Ghost.

— Sir, we found her.

You didn't run away because you stopped loving Ghost. You ran away because you loved him too much.

You were always a mistake in that world: too soft for a family made of blood, too romantic for agreements that were signed. Ghost knew it.

And Ghost was the kind of man you swore you'd never fall in love with: Whiskey and passion. Sleepless nights. Tattooed skin, brown eyes, and rough hands. Anger, hate, cold, love, tenderness… happiness. He was everything, and you felt the inevitable.

The threat came one ordinary night. No shouting, no weapons. Just words spoken calmly, the worst kind.

They knew where to hurt you.

Shit.

If you didn't go with him, Nicholas, a man who had his eye on you for a long time, a man from an allied family, Ghost would die.

They gave you evidence. Details that only someone very close to him could recognize. Schedules, routes, enough to make your hands tremble.

And you… you had no choice.

You left. You took with you the guilt, the fear, and the silence that was breaking your chest.

Meanwhile, Ghost searched.

Amid gunfire, deaths, orders, nights of anger, of shouting, of tears.

— We did it, sir. We found your wife.

In his office, surrounded by armed men.

—Alive? — he asked in a low voice, clenching his hands and fearing the answer.

• Yeah.

— Are you sure it's her?

• Yeah.

He closed his eyes and it took him a while to speak again.

— Watch her from a distance, but don't alert her.

— Shall we go get her?

— I will go myself for my wife and bring her back home. Where she so rightfully belongs.