Chapter 6 - A New DawnI woke up to the sound of gulls and the rhythmic lapping of waves.
I was on a small, sandy beach. The sun was rising over the horizon, painting the sky in soft shades of pink and gold.
Ethan was lying next to me, breathing steadily, alive.
I looked up, scanning the shoreline.
And there, standing in the surf, was Vincent.
He was soaked, his clothes torn, his face bloodied, but he was standing.
I scrambled to my feet, my legs shaking, and ran to him. He caught me in his arms, his hold so tight I could barely breathe.
"I told you," he whispered into my hair. "No one moves against what is mine."
The Moretti empire had fallen, burned to the ground by his own hand. The wealth, the power, the terror—it was all gone.
"What now?" I asked, looking at the ruins of his former life on the horizon.
He took my hand, his palm rough against mine. "Now? Now we disappear. We go somewhere where no one knows the name Moretti. We start over. Just you, me, and Ethan."
I looked at the water, then at him. He was no longer the monster of the city. He was just a man—a man who had lost everything and found the only thing that mattered.
"You're sure?"
He kissed my forehead. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life."
May you like
As we walked along the beach, hand in hand, the sun fully rose, warming the sand and the world around us. The past was a ghost, a nightmare that would eventually fade. But the future... the future was ours to build.
I had stopped on a freezing night in Central Park, and in doing so, I had lost my life as a street girl, but I had gained a soul. And as we walked toward the horizon, I knew that for the first time in my life, I was exactly where I was meant to be.
