My arrogant ex kicked me to the marble floor of a luxury mall because he thought I was a poor vagrant blocking his way. He had no idea I am married to the city's most ruthless ghost.

Dr. Hale cleaned and bandaged my leg and shoulder at the house.

He prescribed mild painkillers and told me to rest for a few days. Roman nodded seriously at every instruction, as if Dr. Hale had just handed down divine law rather than advice to put ice on a bruise.

After the doctor left, Roman carried me to the master bedroom—despite my protests that I could walk perfectly well—and tucked me into the massive silk-sheeted bed. He lay down beside me, propped up on one elbow, his fingers tracing patterns lightly on my uninjured arm.

We did not speak for a long time. The house was quiet. Peaceful. A world away from the mall.

“Tell me again,” Roman said softly, after a while. “How you ended up in that diner. The night I first saw you.”

I smiled. He asked me this story at least once a month. He never got tired of hearing it. And I never got tired of telling it.

I turned onto my side to face him.

“You know most of it,” I said. “After Trevor left, I had nothing. The apartment was behind on rent. I had sixty dollars to my name. No family. No friends who could help. I got a job at the diner the next day. Double shifts. Sixteen hours a day. Slept on a friend’s couch until I could afford a room in a boarding house.”

I paused, remembering.

“It was winter,” I said. “The coldest January on record. I was working the night shift. Two in the morning. I was so tired I could barely stand. My feet were killing me. I had a hole in my only pair of boots, and my sock was soaked through. And then the bell above the door jingled, and you walked in.”

Roman’s fingers stilled on my arm. He remembered too.

“You were wearing that long black coat,” I said. “The one with the collar turned up. You had three men with you. All of you looked like you had just stepped out of a movie. Everyone else in the diner froze. The other waitresses hid in the kitchen. They all knew who you were. Even I knew—everyone in the city knows the stories. But I was too tired to be scared. I just walked over and asked what you wanted.”

“You brought me coffee,” Roman said. His voice was very quiet. “Black. No sugar. And you didn’t flinch. You didn’t look away. You didn’t stammer. You just set the cup down and smiled. Like I was just another customer. Not the man everyone in the city was afraid of.”

“I was too exhausted to be polite to anyone,” I admitted, laughing softly. “I just wanted to get through the shift and go home.”

“You had a bruise on your jaw,” Roman said. His thumb brushed my jawline now, gently, reverently. “Right here. I saw it. I asked you who did it. You said you walked into a door. But I knew a man’s fist when I saw one. I knew Trevor had hit you before he left. I found out later he did it regularly.”

The air in the room grew colder. The old anger was still there, buried deep in Roman’s chest. It would never fully go away. And in a way, I did not want it to. It was part of how he loved me—fiercely, protectively, like he would burn the world down before he let anyone hurt me again.

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” I said. “I just wanted to forget.”

“So you served me pie,” Roman said. “Cherry. You said it was the last piece, and I looked like I needed it more than you did.”

“I ate half of it while you weren’t looking,” I confessed.

Roman laughed—a low, rumbling sound that I felt more than heard. “I know. I saw you in the reflection of the jukebox. That was when I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That I was going to marry you.”

He said it so simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like he had decided it over a slice of stolen cherry pie at two in the morning in a greasy diner.

“You came back every night after that,” I said. “Same time. Same order. Black coffee. Cherry pie. You never talked much. You just… sat there. And watched me. For three months.”

“I was waiting,” Roman said. “Waiting for you to be ready. Waiting for you to heal. Waiting for you to look at me and see a man, not a monster. I sent money to your landlord anonymously so you wouldn’t get evicted. I paid off your medical bills. I made sure the creepy guy who lived down the hall from you suddenly found a reason to move to another state. I took care of everything from the shadows. I just… couldn’t let anything happen to you.”

Tears pricked my eyes. I had known most of this for a long time, but hearing him say it out loud still broke my heart and put it back together, all at once.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I whispered. “Why didn’t you just say, ‘I’m Roman Voss, I have more money than God, let me take care of you’?”

“Because you would have said no,” Roman said simply. “I watched you, Sadi. I watched you work sixteen-hour days. I watched you give your last dollar to a homeless man outside the diner even though you could barely feed yourself. I watched you turn down tips from men who wanted more than just a waitress. You were proud. You were stubborn. You would never have taken my money if you thought it was charity. You would have run the other way.”

He was right. I would have.

“So I courted you slowly,” he said. “Three months of coffee and pie. Then I asked you out to dinner. A real dinner. You said yes. I took you to the most expensive restaurant in the city. You showed up in a ten-dollar thrift-store dress and apologized for being underdressed. And I told you that you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. And for the first time… you believed me.”

“I did,” I said. The tears spilled over now, warm tracks down my cheeks. “I really did.”

He wiped them away with his thumb.

“I proposed six months later,” he said. “In that same diner. Same booth. Same cherry pie. You cried and said yes and then you stole half my pie again.”

“Some things never change,” I said, laughing through the tears.

We lay there for a long time, holding each other, the past three years stretching between us like a bright, shining road.

From the girl with sixty dollars and a broken heart.

To the woman who owned half the city and the love of the most feared man in it.

From sleeping on a couch with a hole in her boot.

To sleeping in a mansion with a man who would kill and die for her.

From Trevor.

To Roman.

The contrast could not have been sharper.

Trevor had taken everything from me—my money, my confidence, my ability to trust. He had kicked me when I was down, both literally and figuratively. He had seen me at my weakest and decided that made me his property, his punching bag, his convenience.

Roman had found me at my weakest and decided I was worth building up. Worth waiting for. Worth loving gently, patiently, completely. He had given me everything—safety, security, a home, a purpose. He had never once asked me to be anything other than exactly who I was.

“I love you,” I said, because it needed to be said. Because it was the truest thing in my life. “More than anything. More than all the money in the world. More than the cufflinks and the sapphires and the big house. Just… you.”

Roman pulled me closer, his arms wrapping around me like a promise. He kissed my forehead, my eyelids, the tip of my nose, and finally my lips—softly, reverently, like I was something holy.

“I love you too, Sadi Voss,” he said against my mouth. “Until the day I die. And probably long after that.”

Outside, the sun began to set over the city. The sky turned pink and gold and purple. Somewhere far away, Trevor was probably sitting on a park bench somewhere, trying to figure out how to start over with nothing.