The room is cavernous. It used to be a ballroom, maybe a century ago. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the sprawling, fortified back gardens. The space is empty, save for a drafting table sitting directly in the center.
Enzo walks me to the table.
Blueprints cover the surface. Dozens of them. Detailed architectural drawings, electrical schematics, and material swatches.
I lean over the table. My brow furrows. I study the lines and measurements. I expect to see tactical choke points, reinforced steel doors, or camera placements. That is what the Fixer does. He builds cages. He builds traps.
But these are not traps.
I trace a finger over a vaulted room labeled on the paper. "Library. Custom mahogany shelving. Climate-controlled."
I look at the next sheet. "Greenhouse. Automated irrigation. Reinforced glass."
I look at the master suite schematic. A sprawling, open-concept space with a stone fireplace, dual offices, and a walk-in closet the size of my old apartment.
I look up at Enzo. He stands still. He watches my face with an intensity that borders on agonizing. His hands are shoved deep into his pockets. For the first time since I met him, the brilliant, calculating mafia strategist looks nervous.
"What is this?" I whisper.
"This is the East Wing," Enzo says. His voice is dangerously quiet. "It has been empty since I was ten. Sealed the night my mother and father were killed. Dominic locked it up. No one comes in here."
My throat tightens. The gravity of the room suddenly presses down on me.
Enzo steps closer to the table. He points to the greenhouse on the blueprint. "You need a place for your basil and mint. The litigation hours killed every herb you tried to keep on your apartment windowsill. When you run your practice from this house, you will need somewhere to step away from the casework. You need your own dirt. Your own sunlight."
He points to the library. "You have sixty-four boxes of legal texts currently sitting in a storage unit downtown. The climate control is terrible. The humidity will ruin the bindings. They need a permanent home."
He points to the dual offices. "You refuse to stop working. I respect that. But you are not going back to a corporate firm that treats you like a disposable asset. You will run your own practice. Out of this house. For the family, and for whoever else you deem worthy of your absolute, terrifying intellect. We work side by side."
I stare at the blueprints. The scale of it. The permanence of it.
I have spent my entire life moving. Upgrading apartments, changing firms, outrunning my own crushing debt. I never unpacked my boxes. I never bought real furniture. I treated my entire existence like a temporary holding pattern, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I look at the date stamp on the corner of the master blueprint. Drafted four months ago. He has been building me a home since before he ever walked into Il Corvo. Enzo Costa did not just pay off my debt. He did not just protect me from hitmen. He sat down at a drafting table and designed an entire world to my specifications. He calculated every variable of my happiness, and he drafted it into reality.
"Enzo," I choke out. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. I violently refuse to cry, blinking rapidly to clear my vision.
He pulls his hands out of his pockets. He steps around the drafting table. He stops right in front of me.
He reaches for my left hand. He touches the diamond ring on my fourth finger. The ring that started as a lie. The ring that forced me into his world.
He slides it off my finger.
Panic spikes through me. A sudden, irrational certainty that the contract is being voided in the wrong direction grips me. My hand feels instantly naked. The phantom metal leaves a cold ring around my skin.
"Wait," I say, my voice cracking.
Enzo drops to one knee.
The air in the empty ballroom vanishes. My lungs cease functioning.
The cold, ruthless Fixer. The man who treats people like pawns on a chessboard. The strategist who just put a bullet in a man in a maintenance bay and collapsed the West Loop transit hub to keep me safe. He kneels on the dusty hardwood floor, looking up at me with quiet surrender.
He holds the ring up between his thumb and index finger.
"The contract is void," Enzo says. His voice echoes in the empty room. "The operation is blown. Jeff is in our custody. The file tying your name to the laundering is gone. You owe me nothing.You are completely free to walk out of these gates and never look back."
I stare down at him. My heart slams against my ribs like a caged animal.
