Seven months pregnant, exhausted, and hiding from the most dangerous man I had ever loved, I thought I had finally disappeared from Dante Moretti’s world. Then the mafia boss walked into the small diner where I worked, saw my swollen belly, and realized the secret I had spent seven months protecting was no longer hidden.

Dr. Weber lifted our daughter into the warm light.

She was tiny, her skin pink and glistening, covered in white vernix, her little fists flailing angrily against the cool air as she cried at the top of her lungs.

“She’s breathing on her own,” Dr. Weber smiled, tears in her own eyes as she quickly suctioned the baby's airway and wrapped her in a sterile, warm blanket. “Apgar score of eight. She’s a fighter, Dante. Just like her mother.”

The doctor stepped forward and laid the small, crying bundle directly onto my bare chest.

The moment the baby felt my skin, her frantic wails subsided into soft, hitching whimpers. She turned her tiny, dark-haired head toward my heartbeat, her miniature fingers grasping at my collarbone.

I looked down at her, my vision swimming with tears of overwhelming, incomprehensible love. She was magnificent. She had my mouth, Dante’s dark hair, and a fierce, stubborn spirit that had survived a war before drawing her first breath.

Beside me, the Don of the Moretti family collapsed.

Dante sank to his knees beside the delivery table, burying his face into the side of the mattress, his broad shoulders heaving with silent, racking sobs. The ruthless king who had walked through gunfire without blinking was completely undone by a five-pound miracle wrapped in cotton.

I reached out, my trembling hand tangling into his dark, damp hair. “Dante... look at her.”

Slowly, Dante raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face wet with tears. He stood up slowly, as if approaching an altar, his scarred hand hovering over our daughter’s head.

“May I?” he asked, his voice a broken whisper.

“She’s your daughter, Dante,” I whispered back.

He slid his massive, calloused hands under her tiny frame, lifting her with a reverence that took my breath away. He cradled her against his chest, right over his heart, looking down at her perfect features as if she were the only thing that existed in the universe.

“Elena,” he murmured softly, a tear dropping from his chin onto the blanket. “Her name is Elena. After my mother.”

“Elena,” I agreed, smiling through my exhaustion. “Elena Moretti.”

Dante looked up from the baby, his hazel eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that burned away every ghost of our past.

He reached into his pocket. He didn't pull out a gun, or a ledger, or a key. He pulled out a simple, platinum band set with a flawless, emerald-cut diamond—the ring he had carried with him every single day I was missing.

He leaned over the bed, holding Elena securely in the crook of his left arm, and slid the ring onto the third finger of my left hand. It fit perfectly.

“I will dismantle the street operations,” Dante vowed, his voice low and absolute. “I will legitimate the shipping lines. I will step back from the commission. Marco’s brother will handle the defense. No more blood will touch this house, Sophia. No more shadows will fall on our daughter.”

He leaned down, pressing his lips gently against mine, sealing the promise with a kiss that tasted of rebirth.

“Be my wife,” Dante whispered against my lips. “Rule this empire with me. Not as my captive. As my equal. My heart. My only Queen.”

Looking into the eyes of the man who had torn the world apart to find me, and who had brought me back from the edge of oblivion, there was only one answer.