The scent of blood still clung to her skin.
Even after three showers, three cups of tea, and hours curled against Matteo’s side, Aaravi could feel it — the weight of what she’d done. The echo of the gunshot. The way the man’s eyes had locked with hers for a fraction of a second before fading to nothing.
She was no longer just a bookstore girl.
She was a Leone.
Not by name.
But by fire.
---
Matteo watched her from across the room.
The early morning sunlight filtered through the curtains, painting her face in gold and shadow as she traced her fingers along the spine of a book she’d read a thousand times. The Secret Garden. Ironic.
He knew what she was doing — trying to feel something soft again. Innocent. Unbloodied.
But innocence didn’t return once it was ripped away.
He walked toward her, silent as a ghost.
Her voice broke the quiet.
“Do you remember the first time we met?”
He paused behind her. “Yes.”
“I hated you.”
He smiled faintly. “I know.”
“I thought you were dangerous.”
“I was.”
“You still are.”
She turned and looked up at him, her eyes stormy but calm.
“But I’m not afraid anymore.”
He stepped closer, cupped her cheek. “You should be.”
“No,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his. “I should rule beside you.”
---
It wasn’t a wedding in the traditional sense.
There were no flowers. No music. No priests.
Just Helena, Nico, a judge flown in from the States, and a blood-red diamond Matteo had kept hidden for years — meant for no one until her.
She wore ivory.
He wore black.
And when they said I do, it felt like the world held its breath.
Vows were spoken not in promises of forever, but in scars.
“You are my war and my peace,” Matteo said, his thumb brushing the edge of her jaw.
“And you are my shadow and my fire,” Aaravi replied, her voice steady.
They kissed.
And everything else disappeared.
---
But every crown casts a shadow.
Two nights later, Matteo received a message from an old contact in Marseille.
The Russians hadn’t just wanted India.
They wanted Matteo.
To finish what Ravan started.
To kill the Leone bloodline once and for all.
Aaravi found him in the war room, fingers clenched around a dagger, his jaw locked.
“They’re coming again,” he said.
“Then we welcome them,” she answered.
But this time, he turned to her with something harder in his eyes.
“No. This time, you don’t go.”
She stepped forward. “Matteo—”
“I let you fight once. I let you carry a gun. I will not let you die in a war that belongs to me.”
Her voice cracked. “I’m not just your wife. I’m your partner.”
“And you’re the only thing I have left to lose,” he said, his voice breaking.
There it was.
The truth.
The fear.
Matteo Leone — the most feared man on two continents — was terrified of losing the girl who’d taught him how to breathe again.
“I can’t lose you, Aaravi.”
She took his hand, placed it over her heart.
“Then stay with me. Let’s find another way.”
But there wasn’t another way.
Not this time.
---
Three nights later, Matteo left under the cover of darkness.
He kissed her forehead as she slept.
Left a note by her pillow.
"If I don’t come back, burn the world for me. — M"
She woke to silence.
To cold.
To the taste of him still on her lips, and the scent of gunpowder in the wind.
And she didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream.
She lit a candle.
Donned black.
And called Nico.
“Get the jet. We’re going to France.”
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