SHE WAS HIRED TO COMFORT A DYING MAFIA BOSS—THEN A STRAY CAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

Chapter 14: Marry Me

Weeks later, in the second-floor library where she’d once searched for answers to a mystery illness, Elias found her reading in the afternoon light — standing on his own two feet, fully himself for the first time since she’d arrived, strength and color returned to a face that had once been a death mask.

He crossed the room, took both her hands, and said only two words. “Marry me.”

“I know I’m mafia,” he went on. “I know life with me isn’t safe or normal. But no one will ever love you more than I do, or protect you better. I lost nine months of my life to someone who wanted me dead — and in those nine months, you were the only one worth living.”

Celeste smiled — the first fully radiant smile of her life in three years. “Yes. On one condition. You help me build a hospital. A real one, where women are trained as doctors, where no one gets fired for being right when someone else is wrong.”

“Deal,” he said, and kissed her like a promise neither of them had believed they’d ever be allowed to make.