in the granite before the altar steps.

They were not ancient history. They were damp, stained with fresh candle soot and faint traces of dried blood.

"How many nights, Maren?" Dante asked again. His baritone was barely a whisper, yet it vibrated through the small stone room like a low, resonant bell.

Maren knelt on the cold stone before him, her hands busy adjusting the medical gauze over his wound. She kept her face lowered, her dark hair falling forward to veil her features. She wore a simple gray woolen nightdress, now stained at the knees with stone dust and red circles.

"It doesn't matter, Dante," Maren replied softly. Her voice was steady, quiet, and entirely lacking in drama or self-pity. "Hold the pad firmly. The doctor will be here in ten minutes."

"It matters to me," Dante rasped out. He reached down with his uninjured right hand, his large, calloused fingers gently catching her chin, tilting her face upward into the candlelight.

He looked at her. Really looked at her.

For twelve months—three hundred and sixty-four days—he had returned to their estate in Lake Forest after midnight, smelling of rain, smoke, and industrial salt. He had believed he was protecting her by keeping his distance. He had convinced himself that his coldness was a shield, that keeping Maren away from his dangerous world would keep her safe from the flames that had consumed his warehouse a year ago.

He had thought she slept peacefully in the master bedroom while he walked the perimeter grounds or buried himself in his study.

He had never known that every night at 11:00 PM, when the estate guards shifted posts, Maren would slip down the rear stone stairs, walk through the freezing orchard, and kneel on bare granite in this unheated chapel, praying for his life until the sound of his car engine signaled he was back inside the gates.

"Three hundred and sixty-four," Maren whispered, meeting his gaze without flinching. "Tonight was three hundred and sixty-five."

Dante went completely still. "Why?"

"Because a year ago, when the warehouse burned," Maren said, her hazel eyes clear and unyielding, "your brother Julian told me that if you survived that night, it was a miracle. He said the men who set that fire would come back to finish the job. He told me that every night you stayed out past midnight was a night you were hunting them... or being hunted."

"Julian told you that?" Dante’s jaw set into a hard, dangerous line.

"I didn't care about the syndicate, Dante," Maren continued quietly. "I didn't care about the money or the estate. I only cared that you came through that gate alive every night. And since I had no gun, no authority, and no place in your world... I came here."

She reached down, gently pulling her hem down to cover her bare, raw knees, but the bloody bandages beneath the fabric had already told the full story.

The front doors of the chapel swung open with a heavy thud.

Dr. Alexander Reed stepped into the room, carrying a black leather medical bag, accompanied by Dante's chief enforcer, Marcus Vance.

"Don Dante!" Marcus gasped, taking in the scene—the blood on Dante's shoulder, the open first-aid kit, and Maren kneeling on the floor. "We swept the perimeter. The sniper who took the shot at the docks was eliminated."

Dr. Reed rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside Dante. "Let me see that shoulder, Dante."

Dante didn't look at the doctor. He looked at Marcus Vance, his gray eyes flashing with a sudden, chilling authority that dropped the chapel's temperature to freezing.

"Marcus," Dante commanded flatly.