Page 166 of Vow Of Fire

That was the secret no one tells you about loving a villain. They think you’ll spend your life trying to tame him, to drag him into the light, to fix the broken person he is.

But I didn’t want Dante fixed. I wanted him exactly as he was. I wanted the rage and the tenderness, the violence and the devotion, the man who brought me coffee the way I liked it and would put a bullet in anyone who tried to hurt me.

I’d stopped trying to escape the flames a long time ago.

Now we were building our kingdom from the ashes. Together.

It was nearly midnight when I noticed the woman in ivory. She stood alone near the crimson-and-black abstract, an untouched flute of champagne in her hand.

I didn’t recognize her, and I knew everyone on the guest list.

She had wavy, dark hair, wore stunning shoes, and possessed a stillness that was out of place at a party.

Dante had noticed her too and crossed the room to stand beside me.

“Friend of yours?” he murmured.

“I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

Across the gallery, Marco noticed her too. My elegant, dangerous, soon to be brother-in-law, who spoke five languages and trusted no one in any of them, went very still. His charming smile remained fixed in place, but his eyes sharpened like cut glass.

The woman in ivory turned her head and met his gaze from across the crowded room. Then she smiled, like she knew something he didn’t.

While we watched, she set down her glass, turned, and walked out into the New York night. Even more surprisingly, Marco abandoned his conversation mid-sentence and followed.

“Trouble?” I asked Dante quietly.

He pulled me back against his chest, his lips at my ear.

“Not ours,” he murmured huskily. “Not tonight.”

And he was right. Tonight we were celebrating a new beginning. The war had been won, the city was ours, and our new life together was about to start.

I admired the ring on my finger, dancing in the overhead lighting. Whatever the woman in ivory had come for, she was clearly Marco’s problem.

Everyone was having a good time. The champagne flowed, the DJ played, guests danced—but I was oblivious to it all.

When Dante pulled me into his arms and kissed me, everything ceased to exist except him. The world might call him a monster, but tonight, and every night after, I called him mine.

EPILOGUE

Evelyn

We were married in the rain, three months to the day after Dante had made me that promise on the docks, both of us soaked to the skin with sirens closing in.

He’d offered me a cathedral. Five hundred guests, a gown flown in from Milan, every white rose in Manhattan. I chose the rooftop where he’d knelt for me, the people who had become mine, and a sky that split open the moment we exchanged our rings, as if the city itself had insisted on bearing witness.

Leo walked me down the makeshift aisle, his cane in one hand and my arm tucked firmly through the other. Marco stood as best man, charming and unreadable.

Chloe cried enough for everyone, but then she was still pining for Alexei, who’d gone to Paris for an indeterminate length of time. I was relieved nothing had happened between them, and when I’d asked, Mikhail had informed me he’d gotten into some trouble and was laying low for a time.

Izzy looked formidable in leather, while Nico kept one earbud in, and Kyle and Max both grinned at me from the front row like proud brothers.

Valentina, in a stunning dove-gray dress, watched her son promise himself to me, a small smile playing on her lips. From her, that was as good as a blessing.

And Dante stood in a black suit that probably cost more than my first year’s rent at the gallery, an intense expression on that beautiful, brutal face, looking at me the way he had from the very beginning. Like I was the only thing in the world worth looking at.

When we’d exchanged rings and been pronounced husband and wife, he took my face in both hands and tilted my mouth up to his. He kissed me like a vow, and I burned gladly in his fire.