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“Because I was afraid that if you knew everything, you would never look at me the way you once did.”

Ronan pulled me gently against him, careful of his wound. I rested my head against his chest and listened to his heartbeat. Neither of us tried to explain away what we felt. There was nothing left to hide.

For several moments, neither of us moved. Ronan’s arms remained around me, careful of his injury, while I listened to the steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek. I’d spent so long believing that loving him meant betraying my parents that admitting the truth felt almost impossible.

Yet standing there with him, I finally understood that my feelings had never erased what happened to my family. They’d simply survived alongside the pain. I lifted my head and looked at him.

“I don’t want to run from you anymore. I’m terrified, but I’m tired of letting fear decide everything for me.”

He touched my cheek gently. There was no urgency in the gesture, no attempt to take more than I was willing to give. When he kissed me, it was nothing like the encounters we’d shared before. There was no anger behind it and no secrets waiting beneath the surface. It was slow, careful, and almost unbearably tender.

For the first time since everything between us had begun, I wasn’t surrendering to desire or losing myself in the confusion of what we were.

I was choosing him with my eyes open. I knew who Ronan was. I knew what he’d done. I knew what his world had cost me, and I knew there would always be parts of the past that hurt.

But I also knew the man who’d carried me from a burning house. I knew the man who’d spent fifteen years carrying guilt without ever expecting me to forgive him. I knew the man who’d nearly died tonight because someone had tried to use me against him.

When we finally came together, there was nothing desperate about it. He moved slowly, giving me time, allowing the trust between us to matter more than the physical need that had complicated everything before. I felt no anger when I held him, only an overwhelming sense of relief that we’d finally stopped fighting what had been there between us all along.

I closed my eyes in pleasure as he thrust deep inside me. His movements seized my body with an unexplainable ecstasy. I could feel it move up my body and settle on my breasts. As if he knew, he went for them, and I couldn’t resist trembling at his tender touch.

“Oh…Ronan!”

He pulled me close now, and I arched on his body, using one arm to hook on to him. It was surprisingly convenient, and he didn’t hold back. I was careful not to hurt him. His lips were against my neck as he spilled inside me, his groans echoing in my ear as his body shuddered against mine.

Later, we lay together in the quiet room. Suddenly, I spoke.

“I forgive you.”

Ronan looked at me for a long time before replying. “Are you certain? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“No. This is something I need you to understand. I forgive you. Forgiveness doesn’t change what happened. My parents are still dead. My childhood is still gone. There are things about that night that will hurt me for the rest of my life. Forgiving you doesn’t make any of that disappear. But I understand now that you’ve been living with that night, too. You’ve carried it for fifteen years. You’ve punished yourself long enough.” He looked away, and I squeezed his hand. “I don’t want to punish you forever.”

He turned back toward me. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Maybe not,” I whispered. “But I’m choosing you anyway.”

He pulled me carefully into his arms, resting his chin against my hair.

For the first time, neither of us spoke about enemies, revenge, or the past. We simply stayed there together until sleep finally found us.

This was what peace felt like.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Sofia

Months passed before I realized that peace had quietly become part of my life. It didn’t arrive dramatically. There was no single morning when I woke up and suddenly felt safe. It happened gradually, through ordinary days that no longer ended with someone trying to kill me or another secret from my past threatening to destroy everything I’d built.

I returned to Nora’s Café part-time and settled back into the familiar rhythm of work. I’d missed the smell of coffee and the noise of conversations more than I’d realized.

Buried Saints continued too, but I changed its direction. I no longer wanted every episode to be about exposing someone or digging up another crime. I began focusing more on survivors, giving people a place to tell their own stories.

It felt different from the podcast I’d started years ago, but it also felt more honest. The attention surrounding my family’s fire eventually faded. Investigations that had once seemed ready to explode across Boston quietly disappeared, and the people who’d spent months demanding answers eventually found something else to talk about.

For the first time since childhood, I could breathe without expecting something terrible to happen.

Ronan changed, too. Our marriage no longer felt like a battlefield. He still worried about my safety, and I still argued with him when his protective instincts became excessive, but we’d learned how to meet somewhere in the middle.