Ahead of her, the path toward the west garden waited in the dark.
Madaline walked anyway.
For the first minute or so, she could still hear the party behind her. The music drifted over the dunes in soft, broken pieces, carried by the wind and threaded with laughter that rose and fell around the crackle of the bonfire. Carlos shouted something she couldn’t make out, followed by Ashlynn’s dry reply, and Madaline smiled despite the nervous twist low in her stomach.
Then the path curved.
The beach disappeared behind dune grass and shadow.
The laughter faded.
And suddenly the island felt much larger than it had a few seconds ago.
The west garden path was marked by small ground lights tucked between white flowers and low hedges, each one casting a faint golden pool over the stones. Between those pools, darkness gathered thickly. The trees beyond the garden swayed in the wind, leaves whispering against one another with a restless, papery sound.
Madaline tightened her hand around the strap of her small bag.
Inside was the note.
She didn’t need to take it out.
She knew every word by now.
I wanted our first hello to belong to us.
Her chest fluttered.
“Normal,” she whispered to herself.
The garden did not answer.
Which was probably for the best.
She kept walking, her shoes quiet against the stone path. The air smelled different away from the beach—less smoke and sugar, more damp earth, crushed flowers, and the faint clean bite of lake wind. Somewhere to her left, water moved against the rocks below the cliffs, a low hush beneath the sound of leaves.
Madaline tried to picture Luca.
That was the strange thing.
For almost a year, she had known the shape of his thoughts better than the shape of his face. She knew the way he wrote when he was teasing her. She knew the way he softened difficult things before asking about them. She knew he remembered small details, held onto them carefully, returned them to her months later like proof that her life had not passed unnoticed.
But his face?
That was still unfinished.
Black hair. Green eyes. A photograph sent months ago that she had looked at more than she’d ever admit, though even that had felt strangely distant compared to the letters. A handsome face, yes. Calm. A little guarded. But paper was still paper.
Tonight, he would become real.
The thought made her almost stop walking.
Mira’s voice came back to her, soft beneath the beach noise.
If he makes you feel small, walk away.
Madaline swallowed.
He wouldn’t.
She knew he wouldn’t.
Or she believed it, which felt almost the same until she thought too hard.
The ground lights became fewer as the path moved farther from the villa. The hedges grew taller, less manicured, the white flowers giving way to darker shrubs and thick old roots that pressed up beneath the stones. The garden looked older here, as if the pretty part had ended and the island had started showing its bones.
Madaline glanced back once.
The villa lights were still visible through the trees, distant and golden. The beach was hidden, but she could see the faint orange flicker of the bonfire over the rise.
She was not far.
Not really.
That helped.
A little.
She turned forward again.
The old resort tree came into view gradually.
At first, it was only a darker shape against the dark, wide and uneven, its branches stretching outward over the end of the path like arms frozen mid-reach. Then she saw the trunk—thick, twisted, ancient-looking, with a small stone bench beneath it and flowering vines climbing along one side where someone had tried to make age look decorative.
Beyond the tree, the garden dropped toward a lower overlook where the lake flashed black beneath the moon.
Madaline slowed.
Her heart beat once.
Hard.
Then again.
No one was there.
For half a second, disappointment and relief hit her at the exact same time.
Then a man stepped from the shadow on the far side of the tree.
Madaline stopped breathing.
He had his back to her.
Dark jacket.
Black hair.
One hand lifted toward the vines, fingers brushing gently over a small white flower as if he had been deciding whether to pick it.
The sight of him was so simple it almost broke her.
Not dramatic.
Not cinematic in the way she had half-feared, half-hoped.
Just a man beneath an old tree, waiting.
Madaline’s hand moved to her necklace without thinking, thumb brushing over the ruby at her throat.
She took one step forward.
Then another.
The man did not turn.
Maybe he heard her.
Maybe he was giving her the chance to decide first.
That felt like him.
Careful.
Patient.
Letting her close the distance because he knew what it meant to be given room.
Madaline’s throat tightened.
“Luca?”
Her voice came out softer than she meant it to.
The man’s hand stilled against the flower.
For one quiet, impossible second, nothing moved except the leaves above them and the lake wind shifting through the branches.
Then he said, without turning around—
“I wondered if you’d come.”
Back inside the villa, the hallway held its breath.
Mira stood at the far end of it with Thorfinn Thorsson between her and the door, a blade low at his side and the kind of stillness in his face that did not belong to panic. That was the first thing she understood about him. He hadn’t come here in a rush of grief. He hadn’t stumbled into this with shaking hands and desperate eyes, looking for someone to hurt because pain needed somewhere to go.
No.
He had planned.
That made him more interesting.
And more annoying.
Mira’s gaze flicked once toward the narrow service hall behind him, then toward the back staircase to her left. Far away, muffled by walls and distance, the bachelorette party still pulsed with music and laughter. The sounds were faint enough now to feel like they belonged to another world entirely.
The world where she was still at the beach.
Still wearing her ridiculous pink sash.
Still laughing with Carlos and Ashlynn.
Still safely surrounded by witnesses.
Thorfinn tilted his head slightly, as if he had noticed her measuring the space.
“Don’t,” he said.
Mira looked back at him.
Slowly.
Her face softened by instinct. Not fear. Not guilt. Something gentler. Something easier for people to hold.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
His mouth tightened.
“There it is.”
Mira blinked once. “What?”
“That voice.”
He took one step forward.
Mira did not step back.
Not yet.
“Ymir told me about it,” Thorfinn said. “How fast you could sound hurt. How fast you could make someone feel like they were the dangerous one.”
Mira let her brows pull together just enough. “Your brother was confused.”
His eyes hardened.
There.
A pressure point.
But not one that softened him. One that sharpened.
“He was bleeding,” Thorfinn said. “Not confused.”
“He killed people.”
The words came carefully. Quietly. Wrapped in grief rather than accusation. The version of the story everyone knew how to accept.
Thorfinn smiled.
It was not like Ymir’s smile.
Ymir’s had been wide and warm and stupidly easy. This one barely touched his mouth.
“You really do say it like that,” he murmured. “Like if you keep your voice soft enough, the lie becomes a mercy.”
Something cold moved through her.
Not fear.
Recognition.
He wasn’t bending.
Most people did. Most people had some little place inside them that wanted to believe they were good, wanted to believe they were fair, wanted to believe they wouldn’t hurt someone wounded unless they had no other choice. Mira knew how to find that place. She had been taught young. She had practiced until it became less skill than reflex.
But Thorfinn was not leaving her room to work.
He had locked it from the outside.
“You’re grieving,” she said, shifting strategy gently. “And I understand that. I do. Losing someone like that—”
“Don’t.”
The word cracked through the hall.
Not loud.
Still sharp enough to cut off the rest of her sentence.
Mira held his gaze.
Thorfinn’s hand tightened around the blade.
“Don’t talk about grief like you know what mine feels like.”
Mira’s expression trembled beautifully.
Just slightly.
The kind of tremble that had made police officers soften, doctors lower their voices, Ethan press kisses into her hair when he thought she was sleeping.
“I lost Kane,” she whispered.
For the first time, Thorfinn’s face changed.
Not with sympathy.
With disgust.
“No,” he said. “You used Kane.”
Mira went still.
Only for a moment.
Then her eyes filled, glistening under the hallway lights. “He was my brother.”
“And Ymir was mine.”
The silence after that was cleaner.
Sharper.
Mira felt the shape of the hallway around her again. The table with her glass behind her. The sash abandoned on the side table. The mirror at her back. The staircase. The service door. His blade.
Her own hands empty.
That was careless.
She hated careless.
Thorfinn stepped closer.
“He told me everything,” he said.
Mira let out a soft, wet breath. “Then he lied to you.”
“He told me about Katarin.”
Her face stayed wounded.
“About Noah,” he continued.
Mira’s fingers curled lightly against her palm.
“About Kane walking down those stairs with scissors in his hand.”
For one second, the hallway sharpened too much.
The lights.
The blade.
Thorfinn’s eyes.
Mira’s mask did not fall.
But something behind it paused.
Thorfinn saw.
A flicker of satisfaction moved across his face.
“There,” he said quietly. “That one mattered.”
Mira smiled.
It was small.
Sad.
Wrong.
“You came all the way here because your brother told you a story.”
“No.” Thorfinn lifted the blade slightly. “I came because everyone else believed yours.”
Then he moved.
Fast enough that Mira barely had time to turn.
The blade caught her along the upper arm first, hot and bright through the thin fabric of her white cover-up. Pain flashed cleanly down to her wrist, and her hand struck the wall as she stumbled sideways.
She did not scream.
The sound rose in her throat by instinct, but she swallowed it.
Screams were for witnesses.
There were none here.
Mira shoved off the wall and swung her glass from the side table in one smooth motion, smashing it against Thorfinn’s shoulder before he could reset his stance. The glass shattered with a bright, ugly sound. He grunted and stepped back, more surprised than hurt, and Mira used the space to dart toward the stairs.
His hand caught her hair.
Pain snapped across her scalp, sharp enough to make her vision flare white at the edges. He yanked her back, and she twisted with it instead of against it, driving her elbow into his ribs.
Thorfinn breathed hard through his teeth.
Mira turned, face empty now.
No tears.
No softness.
No bride.
“You should have stayed with your brother,” she said.
Thorfinn’s eyes darkened.
Good.
There it was.
Anger made people clumsy.
He lunged again, and this time Mira ducked under his arm, reaching for the small decorative tray on the side table. Silver. Heavy. Useless-looking in the way rich things often were until someone applied enough force. She swung it into his wrist.
The blade clattered against the floor.
Mira kicked it away.
Not far enough.
But enough.
Thorfinn grabbed her by the shoulder and drove her backward into the mirror.
The glass cracked behind her with a spiderweb snap.
Pain bloomed across her back. Her breath left her in one sharp burst. For a second, his face was close enough that she could see the darker green around his pupils, the tiny scar near his lower lip, the grief carved into him so deeply it had become indistinguishable from purpose.
“Ymir said you smiled,” he breathed.
Mira looked at him through the cracked reflection around them.
Then she did.
Not the soft one.
Not the sad one.
This smile showed teeth.
Thorfinn’s expression shifted.
For the first time, uncertainty.
“Ymir talked too much,” Mira whispered.
He struck her.
Not with the blade. With his hand, hard enough to snap her face to the side and send heat bursting across her cheek. Mira stumbled, one palm scraping against broken mirror glass before she pushed herself upright again.
Blood welled at the base of her thumb.
She looked at it.
Then back at him.
The blade was near his foot.
He saw her see it.
They both moved.
Mira was faster than he expected.
Thorfinn was stronger than she wanted.
He caught her around the waist and dragged her down, both of them hitting the floor hard enough that the side table rattled and her abandoned sash slipped off the edge, glittering pink against the dark runner.
BRIDE TO BE.
Mira’s breath caught on a laugh.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the house had a flair for cruelty.
Thorfinn pinned one of her wrists, reaching for the blade with the other.
Mira drove her knee up.
He flinched, just enough.
She rolled, hand closing around a shard of mirror glass.
He caught her wrist before she could use it.
For a moment, they froze like that, breath harsh between them, blood from her palm slicking the glass, his fingers crushing around her wrist.
“Say it,” Thorfinn said.
Mira’s eyes lifted to his.
“Say what?”
“That he was innocent.”
Her smile softened again.
Cruelly this time.
“Would it help?”
Thorfinn’s face twisted.
Mira leaned closer despite the pressure on her wrist, voice dropping to something intimate.
“If I said it nicely?”
He slammed her hand against the floor.
The glass shard skittered away.
Then he had the blade again.
Mira saw it lift.
Saw the decision settle.
And for the first time, real urgency moved through her—not fear, not exactly, but the sharp, animal understanding that this body was about to fail her before she was done with it.
She bucked hard, twisting under him, but Thorfinn’s weight kept her pinned long enough for the blade to flash downward.
Pain opened across her side.
Hot.
Deep.
Immediate.
This time, a sound escaped her.
Small.
Angry.
Not a scream.
Thorfinn leaned over her, breathing hard.
“That’s for Noah,” he said.
Mira’s vision blurred at the edges.
She looked up at him, blood warm beneath her palm, dress ruined, pearl necklace crooked at her throat.
Still, she smiled.
Thorfinn’s jaw tightened.
“Stop doing that.”
Mira’s voice came out thin, but steady enough.
“Make me.”
At the old resort tree, Madaline let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
His voice was real.
That was the first thought, silly and obvious and still somehow enough to make her knees feel unsteady. Not ink. Not paper. Not carefully folded pages tucked into a drawer or kept in her bag because she was too sentimental to admit she carried them.
A voice.
Warm. Low. Familiar in a way it should not have been when she had never heard it outside her own imagination.
“I almost didn’t,” she said.
The man beneath the tree lowered his hand from the flower, but he still did not turn.
“I know.”
A nervous laugh slipped out of her. “That confident?”
“That hopeful.”
The answer hit exactly where it was supposed to.
Madaline looked down for a second, smiling despite herself, thumb brushing over the ruby necklace at her throat. The stone was cool under her fingers. Grounding. Real.
“You’re very good at saying things that make people forget they’re nervous,” she said.
“Only people I’ve practiced missing.”
Her smile faltered into something softer.
The leaves above them shifted, wind sliding through the branches with a dry hush. Somewhere far behind her, the party was nothing more than a pulse of distant music, faint enough that it almost felt imagined.
Here, the garden seemed built from shadows and moonlight.
And him.
Still facing away.
Still careful.
“Are you going to turn around?” Madaline asked.
His shoulders moved slightly.
Maybe a laugh.
Maybe a breath.
“I’m working up to it.”
That made her laugh again, quieter this time. “You’re the one who asked me here.”
“I know.”
“So this is your fault.”
“Most things are, eventually.”
Something about that line should have felt heavier than it did.
Instead, Madaline heard it the way she had learned to hear him—in layers. A little self-deprecating. A little guarded. The kind of thing he might write before following it with a softer truth.
She stepped closer.
The distance between them narrowed to a few feet.
He smelled faintly of rain, cedar, and something sharper beneath it. Cologne, maybe. Clean but not sweet. Different from what she had imagined, though she didn’t know what she had imagined exactly. Paper had no scent unless one counted ink and old envelopes and the quiet loneliness of waiting.
“Luca,” she said.
His hand closed gently around the small white flower.
He plucked it from the vine.
“I like hearing you say it.”
Her face warmed.
“That’s unfair.”
“Probably.”
“You admit that very easily.”
“I’m trying to make a good first impression.”
Madaline looked at his back, at the dark jacket, the black hair at his nape, the way he held himself so still beneath the tree.
A strange thought passed through her then.
He was nervous.
Really nervous.
That softened something in her before she could question it.
“You already did,” she said.
He went quiet.
For a second, she thought she had said too much.
Then he asked, “In the letters?”
“Yes.”
The answer was barely above a whisper.
But it was honest.
The hand holding the flower lowered to his side.
“Letters are easier,” he said.
“Because you can choose what to show?”
“Because you can hide what you are.”
Madaline’s breath caught softly.
The words slipped into the space between them and changed the air.
Not enough to frighten her.
Enough to make her notice the darkness at the edge of the path. The empty garden. The distance from the beach.
Then he spoke again, softer.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
She forced a small smile, though he still couldn’t see it. “How did you mean it?”
“I mean… on paper, I can be careful enough not to ruin things.”
That sounded like him again.
The version she knew.
The one who stepped backward from anything too intense before it could become pressure.
Madaline breathed out slowly. “I don’t need you to be perfect.”
“No?”
“No.”
He was quiet long enough that the wind filled the space.
Then he said, “That might be the most dangerous thing you’ve told me.”
She frowned faintly, more curious than afraid. “Why?”
He finally turned his head.
Not enough for her to see his face.
Only the edge of his jaw, the corner of his mouth, the shadow of his cheek.
“Because I might believe you.”
Madaline’s heart twisted.
Oh.
There he was.
The man from the letters.
The one who made sadness sound like something two people could sit beside without drowning in it.
She took one more step closer.
“You can,” she said.
The old tree creaked softly overhead.
He turned a little more, still not fully.
The flower rested between his fingers, white petals pale in the dark.
“Madaline,” he said, and her name in his mouth felt nothing like it looked in ink.
It felt closer.
“Yeah?”
“Before I turn around, I need you to remember something.”
A chill moved lightly over her arms.
“Okay.”
“Everything I wrote to you was real.”
The garden seemed to still.
Madaline stared at the back of his head.
“Why are you saying that like a warning?”
He did not answer immediately.
When he did, his voice was gentler than before.
“Because I know what warnings sound like too late.”
Her hand tightened around the strap of her bag.
The party behind her felt impossibly far away now.
“Luca.”
This time, his name did not come out soft.
It came out uncertain.
He smiled slightly.
She could see that much from the angle.
“There it is,” he murmured.
“There what is?”
“The moment you start wondering if you should have stayed by the fire.”
Madaline stepped back once.
Only one step.
His head tilted, as if he heard it.
“Don’t,” he said softly. “Not yet.”
Her pulse jumped.
The word was gentle.
Too gentle.
A request shaped like something else.
“Turn around,” she said.
The wind moved through the tree again.
The white flower bent slightly in his hand.
“Are you sure?”
Madaline’s mouth had gone dry.
She did not know when the feeling had shifted.
Only that it had.
The romantic hush of the garden had thinned into something colder, something awake and watching.
“Yes,” she said.
The man beneath the old resort tree was still for one more heartbeat.
Then, slowly, he began to turn.
Mira tasted blood.
It was sharp and warm against her tongue, metallic in that familiar, ugly way that always made the body seem less mysterious than people wanted it to be. Just skin. Just meat. Just pressure and pulse and fragile little systems pretending they could hold forever.
Hers was failing.
Not fast enough to be final yet.
Fast enough to be irritating.
She lay half on her side near the cracked mirror, one hand pressed against the wound beneath her ribs, the other curled against the runner carpet. Her white outfit had gone red in places, darkening where blood soaked into the fabric and spread in uneven blooms. The pearl at her throat had slipped sideways, the chain biting faintly into her skin.
Thorfinn crouched a few feet away, breathing hard, blade loose in his hand.
Not careless.
Never fully careless.
But he was watching her face too much.
They always did that.
Even the ones who knew better.
They watched the face because they wanted truth to live there. Wanted guilt. Fear. Regret. Some little confession the mouth did not have to speak.
Mira smiled at him because she knew he hated it.
His jaw tightened.
“You think this is funny?”
Her breath shuddered once before she could control it. Pain pulsed hot and deep through her side. Her arm burned where he’d cut her earlier. Her scalp still ached from where he had dragged her back by her hair.
Still, her smile stayed.
“No,” she whispered. “You are.”
Thorfinn’s eyes went flat.
Good.
Anger again.
But this time, it did not make him move right away. He had learned too much from grief to be simple. That was unfortunate.
He stood slowly, wiping the back of his wrist across his mouth where she had split his lip. His green eyes never left her.
“Say it,” he said again.
Mira blinked up at him through the blur creeping into the edges of her vision. “You’re very repetitive.”
“Say Ymir was innocent.”
Her fingers tightened against the carpet.
For a moment, she considered it.
Not because he deserved it.
Because there was always use in giving someone exactly what they wanted at the wrong time.
But Thorfinn wanted truth too badly. He would hear satisfaction in anything she said now. He would twist it into proof, into peace, into some neat little offering for the brother rotting behind bars.
Mira could not allow him peace.
That felt rude, somehow.
“Ymir was loud,” she said instead.
Thorfinn’s expression darkened.
Mira’s smile softened, crueler for it. “So loud. Always talking. Always joking. Always making himself the center of every room like the rest of us should feel lucky to hear him breathe.”
“Shut up.”
“He was sweet, though.” Her voice thinned, but she kept it gentle. “That was the sad part. He really did think he was protecting me.”
Thorfinn took one step closer.
Mira looked up at him, eyes bright from pain and blood loss and something colder underneath.
“He put his hands on my face,” she whispered. “Told me not to be scared.”
The blade in Thorfinn’s hand trembled once.
Only once.
“And then you stabbed him.”
Mira’s mouth curved.
“He should have been less trusting.”
Thorfinn moved.
This time, she was ready enough to roll, but not fast enough to get away cleanly. The blade struck the floor beside her shoulder, biting into the runner. Mira shoved herself backward with a gasp, palm slipping in blood, and slammed her heel into his knee.
He grunted.
Not enough.
He caught her ankle before she could pull it back and dragged her hard across the floor. Pain tore through her side, bright enough to blank the hallway for a second. Her back hit the leg of the side table. Something above her rattled and fell—a small dish, maybe, shattering near her head.
Mira grabbed one of the broken pieces and slashed upward.
It caught Thorfinn across the forearm.
He hissed, but he did not let go.
Then he was on her again.
Weight. Hands. The blade.
Mira drove her elbow into his throat and felt him choke, felt the pressure shift. She twisted beneath him, clawing for space, for leverage, for anything sharp enough to matter.
Her fingers found the pearl necklace.
For one absurd second, she thought of Ethan fastening it earlier with careful hands.
His fingers warm against the back of her neck.
His voice low.
You’re beautiful.
Not useful.
Not perfect.
Beautiful.
Mira’s breath caught for a reason that had nothing to do with the blade.
Thorfinn saw the opening.
He slammed her wrist down and pinned it with his knee, his face close to hers now, grief and fury carved so deeply into him that for one second, he looked less like Ymir’s brother and more like a shadow Ymir had left behind.
“He begged me not to come here,” Thorfinn said.
Mira stared at him.
Her smile faded slightly.
“Smart boy.”
Thorfinn’s mouth twisted.
“He was scared of you.”
Mira’s eyes sharpened.
That pleased her.
More than it should have.
“He learned.”
Thorfinn struck her again, this time with the butt of the knife against her cheekbone. Light burst across her vision. Her head snapped sideways, and for a moment, sound disappeared.
When it came back, it came muffled.
The distant music.
The wind.
Thorfinn’s breathing.
Her own pulse, too fast and too wet beneath everything.
He grabbed her jaw and forced her face back toward him.
“Look at me.”
Mira did.
One eye was already swelling. Blood had smeared across her mouth.
She still looked at him like he was the one cornered.
His grip tightened.
“This is for my brother.”
Mira’s lips parted.
A laugh came out.
Small.
Broken.
Wrong.
“No,” she whispered. “This is for you.”
For half a second, he froze.
Mira’s voice dropped lower, intimate despite the blood in it.
“Ymir didn’t want you here.”
Thorfinn’s face changed.
There.
Finally.
A crack.
Mira smiled into it.
“He knew you’d become something ugly.”
The blade lifted.
This time, she could not move fast enough.
The cut came across her throat in one hard, vicious line.
For a moment, there was no pain.
Only surprise.
Then heat.
Then wet.
Then her body trying very hard to understand that breathing had become difficult.
Thorfinn released her and stumbled back, chest rising and falling, blade red in his hand.
Mira’s hand flew to her throat.
Uselessly.
Blood slipped between her fingers, warm and quick. Her mouth opened, but the sound that came out was thin and broken, more air than voice.
She sank sideways against the shattered mirror, knees folding beneath her.
The hallway tilted.
Lights stretched.
The runner beneath her cheek smelled like dust and copper.
Thorfinn stood over her, staring.
Waiting.
For fear, maybe.
For begging.
For the truth.
Mira looked up at him through the blur.
Her lips moved.
No sound came at first.
Thorfinn leaned closer despite himself.
Mira smiled.
Bloody.
Wide enough for him to see.
Then, with what little breath she had left, she whispered, “You have no idea what you just did.”
Thorfinn went still.
Mira’s smile stayed.
Even as her eyes lost focus.
Even as her hand slipped from her throat.
Even as her body sagged fully against the floor.
The bride died with blood in her teeth.
And a smile on her face.
Madaline forgot how to breathe.
For one strange, suspended second, all she saw were pieces.
The white flower between his fingers.
The dark jacket.
Black hair shifting slightly in the wind.
The line of his jaw coming into view.
Then his face.
And the world stopped making sense.
Madaline stared at him, her body going cold before her mind caught up. Black hair, yes. Different than before. Darker. Styled carefully. His eyes looked green in the low garden light, but something beneath them—something in the shape of his stare, the angle of his mouth, the stillness of his expression—cut through the disguise like a blade through silk.
No.
Her lips parted.
No sound came out.
The man beneath the tree watched her with the same patience she had once found beautiful in letters. The same quiet attention that had made her feel seen. Known. Chosen.
Except now she knew that face.
She knew it from memorial photos.
From news clips.
From grief.
From Mira’s trembling voice saying his name like it belonged to a wound that would never close.
Kane Amato smiled.
Not fully.
Just enough.
“Hi, Madaline.”
Her name in his voice broke something open.
She took a step back.
Then another.
“No.”
Kane’s gaze softened, and somehow that was worse than if he had looked cruel.
“I know.”
“No,” she said again, sharper this time, because it was the only word her mind could hold onto. “You’re dead.”
The flower hung loosely at his side.
“I was.”
Madaline’s stomach turned.
The letters.
Every letter.
Every remembered detail. Every gentle question. Every line she had read twice because it made her feel less alone.
All of it.
Him.
“Luca,” she whispered.
Kane’s smile faded slightly.
Almost regretful.
Almost.
“Luca was real,” he said.
Madaline’s chest tightened so violently it hurt.
Behind her, the party was too far away now. The music was only a ghost of sound. The villa lights were distant through the trees.
She was alone with a dead man.
A dead man holding a flower.
A dead man who had written to her for a year.
Her hand rose to her ruby necklace, fingers closing around it like a prayer.
“Kane?”
He looked at her then, really looked, and the mask of Luca Armani slipped just enough for the old face to breathe underneath it.
Kane smiled like he had been waiting two years to hear her say his name.