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Not as the man named in the Serra files. Not as the man whose signature had appeared beside manifests detailing trafficked women and shipments moved through the Coccico network.

I thought of the man who had run behind my bicycle until he was breathless, laughing as I wobbled down the driveway. The man who had held my hand when I was frightened of thunderstorms. The father who had kissed my forehead and told me I could be anything I wanted to be.

I still couldn’t comprehend how those two men could exist inside the same person.

Perhaps that was the part I would never reconcile. Maybe there was no clean line between them.

My father had done terrible things. Whatever reasons he had given himself, whatever lines he had convinced himself he would never cross, he had crossed them. People had suffered because of him. Some had died.

I could not erase that because I loved him. But neither could I erase the man I had known because I had discovered the truth.

He had spent years gathering evidence against the Coccico cartel. He had hidden it so carefully that even the people closest to him had known nothing about it. And when they came for him, he had died protecting the evidence that would eventually bring the cartel down.

It did not absolve him. But it mattered.

I had finally learned that two things could be true at once. I could love my father and hate what he had done. I could mourn him without forgiving everything. And perhaps, eventually, I could stop carrying his sins as though they belonged to me.

My gaze moved to Demitri.

He was watching me from across the garden, quiet as always, but I knew him well enough now to see what others might have missed. The slight tension in his jaw. The way his eyes never quite left mine.

He had his own ghosts. His own burdens. His own choices to live with.

The collar he had worn for ten years had never erased the man beneath it. Neither had his decision to leave the Church changed what he had done before he entered it. He could not undo the dead. He could not undo the violence, or become innocent simply because he had spent a decade trying to become someone else.

But he had opened the church doors when I stumbled through them. He had hidden me. Protected me. And when protecting me meant stepping back into the world he had spent years trying to escape, he had done it without hesitation.

A few days ago, he had walked into the fire to save the women and children the Coccico were trafficking. He had not asked who deserved saving. He had simply gone in.

I wondered if that was what forgiveness really looked like. Not pretending the past had never happened. Not deciding that evil disappeared because someone had eventually done good. Perhaps it was simply accepting that people could be more than the worst thing they had ever done.

My father. Demitri. Even me.

I rose from the bench. Demitri's eyes followed me as I crossed the space between us. When I stopped in front of him, he looked up at me, and something in his expression softened.

There was no question between us anymore. No hesitation and no waiting for me to decide whether I wanted him, because I had already decided.

I rested my hands on his shoulders.

His hands settled on my waist immediately, familiar now, warm and certain. He pulled me closer, and I leaned down to kiss him.

There was nothing desperate about it. No fear that this might be our last moment. No urgency born from knowing the world could take everything from us tomorrow. Just us. And for once, that was enough.

When we parted, his forehead rested against mine.

“I want you to stay,” he said.

The words were quiet. They carried more weight than any grand declaration could have.

I lifted my head.

“With you?”

His mouth curved faintly.

“If you'll have me.”

I smiled.