His expression softened, his hand coming up to trace the line of my jaw with a gentleness that belied the strength I knew he possessed. "From the moment I saw you," he said quietly, "I knew you would change everything. I just didn't understand how completely. How perfectly."
I thought of the journey that had brought us here—the fear and rage of my abduction, the slow evolution from captivity to something more complex, the revelations about my father's betrayal, the violence that had ended one chapter and begun another. The choices that had transformed me from victim to victor, from pawn to queen.
"What began as a kidnapping," I said softly, echoing words I had thought but never spoken during those dark days, "ended with a kingdom."
Rafe's arms tightened around me, his expression a mixture of love and fierce pride and something darker, something that reminded me of who he was, who we both were—not just lovers, not just partners, but rulers of a world built on power and control and the constant vigilance required to maintain both.
"And this time," he promised, his voice low and certain, "no one will take your crown."
I smiled, feeling the weight of the dagger against my thigh, the symbol of transformation, of power reclaimed and redirected. "No," I agreed, my voice matching his in certainty, in promise, in the absolute conviction that what we had built together would endure. "No one will dare."
As we left the vault, as we returned to the penthouse high above the city that was now ours in all the ways that mattered, I thought again of that night months ago—of the woman I had been, of the man who had taken me, of the path neither of us could have predicted that had led us here, to this partnership, this power, this love that had transcended its dark beginnings to become something neither of us had known we needed until we found it in each other.
What began as a kidnapping had indeed ended with a kingdom.
And I intended to rule it well.
EPILOGUE
GRACE
Ten Weeks Later
I hadn’t meant to tell him. But that’s how everything happened with Rafe—not in careful timing or planned moments, but in impact. Pressure. Friction. The truth, for us, never arrived gently. It always hit like a second heartbeat. This wasn’t any different.
He had me stretched across the bed, shirtless, lazy with heat. My legs tangled in his, his hand splayed warm across my stomach. We’d been like this for over an hour, moving between silence and sex and silence again, not because there wasn’t more to say—but because neither of us quite knew how to say it. I’d been carrying the truth like a shard of glass for days. Turning it over. Trying not to bleed.
I should’ve told him in a different moment. When we weren’t slick with sweat and stretched across ruined sheets, when my body wasn’t still aching from the way he’d just taken me like he was afraid someone might steal me if he didn’t mark me enough. But Rafe Conti didn’t believe in timing. He believed in ownership.
And so, finally, I just said it.
“I’m pregnant.”
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. He didn’t smile. Just stared at the ceiling like he’d known it already and was waiting for me to catch up. His hand didn’t lift from my belly. If anything, his fingers curved tighter, anchoring to the skin just below my ribs like he could already feel the truth of it shifting beneath.
There was a beat of silence. Two.
Then: “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
His voice came slower this time. Deeper. “Is it mine?”
I turned my head toward him, my brow twitching. “Are you joking?”
He blinked once. “I don’t know. Am I?”
I shoved his shoulder. “Who the hell else do you think had access, Rafe? You think I’ve been sneaking out of this fortress in the middle of the night to cheat on you with a barista?”
He grinned, finally, sharp and wolfish. “You’ve had that violin tutor here twice.”
“That guy’s eighty.”
“Age is just a number.”
“You are the most insane person I’ve ever met,” I muttered, and when I rolled onto my back and covered my eyes with one arm, he took it as an invitation to press closer—his mouth brushing against my jaw, his hand still protective and heavy over my stomach.
