The Mafia Boss Woke With Her Hand in His and Learned Too Late Who Wanted Her Gone
“Miss Pierce, I suggest you remember the nature of your position in this house.”
Her face changed.
Not to fear.
That would have been easier.
It became disappointed.
“You’re right,” she said quietly. “I’m your employee. I’ll remember that.”
She walked out.
The door closed softly behind her.
Gideon wished she had slammed it.
The silence left behind was worse.
He had spent eleven years convincing himself that distance protected people.
Now one disappointed look from Rosalind made the entire mansion feel empty.
The following afternoon, an old family adviser named Lucian Ardell arrived.
Lucian was sixty-three, silver-haired, soft-spoken, and beloved by nearly everyone on the Moretti staff.
He had been Gideon’s father’s closest friend.
He had known Gideon since childhood.
Antonia, the estate’s elderly cook, kissed his cheeks when he arrived.
The gardener shook his hand.
Even Tobias Reyes, Gideon’s famously suspicious head of security, treated Lucian with respect.
“You must be Rosalind,” Lucian said warmly.
He took both her hands.
“I hear you’ve accomplished the impossible.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve made Gideon eat regular meals.”
She laughed.
Before leaving after dinner, Lucian pulled a small blue tin from his coat.
“My sister makes this herbal tea. Chamomile, lemon balm, things I cannot pronounce. Gideon hasn’t slept properly in years.”
He lowered his voice conspiratorially.
“He refuses everything from me. But I have a feeling he might accept something from you.”
Rosalind hesitated.
“We’re currently experiencing a minor diplomatic crisis.”
Lucian smiled knowingly.
“All the more reason.”
She accepted the tin.
The next evening, an alarm screamed through the Moretti estate.
A suspicious van had been spotted near the eastern security gate.
Rosalind saw Gideon entering the main hall surrounded by guards.
Every trace of the tired man from the library had vanished.
This Gideon was cold.
Focused.
Commanding.
“Everyone to the east corridor,” he ordered.
Rosalind caught his sleeve.
“What happened?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Rosalind.”
She froze.
It was the first time he had used her first name since the library.
“Move. Please.”
The please frightened her more than an order.
She went.
Twenty minutes later, the threat was cleared.
The van had been a test.
Someone had wanted to know how quickly Moretti security responded.
Gideon found Rosalind afterward.
“You were standing near a window when the alarm started.”
“I was checking on the staff.”
“Your job does not require you to stand where someone might put a bullet through glass.”
“Then tell me what’s happening instead of treating me like a child.”
His jaw tightened.
“You have no idea what people in my world might do to hurt me.”
“You’re right. Because you refuse to tell me anything.”
“That is deliberate.”
“Then stop pretending your distance is kindness.”
The words struck him visibly.
Rosalind’s anger softened.
“I don’t need every secret you have, Gideon. But if you want me in this house, stop making me feel like my presence is something you regret.”
She walked away.
Gideon watched her go.
He had faced armed men with less fear than he felt now.
The following night, Rosalind remembered Lucian’s tea.
She prepared it exactly as instructed.
Ten minutes steeping.
One spoonful of honey.
She carried it to Gideon’s library.
He looked up.
“Peace offering?” he asked.
“Possibly.”
She placed the cup beside him.
He lifted it.
“I behaved badly.”
Rosalind blinked.
“Was that an apology?”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“I’m trying to appreciate the historical significance.”
His mouth almost smiled.
He drank.
Made a face.
“This is terrible.”
“It’s herbal.”
“It tastes like lawn clippings.”
“Drink.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
For the first time since the sofa, the tension between them eased.
Rosalind left him working.
Forty minutes later, she returned for the cup.
Something was wrong.
Gideon sat behind the desk, unnaturally still.
His face had gone pale.
Sweat covered his forehead.
The teacup lay on its side.
“Gideon?”
His head turned slowly.
“Why is the lamp yellow?”
Everything inside Rosalind changed.
Six years disappeared.
She was twenty-four again, kneeling beside strangers beneath flashing ambulance lights.
She crossed the room and grabbed his wrist.
His pulse was dangerously slow.
Irregular.
“Look at me.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
She checked his pupils.
“Nausea?”
He nodded.
“Vision changes?”
“The lights have halos.”
Rosalind’s blood went cold.
“Tobias!” she shouted.
Footsteps thundered down the corridor.
She grabbed the phone.
“I need an ambulance at the Moretti estate. Forty-eight-year-old male, altered mental status, severe bradycardia, irregular pulse, nausea and visual disturbance. Possible cardiac glycoside poisoning.”
Reyes appeared in the doorway.
“What happened?”
“The tea.”
His gaze snapped toward the cup.
“Seal it. Nobody touches anything. Get the blue tin from the pantry and bag it separately.”
Gideon tried to stand.
“No hospital.”
Rosalind pushed him back into the chair.
“I beg your pardon?”
“No ambulance.”
“Your heart rate is under forty.”
“If I go to a hospital, everyone knows I’m vulnerable.”
“If you don’t go, everyone knows you’re dead.”
His eyes flashed.
Nobody spoke to Gideon Moretti like that.
Rosalind crouched in front of him.
“Listen to me. Whatever was in that tea is interfering with your heart. You can be powerful tomorrow. Tonight you’re a patient.”
“I hate hospitals.”
“I don’t care.”
“You are remarkably disrespectful.”
“And you’re still alive enough to complain, which is encouraging.”
His vision blurred.
Rosalind caught his face gently between her hands.
“Stay with me.”
Something in his expression broke.
Not fear of death.
Fear of leaving.
“Rosalind.”
“I’m here.”
“Stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He lost consciousness minutes later.
And when the paramedics finally carried the most dangerous man in Rhode Island from his own home, Rosalind climbed into the ambulance beside him and never let go of his wrist.
Gideon survived because Rosalind recognized the symptoms quickly.
The emergency physician told her that much before ordering her out of the treatment room.
So she waited.
Reyes waited.
Antonia arrived crying.
And shortly after one in the morning, Lucian Ardell came through the hospital doors wearing an overcoat over pajamas.
“My God,” he whispered. “Is he alive?”
“Stable,” Reyes said.
Lucian covered his face.
Then he looked at Rosalind.
“The tea.”
She said nothing.
“I gave you that tin.”
“Yes.”
Pain seemed to twist his expression.
“Oh, my dear girl.”
He sank into a chair.
Then, very softly, Lucian said, “Tobias, I hate even suggesting it, but the tea was prepared by Miss Pierce.”
Rosalind looked at him.
Lucian continued reluctantly.
“And foxglove grows in the Moretti greenhouse.”
Reyes’s expression changed almost imperceptibly.
“Miss Pierce called the ambulance,” he said.
“Of course.”
“She identified the poison.”
“Very clever.”
“She preserved the evidence.”
Lucian sighed.
“Exactly. Very clever.”
The implication settled over the waiting room.
Rosalind felt colder than she had while kneeling beside Gideon’s failing heart.
Two hours earlier, she had saved him.
Now she was a suspect.
Reyes looked at her.
“You will remain protected until Mr. Moretti is able to speak.”
Protected.
Watched.
They meant almost the same thing in Gideon’s world.
Rosalind sat quietly until dawn.
When Gideon opened his eyes, Rosalind was asleep in a plastic chair beside his hospital bed.
His throat felt scraped raw.
His chest hurt.
But she was there.
Her hair was tangled.
Her sweater was wrinkled.
Dark shadows sat beneath her eyes.
“You shouldn’t have stayed,” he rasped.
Her head snapped up.
“You were unconscious. It’s difficult to obtain permission from unconscious people.”
A laugh escaped him and became a wince.
“The doctor told me what you did.”
“She exaggerates.”
“She said you named the treatment before the ambulance arrived.”
Rosalind looked away.
“I used to be a paramedic.”
Gideon stared.
“For how long?”
“Two years.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked.”
He closed his eyes.
“I have been a fool about several things.”
Before she could answer, Lucian entered carrying flowers.
“Gideon, thank God.”
His relieved expression shifted when he saw Rosalind.
“Tobias and I were discussing the unfortunate questions surrounding Miss Pierce.”
“No.”
The word was quiet.
Lucian stopped.
Gideon’s face remained pale, but his voice had regained steel.
“A woman trying to poison me does not call an ambulance. She does not identify the substance. She does not preserve evidence. And she certainly does not spend the night beside my bed.”
He looked at Rosalind.
“She stays.”
“Gideon—”
“She stays, Lucian.”
A small silence.
Then Lucian smiled.
“Of course.”
Rosalind noticed something she would remember later.
The smile reached his mouth.
Not his eyes.
Gideon returned home five days later.
Two mornings after that, he found Rosalind in the greenhouse.
She was trimming dead leaves when he entered.
“I owe you an apology.”
She lowered the shears.
“For nearly dying after drinking my tea?”
“For treating your kindness as a threat.”
Her expression softened.
“That’s surprisingly self-aware.”
“I nearly died. Apparently it produces reflection.”
He stared through the glass walls toward the ocean.
“I was engaged once.”
Rosalind went still.
“Her name was Elena.”
He told her about the photograph she had seen.
Elena had taught music to children in Providence.
She knew almost nothing about Gideon’s real world because he had deliberately kept her outside it.
Eleven years earlier, someone trying to send Gideon a message had targeted the street outside the bridal shop where Elena was having her wedding dress fitted.
She never came home.
Gideon’s voice did not break while telling the story.
That made it worse.
“I decided no one would ever matter enough to me again to become leverage.”
Rosalind swallowed.
“And then?”
“A woman arrived in my house and began forcing me to eat soup.”
Despite herself, she smiled.
“I thought avoiding you would fix the problem.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
He turned toward her.
“Rosalind, I am afraid of what happens to people I love.”
She stepped closer.
“You cannot guarantee you’ll never lose someone.”
“I know.”
“You can only decide whether fear gets to control everything before you do.”
He looked at her hand resting on the potting table.
Slowly, he reached toward it.
Stopped.
“May I?”
The question meant more than touching her hand.
Rosalind placed her fingers in his.
“Yes.”
His grip closed around them.
“Stay.”
“As your household manager?”
“No.”
Gideon finally met her eyes.
“Stay because when you leave a room, I wait for you to come back.”
Something warm and painful rose in her throat.
“That,” she whispered, “is a much better answer.”
Their first dinner outside the estate was awkward.
Then wonderful.
Gideon discovered he had forgotten how to talk about things that were not business, enemies, or risk.
Rosalind asked about books.
Food.
Childhood.
Music.
She made him laugh until he looked almost startled by the sound.
Four security men sat badly disguised at a table across the restaurant.
“One of them is Marco,” Rosalind whispered.
“No.”
“He’s wearing a baseball cap.”
“Many men wear caps.”
“Marco ordered salad.”
Gideon glanced over.
“That is suspicious.”
Outside, harbor lights trembled across the water.
Gideon stopped beside the railing.
“I cannot promise you safety.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“There will always be people who dislike me.”
“That sounds like a personality issue.”
His mouth twitched.
“I am serious.”
“So am I.”
He looked at her.
“I will never lie to you and tell you my world is harmless.”
“Good.”
“And I will never ask you to stay if staying costs you the life you want.”
“Then don’t make that decision for me.”
Rosalind touched his cheek.
“You’re allowed to be afraid of losing something. But you don’t get to call it protection every time you push it away.”
Gideon leaned into her palm.
“May I kiss you?”
“You may.”
He kissed her gently.
Not like possession.
Not like conquest.
Like permission.
For a man accustomed to controlling everything around him, the tenderness terrified him.
For the first time, Gideon Moretti decided fear was not a reason to stop.
Three weeks later, the laboratory results arrived.
Reyes entered the library carrying a report.
“The tea was deliberately contaminated.”
Gideon’s expression went cold.
“Source?”
“The foxglove came from your greenhouse.”
Rosalind felt sick.
Reyes placed the small blue tin on the desk inside an evidence bag.
“The label is false.”
Antonia had already noticed something else.
Lucian had claimed the tea came from his sister.
He had no sister.
And Walter, the elderly gardener, remembered Lucian taking a large cutting from the foxglove bed only days before the poisoning.
Gideon read the report twice.
Then placed it carefully on the desk.
“Lucian carried my father’s coffin,” he said quietly.
Rosalind said nothing.
“He taught me to tie a tie.”
Still nothing.
“When Elena died, he sat outside my bedroom for three days because he believed I might do something reckless.”
Gideon finally looked up.
“I do not want it to be him.”
“I know.”
His grief frightened Rosalind more than his anger.
Then Gideon became the man everyone else knew.
“Tobias, check his accounts. Calls. Meetings. Everything. Quietly.”
Reyes nodded.
“And Rosalind goes to Boston tonight.”
Her head turned.
“What?”
“Caleb’s apartment. Marco will drive you.”
“You’re sending me away?”
“Lucian already tried to kill me and place the blame on you.”
“You promised you’d stop deciding for me.”
“I am not debating your safety.”
“That is exactly the problem.”
“Rosalind.”
“No.”
She stood.
“You don’t get to tell me I have choices only when those choices agree with yours.”
“This is different.”
“It always becomes different when you’re afraid.”
His voice hardened.
“You do not understand the risk.”
“Then explain it to me. Don’t exile me.”
“I would rather have you angry in Boston than dead in Newport.”
Her eyes filled, though she refused to let the tears fall.
“And I would rather have a man who trusts me enough to stand beside him than one who only loves me when he can control where I stand.”
The words cut deep.
She grabbed her coat.
“I’ll go to Caleb’s.”
Relief flashed across Gideon’s face.
Her gaze sharpened.
“Not because you ordered me to. Because he needs help packing.”
She left.
Gideon stood alone in the library.
Again.
Marco drove Rosalind toward Boston after sunset.
They never reached it.
Near Tiverton, a gray truck suddenly crossed the road and trapped the sedan against a guardrail.
Marco moved first.
He barely had the door open before someone struck him from behind.
Rosalind reached for her phone.
A hand covered her mouth.
Something sweet and chemical filled her nose.
The world disappeared.
She woke on concrete.
Her wrists were tied.
Salt and rust filled the air.
An abandoned seafood packing warehouse stood around her, its upper windows broken, moonlight leaking through old steel beams.
A boy sat near the door with a pistol.
He looked nineteen.
Maybe younger.
His hand trembled badly.
So did his breathing.
Rosalind watched him for several seconds.
“You’re having an asthma attack.”
His eyes widened.
“Shut up.”
“Do you have an inhaler?”
“I’m fine.”
“Your lips are turning blue.”
Fear replaced the bravado in his face.
He fumbled inside his jacket.
An inhaler fell onto the floor.
“Pick it up,” she said.
He stared at her.
“My hands are tied, sweetheart. I’m unlikely to overpower you.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“Then don’t. Just breathe.”
He grabbed the inhaler.
“Shake it. Exhale first. All the way.”
He obeyed.
“Now inhale slowly while you press it.”
His breathing improved after several doses.
The gun lowered.
“What’s your name?” Rosalind asked.
“Nico.”
“I’m Rosalind.”
“I know.”
“Of course you do.”
His face crumpled suddenly.
“They told me you stole money.”
“I didn’t.”
“They said Mr. Ardell just wanted you held until you returned it.”
Rosalind’s stomach dropped.
“Lucian is here?”
Footsteps sounded outside.
Nico turned pale.
Rosalind lowered her voice.
“When that door opens, whatever happens, stay low.”
Lucian entered.
He looked exactly as he always had.
Silver hair.
Expensive coat.
Kind face.
That was somehow the worst part.
“I am sorry about this, my dear.”
Rosalind laughed once.
“You poisoned the wrong man and kidnapped the wrong woman. Your week has been messy.”
His eyes hardened.
For the first time, she saw what had been underneath the warmth.
Lucian placed a phone on the desk.
A call connected.
“Gideon.”
Silence.
Then Gideon’s voice.
“Let me hear her.”
Lucian smiled.
“She is perfectly safe.”
“Let. Me. Hear. Her.”
Lucian nodded toward Rosalind.
“I’m here.”
The breath on the other end of the phone changed.
“Rosalind.”
“I’m okay.”
“I’m coming.”
“No—”
Lucian ended the call.
“You will not convince him otherwise.”
“What do you want?”
“The Newport docks.”
Rosalind stared.
Lucian shrugged.
“Everyone thinks these things are emotional. They rarely are. The docks control millions in shipments every year.”
“You nearly killed a man who trusted you for money.”
“No. I nearly killed him for thirty years of being treated like an adviser while the Moretti family grew rich enough to own half the coastline.”
His face tightened.
“I built that empire beside his father. And what did I receive? Gratitude.”
“Most people would consider that better than prison.”
He smiled coldly.
“I understand why Gideon likes you.”
Gideon arrived thirty-one minutes later.
Alone.
At least, apparently alone.
He entered the warehouse with empty hands.
Rosalind had never seen him look like that.
His face revealed almost nothing.
His eyes revealed everything.
Lucian placed documents on a metal table.
“Sign the docks to the holding company named there.”
Gideon did not read the documents.
He signed.
Rosalind stared at him.
“Gideon, no.”
He looked only at her.
“Take everything.”
Lucian smiled.
“All that your father built.”
“I said take it.”
“For a household manager?”
Gideon’s voice dropped.
“For her.”
Lucian laughed softly.
“There it is. The weakness.”
Gideon’s jaw tightened.
Lucian studied him.
“You know, your father worried about you. Even when you were young. Too much loyalty. Too much heart hidden beneath all that temper.”
He slid the signed papers into his coat.
“And then there was Elena.”
Everything stopped.
Gideon’s face emptied.
Rosalind felt something horrible approaching.
Lucian continued.
“Carmine Vasco’s father paid very well for information about your movements back then.”
Gideon did not blink.
“I gave him the bridal shop schedule.”
The warehouse seemed to lose all sound.
Even Rosalind forgot to breathe.
“You?” Gideon whispered.
“I never expected her to die.”
“You sat with me afterward.”
“I was sorry.”
“You sat beside me for three days.”
“I said I was sorry.”
Gideon took one step forward.
His expression became terrifyingly calm.
“You watched me bury her.”
Lucian reached inside his coat.
Rosalind saw it.
So did the armed man beside him.
“Gideon!” she shouted.
The guard raised his weapon.
“Nico!”
The nineteen-year-old boy moved.
He slammed his entire body into the gunman.
A shot exploded.
Gideon staggered.
Rosalind screamed.
The bullet had struck his shoulder.
At that exact moment, the warehouse doors crashed inward.
Reyes and his men flooded the building.
The gunman went down.
Lucian dropped his weapon.
Rosalind twisted her wrists against the sharp edge of the crate until the plastic restraint snapped.
She ran to Gideon.
He had slid against a steel support beam, one hand pressed to his shoulder.
Blood spread between his fingers.
“Move your hand.”
“I’m fine.”
“You have got to stop saying that when you are actively bleeding.”
She tore off her scarf and pressed it hard against the wound.
He hissed.
“Sorry.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“No.”
Tears ran down her face.
Her hands remained steady.
“Stay awake.”
“Rosalind.”
“Stay awake!”
His good hand reached up and touched her cheek.
“You’re crying.”
“I’m furious.”
“That explains it.”
“You nearly got yourself killed.”
“I signed everything.”
“You idiot.”
“To get you back.”
Her face broke.
Reyes approached.
“Ambulance is coming.”
Then he looked toward Lucian.
“Mr. Moretti. What do you want done?”
Lucian stood between two guards.
For the first time, he looked old.
“Gideon.”
Gideon turned his head slowly.
Eleven years of grief had just acquired a face.
“You told me love was weakness,” Gideon said.
Lucian said nothing.
“You were wrong.”
His fingers closed around Rosalind’s hand.
“She is the reason I survived you twice.”
Lucian lowered his eyes.
Gideon looked at Reyes.
“Turn him over with everything we have. The poisoning. The kidnapping. The financial records. Every piece of evidence.”
Lucian looked up in surprise.
Gideon’s voice remained cold.
“You wanted me to become exactly what everyone says I am. I won’t give you that satisfaction.”
Then he glanced toward Nico.
“The boy?”
“Scared to death,” Reyes said.
“He helped Rosalind?”
“Yes.”
“Then nobody touches him. Make sure he gets legal counsel. Get him home to his mother.”
Nico started crying.
Rosalind reached out and squeezed his hand.
Then she returned both palms to Gideon’s wound.
“You,” she said through tears, “are going to the hospital.”
He sighed.
“Again?”
“Yes.”
“I dislike hospitals.”
“And hospitals remain devastated by the news.”
Three weeks later, Gideon walked into his formal dining room with his left arm still in a sling.
Twenty people rose from the long table.
Lawyers.
Executives.
Business partners.
Men accustomed to being obeyed.
Rosalind stood beside him wearing a dark green dress, her expression suspicious.
“You said this was dinner.”
“It is.”
“Why does everyone look terrified?”
“They often do.”
“Gideon.”
He ignored her.
“Ladies and gentlemen.”
The room went silent.
“Rosalind Pierce saved my life when I was poisoned. She discovered the man responsible when people who had known him for decades failed to see him clearly. And when she was taken from this house, she saved herself, helped save a frightened boy, and still found time to stop me from bleeding to death.”
Rosalind leaned closer.
“This is becoming embarrassing.”
“I have not reached the embarrassing part.”
“Oh, no.”
A few people around the table suddenly found their wineglasses fascinating.
Gideon continued.
“For years, I believed anyone I loved became a weakness.”
He looked at Rosalind.
“I was wrong.”
The room became so quiet that the fire could be heard cracking behind them.
“She is not my weakness.”
Rosalind’s eyes filled.
“She is the person who reminds me that strength is not the absence of fear. Sometimes it is trusting someone enough to admit you are afraid.”
Antonia began crying in the doorway.
Reyes looked at the ceiling.
Gideon took Rosalind’s hand.
“And before Miss Pierce accuses me of making another decision without consulting her, I will announce my intention in advance.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“What intention?”
“I intend to kiss you in front of everyone.”
A laugh escaped her.
“That is extremely dramatic.”
“I have been told I have a reputation.”
“And if I object?”
“I will endure the humiliation.”
Rosalind stepped closer.
“Fortunately for your reputation, I don’t object.”
She kissed him first.
Months later, Rosalind opened Pierce Household Management in Providence.
When Gideon offered to finance it, she accepted only after making him sign a loan agreement with interest.
“You do understand I would have given you the money,” he told her.
“That is precisely why you are being charged interest.”
Caleb graduated and began his engineering apprenticeship in Boston.
Nico entered a diversion program, found legitimate work, and sent Rosalind a Christmas card every year afterward.
Gideon never asked her why she kept them.
He already knew.
In the estate greenhouse, he placed a small silver-framed photograph of Elena beside the orchids.
One evening, he told Rosalind everything.
Not only how Elena died.
How she lived.
How she hated olives.
How she sang the wrong lyrics to every song.
How she once threw his expensive shoes into the yard because he tracked mud through her apartment.
Rosalind listened.
She did not compete with a dead woman.
She did not ask him to erase a life that had existed before hers.
When he finished, she held his hand.
That was all.
Sometimes love did not heal by replacing grief.
Sometimes it simply made room beside it.
The following spring, rain tapped softly against the tall library windows.
An old movie played silently on the television.
Gideon woke before dawn.
For several seconds, he did not move.
Rosalind was asleep against his shoulder.
Again.
Her hand rested over his chest.
A blanket covered them both.
The library lamp still burned.
Almost exactly as it had the first morning.
Only now there was no fear in him.
Rosalind stirred.
Her eyes opened.
She smiled sleepily.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
She looked at the sofa.
Then up at him.
“You’re not going to tell me I shouldn’t have slept here?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Gideon brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.
“Because I was hoping you would.”
Her smile widened.
“That’s a dangerous admission from a man who likes control.”
“I have discovered something.”
“What?”
“Control is overrated.”
She laughed softly and settled closer.
Outside, the Atlantic rolled toward the rocks beneath a pale Rhode Island sunrise.
For most of his life, Gideon Moretti had believed love was the opening an enemy waited for.
A weakness.
A vulnerability.
A door left unlocked.
He understood now that he had been wrong.
Love was not believing no one could hurt you.
It was knowing they could and refusing to spend your entire life alone because of it.
Rosalind’s fingers curled loosely into his sleeve.
His hand closed around hers.
She yawned.
“You know what’s funny?”
“I suspect you are about to tell me.”
“You still didn’t wake me.”
Gideon looked down at the woman who had fallen asleep beside him, saved his heart twice, argued with him more than anyone alive, and somehow turned an enormous guarded house into somewhere that felt like home.
A rare, peaceful smile touched his face.
“No, Rosalind.”
He kissed her forehead.
“I didn’t.”
And this time, he was grateful he hadn’t.
THE END.
