Chapter 25 - A Farewell Without Titles
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Lorenzo switched off the desk lamp in his study, plunging the room into cool moonlight, and walked up the carpeted stairs to the master bedroom.
Isabella was sitting in bed, propped up against a mountain of pillows, reading a leather-bound novel. She looked up as he entered, setting her reading glasses on the nightstand.
Lorenzo walked over to the kitchen adjacent to their master suite and picked up a bottle of wine she was struggling to uncork.
"Need some help with that?" he asked smoothly, taking the bottle.
Isabella raised an eyebrow, leaning back against her pillows. "Did I ask for help, Mr. DeLuca?"
Lorenzo stopped, holding the bottle mid-air, before handing it right back to her with a dry smile.
Isabella let out a soft laugh, taking the bottle back and successfully popping the cork herself.
Progress, Lorenzo noted silently to himself with an amused grin, was apparently still incomplete.
He sat down on the edge of the mattress as Isabella poured two small glasses. Outside their bedroom window, the low landscape lights of the garden illuminated the stone pathways below.
It was an ordinary night.
Decades ago, the word ordinary would have sounded dreadfully boring to Lorenzo DeLuca. It would have sounded like weakness, or a lack of ambition.
Now, it sounded like the rarest luxury in the world.
There was no active surveillance watching their perimeter. There was no need to hide in safehouses. There were no court trials looming over their heads. There were no emergency ER visits, and no mournful trips to a cemetery.
There was just dinner, a wife who had survived against all odds, a husband who had learned how to listen, and a family built from chosen relationships that had withstood the test of time and violence.
There was a dead woman whose real name had finally been carved into a proper headstone, and a child who had been allowed to grow up into a safe, confident adult.
And somewhere downstairs in an archival box sat an old brown leather dog collar fitted with a crooked metal ring.
It wasn't sacred. It wasn't magical.
It was simply the one detail that had stubbornly refused to fit the lie everyone else believed—the detail that had held the door open just long enough for the truth to walk through.
Lorenzo lifted his glass of wine. Isabella touched hers gently against his.
"What are you thinking?" she asked softly, her green eyes reflecting the warm glow of the bedside lamp.
Lorenzo looked at her. She was alive, breathing, still correcting his posture, still challenging his ego, and still actively choosing to share her life with him every single day.
"Nothing," he smiled gently.
"Liar," she whispered affectionately.
Lorenzo looked into her eyes and finally voiced the quiet truth that lived in his heart every morning he woke up beside her.
"I’m just glad you’re here, Isabella."
Isabella’s expression softened, the playful banter melting away into absolute warmth.
"So am I, Lorenzo," she replied softly. "So am I."
There was no grand, cinematic speech. There was no miraculous declaration or debt owed.
There was only choice.
May you like
And for Lorenzo DeLuca, after everything that raw power had failed to protect, that quiet choice was the happiest ending he could have ever imagined.
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