I held her like I could will her heart to start again. Like I could trade mine for hers. Like if I kissed her hard enough, whispered her name enough times, she’d open her eyes and grin at me with that smug little smirk.
But she didn’t.
And I cried. Loud. Shaking. Wretched. The kind of tears that rip open old wounds and gut you raw.
I hadn’t cried like that since I was nine, but now I howled like an animal.
The pain wasn’t just in my chest—it spread through my entire body, seeping into bone, into muscle, into every breath I tried to take. It kept growing, second by second, like something inside me was tearing wider, deeper, with no end to it.
It wasn’t just pain. It was everything at once—grief, rage, loss—so heavy it felt like it would crush me from the inside out.
“You can’t be gone. You can’t,” I whispered, arms wrapped tight around her like I could fuse us together. “You’re supposed to see him grow. Laugh with him. Fight with me about what we name our second.”
“Malaya, please,” I sobbed. “Don’t leave me to raise him in a world without you.”
Silence.
“I love you,” I said into her hair. “That’s all I know how to do.”I kissed her again and again—her mouth, her cheek, her closed eyes—like love could shock her back to life.
I sat there until they ripped her out of my arms.
Hands grabbed my shoulders.
I snarled, twisting, shoving back. Someone shouted my name. Another voice ordered me to let go. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I fought like they were trying to rip my heart out with their bare hands—because they were.
They dragged me backward inch by inch while I clawed forward, fingers slipping on her hospital gown, my grip tearing loose.
“No,” I roared. “Don’t touch her. She’s mine.”
The guards pinned my arms. Forced me down. Held me as they lifted her from the bed and wheeled her away.
I watched her disappear through the door.
One moment, I had a reason to live.
The next, I was still breathing—but nothing inside me was alive.
Epilogue 1
They buried her two days later. A quiet ceremony. No speeches. Just a few of my men standing at a distance, heads bowed, hands folded like they knew nothing they said would matter. Valeria stood off to the side in dark shades, swaying gently, already detached, already slipping back into whatever poison she could find to kill the pain. She’d lost her best friend. So I couldn’t really blame her. But I was also too numb to care, too numb to try to pull her out of it.
Kira’s mother cried the way only someone who has already lost too much can cry—from the stomach, from the bones. And I stood there with Anton in the crook of my arm, his tiny face slack with sleep, unaware that his mother was being lowered into the earth just meters away.
I didn’t speak. Didn’t cry. Didn’t look away from the coffin until the last shovel of dirt hit the lid with a dull thud, like a final insult. I was so hollow I wondered if my soul had slipped out when I wasn’t looking. What remained felt like the old me—theone from before she ever walked into my life. The one made of anger and ash.
She was supposed to live. She was supposed to raise our child, to grow old with me. To be free. To be mine.
But death doesn’t care about what you’re owed. It comes when it wants, and it leaves you with ruin. And me? I should have known better. I should have known that fate doesn’t give second chances to men like me. That whatever miracle had placed her in my arms would rip her away with equal cruelty.
I should have sent her away the first night she came to my apartment. I should have killed that nurse when I killed the judge. Hell, I shouldn’t have taken the job at all. If I hadn’t followed orders like a good little monster, maybe she’d still be breathing.
Her death is mine to carry. Every version of it.
I thought about ending my own life more than once. But every time I touched the barrel, something stopped me. Not hope. Rage.
So I leaned into it.
I started taking jobs again, more than I could handle. Stopped sending my men and started going myself. I followed every trail that smelled like guilt, every bastard who had ever believed I’d forgotten. Blood became purpose again. I was doing what I was born for—the only thing I had ever done right.
