"Victoria shoved my little girl away from a grand piano because she thought a maid's daughter had no business touching anything inside that mansion. Seconds later, the most feared man in New York walked into the room, took one look at my daughter's gray-green eyes, and dropped his keys like he'd just seen a ghost. In that instant, everything everyone believed about us changed.

By the time the morning sun rose over Manhattan, the headlines were already shaking the nation to its core: SENATOR KENSINGTON ARRESTED AT JFK AIRPORT FOR 2022 VANCE ASSASSINATION; DAUGHTER HELD WITHOUT BAIL IN ARSON ATTEMPT.

Inside a private penthouse suite at Mount Sinai Hospital, the smell of smoke and gunpowder had finally been replaced by crisp white linens and fifty bouquets of white roses filling every corner of the room. I had escaped the greenhouse with minor smoke inhalation and a few singed curls, though Damon had refused to let the doctors admit him to a separate room while they stitched the bullet graze on his left shoulder and bandaged his burned palms.

Instead, the most feared billionaire in New York was currently lying right beside me on the wide hospital bed, his good arm wrapped securely around my waist while Sophie sat at the foot of the mattress, happily eating strawberry Jell-O with a very tearful, doting Evelyn Vance.

"Grandma Evelyn says the new white piano is already in the parlor," Sophie announced proudly, waving her plastic spoon at us. "And she sewed Mr. Elephant’s ear with gold thread!"

"Only the best for a Vance princess," Evelyn smiled warmly, rising from her chair and smoothing her skirt. "Come along, darling. Let’s go down to the cafeteria and get some hot chocolate so your mother and father can talk."

Once the door clicked shut behind them, leaving the room bathed in quiet golden sunlight, Damon turned on his side to look at me. The dark shadows that had haunted his silver-hazel eyes for four years were finally gone.

Reaching into his pocket with his bandaged hand, he pulled out a breathtaking vintage platinum ring set with a flawless square-cut diamond that had belonged to his grandmother. Without a word, he slid it onto my left ring finger—where it fit as if it had been forged for me alone.

"No more secrets, no more running, and no more waiting," Damon murmured softly, pressing his lips to the ring before meeting my eyes. "Marry me, Elena. Today. Right here if I have to bribe a judge to come up to the tenth floor."

"Yes," I whispered, smiling through happy tears as I leaned in to kiss him. "A thousand times yes."

Just as his lips brushed mine, an encrypted satellite phone sitting inside Damon’s evidence bag on the nightstand—the burner phone confiscated from Senator Kensington’s gunman the night before—began vibrating violently against the wood.

Damon frowned, reaching over to press the speaker button so we could both hear.

No voice spoke at first. Instead, a crackling audio recording from four years ago played through the speaker: the unmistakable sound of a stormy night in a Queens charity clinic, a nurse saying 'She’s unconscious from the anesthesia, Senator, she’ll never know,' followed by the sharp, distinct cries of two newborn babies.

Then, a cold, unfamiliar voice came onto the line.