Blood was drying on my cuff when I walked into my Chicago penthouse at 1:43 a.m., but the violence I'd left behind was nothing compared with what waited inside my own home. Before I could touch the lights, my housekeeper stepped from the darkness and whispered, “Don't make a sound,” then showed me why my fiancée had spent eleven weeks terrifying my children and why losing my temper was exactly what she needed.

When Naomi and I finally walked back through the front doors, the silence of the apartment felt different. It wasn't the suffocating, heavy silence of a trap waiting to be sprung. It was clean. It was light.

From the hallway, pattering footsteps echoed across the floor, and suddenly two small bodies slammed into my legs.

“Daddy!” Rosie cried, burying her face in my trousers, her little arms wrapping around my waist with a desperate, crushing grip.

Jack stood just behind her, his eyes wide and uncertain, still carrying the rigid posture of a soldier waiting for punishment. But as I knelt down on the hardwood floor and opened my arms, the armor finally cracked. Jack let out a sob and hurled himself into my embrace, burying his face in my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Jack choked out, his small frame shaking. “We tried to be good. We didn't want to make it hard.”

“Hey, look at me,” I whispered, lifting his chin so he had to look into my eyes. My own vision blurred with unhedged tears as I brushed the hair from his forehead. “You never made anything hard. You were brave. Bravest kids I’ve ever known. And nobody is ever, ever going to hurt you again. I promise you that on your mother's memory.”

Rosie sniffled, clutching her battered stuffed rabbit—the one Isabella had sewn—tightly against her chest. “Is the bad lady gone, Daddy?”

“She’s gone, sweetheart,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “She’s never coming back.”

Naomi stood a few feet away, leaning against the doorframe with her hands in her pockets, watching us with a soft, melancholic expression.

“Well,” Naomi cleared her throat gently, pushing off the wall. “The federal prosecutor’s office has already impounded Patrick’s entire estate. Arthur Velez started singing the second they put him in a holding cell, and the entire Sloane network is collapsing like a house of cards. By tomorrow morning, the media will have the full story, and your name will be completely cleared of any association with their syndicate.”

I stood up, holding Rosie in one arm while keeping my other hand resting on Jack’s shoulder. I looked at Naomi, realizing just how much I owed this woman—a woman I had initially dismissed as just another face in the background of my sprawling, violent world.

“You saved my family, Naomi,” I said, my voice thick with emotion. “How do I begin to thank you?”

Naomi offered a small, crooked smile, shaking her head. “You don't need to thank me, Roman. Just be their father. The father Isabella wanted you to be before the money and the power made you look away.”

The words hit me like a physical blow, but they were true. I had spent fifteen years building an empire out of fear and deterrence, believing that protecting my family meant putting high walls around them and letting ruthless people manage the perimeter. I had forgotten that walls keep out the light just as effectively as they keep out the monsters.

“What happens to you now?” I asked. “Are you going back to the bureau?”

Naomi looked toward the windows, where the city lights of Chicago were beginning to flicker on against the gathering dusk of Lake Michigan.

“I think I’m officially retired from government work,” she said, her eyes glinting with a new sense of freedom. “Turns out, I prefer residential security. Especially when the employer is finally listening.”

A genuine smile broke across my face for the first time in three years.

“Well,” I said, extending my free hand toward her. “The housekeeper position is permanently filled, but I have an opening for Chief of Security and Family Operations. Salary is negotiable, but the benefits include a lot less paperwork and a boss who actually takes your advice.”