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

Chapter 15: Spring

Twelve months later, Elias woke to the smell of lavender and found Celeste arranging fresh stems by the bed, her hand resting on the curve of her belly where their first child grew, weeks from being born. His hair had grown back thick and dark. His body had regained its strength. The man beside her in the morning light bore no resemblance to the gaunt ghost she’d once lowered gently onto damp sheets.

Finn had written from Montana that morning — starting over, asking after them both. Bianca’s daughter, raised now under Dorothy’s watchful care, had just learned to roll over; Elias looked at the photo of his tiny niece, innocent of every sin her mother had committed, and said only, “She’s beautiful. She looks like her uncle Finn.”

Outside the window, lavender bloomed in vivid purple down the garden path — the same lavender Elias had planted for his mother as a boy, now blooming for the wife who had refused to look away, and for the child who would grow up knowing that sometimes the person who saves your life isn’t the one with the power or the title. It’s the one brave enough to stay when everyone else has already left.