The three-month anniversary of their forced marriage dawned with a deceptive calm over the Moretti mansion. Three months since the council had shackled Elena Voss to Dante Moretti in a bid for peace, and the landscape between them had transformed from gilded cage to a volatile paradise of revelation, scars, and simmering suspicion. The safe house photo had bared her as Phoenix, yet her careful lies during the interrogation had kept deeper truths Ghost’s alliances, the vault’s full secrets veiled. Dante’s obsession, once a distant hunt, now fixated on the gaps in her childhood stories, fueling late-night questions even as tenderness grew.
He found her in the garden overlooking the lagoon that morning, where palm fronds whispered in the breeze and the air carried the faint salt of water. El
