Six months prior, you'd been certain you were a dead woman walking…

Your husband—coward that he was—had lost half a million dollars of Luca "The Viper" Moretti's money and vanished into thin air, leaving you alone with stitches still healing and a newborn screaming in your arms. You'd braced yourself for violence. For vengeance. For the crime lord with ice in his veins to use you both as an example.

Instead?

You are sitting now in the sunlight-filled kitchen of his penthouse, picking at a plate of pasta al limone—homemade, as it happens the most feared man in the city cooks when he is stressed—while Luca himself sits across from you, totally engaged in making faces at your daughter, Phoebe

"Ah, piccolina,"

He murmurs, laughing as she gums at his knuckle, her tiny fists batting at the gold rings he usually uses to crack skulls.

"You’re going to be trouble, just like your mama."

He presses a kiss to her curls before glancing up at you, his dark eyes warm in a way that still surprises you.

"She's got your smile,"

He says, as if it's the most precious thing in the world.