A Pastrami Delivery Saved the Mob Boss. Then She Became His Queen
ACT ONE — The Collapse
Lorenzo Moretti had been in the life for twenty-three years. He’d seen men die in every way imaginable—stabbed, shot, poisoned, beaten, burned. He’d ordered most of those deaths himself. But watching his chief translator, his closest confidant, choke to death on his own frothing saliva while three international crime lords stared at him with predatory suspicion—that was a new kind of hell.
Seio had been with him for twelve years. Loyal, efficient, fluent in Russian, Mandarin, and Spanish. He’d been the bridge between Lorenzo’s empire and the global underworld. And now he was dead, dragged unceremoniously into a coat closet, his body already cooling.
Lorenzo didn’t have time to grieve. He didn’t have time to do anything except project calm while his entire carefully constructed empire teetered on the edge of collapse.
The meeting had been in progress for four hours. Four hours of careful negotiation, delicate diplomacy, and the constant underlying threat of violence. They’d almost reached an agreement—a three-way distribution network that would funnel untraceable weaponry and narcotics through shipping lanes from the Baltic to the West Coast to the Gulf. It was the deal of a lifetime. The deal that would cement Lorenzo’s position as the preeminent power in the American underworld.
Then Seio had taken a sip of his espresso. And everything had gone wrong.
Now Gregori Yudin was slamming his fist on the table, his face an angry shade of violet as he barked rapid-fire Russian. Wei Chen had stood up, his hand hovering over the suppressed pistol tucked into his waistband, shouting back in harsh Mandarin. Hector Salazar was chuckling darkly, murmuring threats in Spanish that Lorenzo barely caught—but the click of a safety being disengaged was a universal language.
Lorenzo raised his hands. “Gentlemen, please. Please.”
They ignored him. The tension in the room was a taut wire, seconds away from snapping into a bloodbath that would plunge three continents into an underworld war.
Then the heavy oak doors burst open.
Every gun in the room swiveled instantly toward the doorway.
And Lorenzo Moretti’s salvation walked in.
ACT TWO — The Rescue
Beatrice Gallagher stood frozen in the doorway, her wide brown eyes darting from the bleeding man on the floor to the custom-tailored monsters around the table to the dozen hollow-point barrels pointed directly at her chest. She was sweating profusely, her cheap maroon uniform plastered to her skin, her large chest heaving from the exertion of carrying eighty pounds of deli food up forty flights of stairs.
She was going to die. That was her first coherent thought. She was going to die in a penthouse full of gangsters because she’d taken a catering shift that paid eleven dollars an hour plus tips.
Gregori waved his gun at her and screamed a vicious Russian insult. “Ubity etu zhivotnuyu!”—kill this animal. He ordered his men to shoot the intruder and be done with it.
Wei Chen sneered, adding a cutting remark in Mandarin about the Americans’ lack of security and the sheer size of the woman. “Da xiang,” he called her—elephant. Clumsy elephant who’d blundered into a dragon’s den.
Hector laughed out loud, tossing out a filthy Spanish comment about what he’d do to a woman with thighs that thick if he weren’t so busy.
Lorenzo closed his eyes, bracing for the gunfire.
Instead, he heard a heavy sigh. A sigh of profound, exhaustion-fueled annoyance.
Bea let the catering bags drop to the floor with a heavy, wet thud. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of a plump, dimpled hand, planted her thick legs shoulder-width apart, and looked dead at the Russian oligarch.
“Ya by predpochtla, chtoby vy ne napravlyali na menya etu shtuku, yesli ne sobiraetes’ oplatit’ schet za obsluzhivaniye prezhde, chem menya ubit,” she snapped in flawless, unaccented Moscow-dialect Russian. “I’d prefer you not point that thing at me unless you plan on paying the catering bill before you kill me.”
Gregori’s jaw dropped. The gun wavered.
Before the room could recover from the shock, Bea shifted her furious gaze to Chen. Her voice changed, the tonal inflection shifting instantly into perfect crisp Mandarin. “Wo bu shi da xiang. Dan wo zhidao ni de ma ren you duo rude. Ba qiang fang xia, buran nide wucan hui biande feichang nankan.” — I am not an elephant, but I know exactly how rude your insult was. Put the gun down or your lunch today is going to get very ugly.
Wei Chen stepped back, blinking rapidly, his sophisticated veneer shattering.
Finally, she glared at Hector Salazar, who was staring at her as if she were an alien. She spat in raw, colloquial Mexican Spanish. “Y en cuanto a ti, si me tocas un solo pelo de la cabeza, te haré tragar esta mostaza picante por la nariz. ¿Entendido?” — And as for you, if you touch a single hair on my head, I’ll make you swallow this spicy mustard through your nose. Understood.
Silence descended upon the penthouse. Absolute and profound.
Lorenzo Moretti stared at the sweaty, heavily panting, profoundly overweight delivery woman as if she were an angel sent directly from God. She was breathing hard, her large chest heaving, her thick arms crossing defensively over her stomach. She looked terrified. But a stubborn fire burned in her eyes.
“You,” Lorenzo whispered, his voice hoarse. “You speak their languages.”
Bea looked at the breathtakingly handsome Italian mafia boss. “I have a master’s degree in applied linguistics and advanced interpretation from Georgetown,” she said, her voice trembling slightly now that the adrenaline was wearing off. “But academia doesn’t pay the rent, and a severe anxiety disorder makes traditional corporate work difficult. So I deliver sandwiches. The total comes to $642. Can I please just get a signature?”
Lorenzo stepped over the lifeless body of his former translator. He walked directly to Bea and gently, almost reverently, took the clipboard from her shaking soft hands.
“Beatrice,” Lorenzo said, reading her name tag. He looked deeply into her panicked brown eyes. “I’m going to give you exactly two million dollars.”
Bea blinked. “What?”
“Two million. Cash, wire transfer, whatever you want. On one condition.” He gestured toward the empty chair next to him at the head of the blood-splattered table. “You sit down. You eat a pastrami sandwich. And you translate the rest of this meeting for me. Because if you don’t, we are all going to die in this room.”
ACT THREE — The Maestro
Bea found herself wedged into a sleek, minimalist Italian leather chair that was designed for supermodels, not a woman of her significant carriage. The armrests dug painfully into her wide thighs, but the physical discomfort was a distant background noise compared to the sheer terror vibrating through her nervous system.
The body of the poisoned translator had been unceremoniously dragged into a coat closet. The eighty pounds of deli food was unpacked. The surreal image of Gregori Yudin aggressively chewing a garlic pickle while adjusting the slide of his Glock 19 was burned into Bea’s retinas forever.
“Tell the Russian,” Lorenzo said, his voice a low, soothing baritone right next to her ear, “that the May shipping containers leaving the port of Newark will bypass standard customs via our inside men at terminal four. But I need his men to handle the offloading in St. Petersburg.”
Bea took a deep, shuddering breath. Her large, soft hands gripped the edge of the mahogany table. She turned to Gregori and relayed the message in rapid, flawless Russian, ensuring she used the specific underworld jargon for inside men—”svoyi”—to establish street credibility.
Gregori listened, his cold blue eyes locked onto Bea. He replied, speaking quickly and aggressively. Bea turned to Lorenzo. “He says that is acceptable. But he demands a forty-five percent cut of the gross revenue from the Baltic route, not the thirty-five you discussed earlier.”
She paused, lowering her voice so only Lorenzo could hear. “But Mr. Moretti, the specific phrasing he used—he used an idiom, ‘pustit’ volka na ovtsebazu’—’let the wolf eat the sheep.’ In this context, in the Moscow syndicate, it’s not a negotiation tactic. It’s a delay tactic. He’s agreeing to the terms because he doesn’t intend to honor them. I think he plans to ambush your shipment in St. Petersburg and take a hundred percent.”
Lorenzo’s dark eyes widened a fraction of an inch. A thrill went down his spine. His old translator was adequate. He merely translated words. This woman—this brilliantly sharp, terrified woman with her chafing thighs and faded polo shirt—was translating intent. She was reading the cultural subtext.
“Fascinating,” Lorenzo murmured, his gaze lingering on the curve of her jaw, flushed pink with anxiety. “Tell Hector that if he can guarantee the Sinaloa supply lines to the East Coast, I will handle the Russian problem myself.”
Bea’s heart hammered as she switched to Spanish, maintaining the delicate balance of respect and threat required for cartel negotiations.
The meeting stretched for three agonizing hours. Bea was a maestro, conducting a symphony of criminal diplomacy. She smoothed over Wei Chen’s bruised ego with delicate Mandarin honorifics. She diffused Hector’s explosive temper with culturally specific jokes that Lorenzo couldn’t have even conceptualized. She navigated Gregori’s treacherous demands with the precision of a master chess player.
She was exhausted. Her back ached, her uniform was soaked in sweat, and she desperately wanted to go back to her tiny, lonely apartment in Queens and binge-watch baking shows.
Finally, the terms were set. Blood oaths were sworn. The three international bosses stood, offering Lorenzo begrudging nods of respect, their eyes lingering on the fat delivery woman who had somehow brokered the most lucrative black market deal of the decade.
As Gregori passed Bea, he leaned down, his massive frame towering over her. He rumbled in Russian: “You are too smart to carry food, little girl. When you bore of him, come to me. I will make you a queen.”
Bea didn’t flinch. “Ya predpochitayu svoyu nezavisimost’,” she replied smoothly. “I prefer my independence. And your breath smells like pickle brine.”
Gregori threw his head back and roared with laughter, slapping Lorenzo on the shoulder before exiting with his entourage.
Once the massive oak doors clicked shut, leaving only Bea and Lorenzo and Lorenzo’s heavily armed guards in the penthouse, Bea let out a massive, shuddering breath. Her whole body seemed to deflate. She struggled to push herself up from the chair, the leather squeaking against her thighs.
“Well,” Bea said, her voice shaking slightly. “That’s done. I’ll just—I’ll take that wire transfer now, Mr. Moretti. I can write down my routing number.”
Lorenzo poured two glasses of twenty-year-old Macallan scotch. He walked over, handing one to Bea. She took it hesitantly, her large fingers brushing against his. He noticed the stark contrast—his hands calloused from violence, hers soft and plump.
“Drink,” he commanded softly.
She took a sip, coughing slightly at the burn.
“You saved my empire today, Beatrice.” Lorenzo paced slowly around her, moving like a panther, silent and predatory. “More importantly, you saved my life. If Gregori had ambushed my men in St. Petersburg, I would have been weakened. Wei Chen would have smelled blood in the water. I would be dead by Christmas.”
“You’re welcome,” Bea said, clutching her cheap catering bag. “I really just want to go home now.”
Lorenzo stopped in front of her. He looked at her plain face, devoid of makeup. Her heavy, exhausted frame. And the brilliant, calculating mind hidden behind her terrified eyes.
“You can’t go home, Beatrice.”
Bea froze. The blood drained from her face. “You—you promised. You said if I translated, you’d pay me. You’re going to kill me because I know too much.” Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over her thick cheeks. “Please. I live alone. I don’t have anyone to tell. I’ll disappear. I’ll—”
“Kill you?” Lorenzo looked genuinely offended. He stepped closer, reaching out to gently wipe a tear from her cheek with his thumb. The touch sent a violent jolt of electricity through Bea’s spine.
“Beatrice, you are the most valuable asset I have ever encountered. Gregori just offered to make you his queen. Do you think he’s going to let you go back to delivering pastrami? Do you think Wei Chen won’t send his triad ghosts to kidnap you and use you against me?”
Bea stared at him, the horrifying reality of the underworld sinking in. By sitting at that table, she hadn’t just saved Lorenzo. She had made herself a high-value piece on a global chessboard.
“You don’t deliver sandwiches anymore, Beatrice.” Lorenzo’s voice dropped an octave, slipping into a dark, possessive timbre. “You belong to the Moretti family now. You belong to me. I am going to put you in a penthouse. I am going to buy you a wardrobe that doesn’t bruise your skin. And you are going to be my voice.”
Bea gripped the handles of her empty delivery bags, her knuckles turning white. “And if I refuse?”
Lorenzo leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of her ear, the scent of gunpowder and cologne enveloping her senses. “Then I will have to convince you. And Beatrice—I am a very convincing man.”
ACT FOUR — The Golden Cage
The golden cage Lorenzo Moretti built for Beatrice Gallagher was located on the forty-second floor of a hyper-exclusive glass tower in Tribeca. It featured floor-to-ceiling windows, a private chef who previously held two Michelin stars at Le Bernardin, and a security detail composed of heavily armed men who looked like they chewed gravel for breakfast.
For the first week, Bea was paralyzed by a bizarre cocktail of terror, imposter syndrome, and the sudden jarring absence of financial panic. Her bank account now showed a daily direct deposit that exceeded her previous annual salary. But she was a prisoner. Albeit one wrapped in thousand-dollar cashmere throws.
On her eighth day in captivity, the massive mahogany double doors to the penthouse opened. Lorenzo strode in, flanked by three nervous-looking women carrying garment bags. He looked devastatingly sharp in a midnight blue Tom Ford suit, a silver Patek Philippe watch glinting on his wrist.
“You have been wearing the same oversized university sweatpants for four days, Beatrice,” Lorenzo said, his tone conversational but laced with absolute authority. “While I admire the Georgetown pride, my chief intelligence officer cannot look like she’s cramming for midterms.”
Bea bristled, pulling the heavy fabric of her hoodie tighter over her large stomach. “Off-the-rack Italian designer clothes don’t exactly cater to a size twenty-four, Mr. Moretti. I don’t fit into the mafia wife aesthetic of silk slip dresses and stilettos. I’m fat. I’m clumsy. I like comfortable waistbands.”
Lorenzo didn’t flinch. He simply gestured to the women. “Which is why I didn’t send you to Bergdorf Goodman. I brought the head tailor from Christian Siriano’s private atelier—along with a team who understands that true power requires custom architecture.”
He stepped closer, his dark eyes dropping to take in her wide hips and the soft, thick curve of her thighs. There was no disgust in his gaze. Only a heavy, simmering heat that made Bea’s breath catch in her throat.
“Do not ever apologize for the space you take up, Beatrice. The women in my world are starving ghosts. You are substantial. You are real. Now, let them measure you. We have a dinner meeting with the Irish at eight.”
The transformation was startling. By the time they arrived at the back room of a private, dimly lit speakeasy in Hell’s Kitchen, Bea was poured into a custom-tailored deep emerald green wrap dress. The heavy jersey fabric draped flawlessly over her large breasts, cinched tightly at her waist, and flowed elegantly over her stomach and hips. She looked powerful. She felt terrifying.
The meeting was with Arthur Gallagher—no relation to Bea—a notoriously stubborn boss of the Westside Irish mob. Lorenzo needed Arthur’s union contacts to move construction materials for a money-laundering front.
Arthur, a red-faced man with a thick brogue, spent the first hour drinking heavily and speaking in thick coded Dublin street slang, intentionally trying to box Lorenzo out of the negotiation. Lorenzo sat back, sipping his bourbon, and simply tapped the table twice. Their signal.
Bea leaned forward. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her linguistic training took over. She didn’t just translate. She mirrored the cadence and cultural aggression of the speaker.
“Arthur,” Bea said, her voice dropping into a flawless working-class northside Dublin accent that she’d perfected during her master’s thesis. “Stop acting the maggot and playing the hard man. Lorenzo knows your boys on the docks are skimming off the top of the union dues. We can either bury that little secret and do business, or I can translate your ledger for the federal prosecutors. What’s it going to be?”
Arthur choked on his Guinness. The blood drained from his ruddy face. He stared at the large, commanding woman in the emerald dress as if she were a witch.
Ten minutes later, the deal was signed.
In the armored Maybach on the way home, Lorenzo poured them both a glass of champagne. The neon lights of Times Square washed over the car’s interior, highlighting the sharp angles of his jaw.
“You are a terrifying creature, Beatrice,” Lorenzo murmured, his voice thick with admiration.
“I’m just a linguist with a very good memory,” she whispered, her hands shaking slightly from leftover adrenaline.
Lorenzo reached across the leather seat. His large, warm hand enveloped hers. His thumb traced the soft, plump flesh of her knuckles. “No. You are the key to the city.” He pulled her hand to his lips, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss to her skin. “And someone is trying to take the city from me.”
Bea froze. “What do you mean?”
Lorenzo’s expression turned lethal. “I intercepted an encrypted text file from Gregori Yudin’s lieutenant in Brighton Beach. It’s written in a localized coded dialect of Russian underworld slang. My other guys couldn’t crack it. I need you to look at it tonight. Because I believe I have a rat in my inner circle.”
ACT FIVE — The Code
For three days, Bea barely slept. She sat at the massive marble island in the penthouse kitchen, surrounded by empty coffee cups, highlighters, and printouts of the intercepted Russian texts. The code was brilliant—utilizing phonetic spelling of Cyrillic mixed with localized Brooklyn street slang. But it wasn’t a match for a woman who’d spent five years deconstructing morphological typologies.
On Thursday morning at 3:00 a.m., the pieces clicked into place.
Bea gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. She grabbed the papers, her thick thighs chafing as she ran down the long hallway toward Lorenzo’s private suite. She didn’t bother knocking. She burst through the heavy oak doors.
Lorenzo was awake, sitting in a leather armchair by the window, cleaning a Heckler & Koch USP compact pistol. He wore only dark sweatpants, his heavily tattooed chest bare in the moonlight. He looked up, instantly alert.
“It’s Vincent,” Bea breathed, her chest heaving as she waved the papers. “Your underboss. Vincent.”
Lorenzo went deadly still. “Explain.”
“The texts,” Bea said, walking over and slapping the papers onto the glass side table. “They aren’t just schedules. They’re using a specific syntactic structure—a verbal tick. The writer constantly uses the phrase ‘v kontse dnya’—’at the end of the day’—but places it at the beginning of the sentence. It’s grammatically incorrect in Russian, but it’s a direct translation of an English idiom. Vincent says that all the time. ‘At the end of the day, boss.’ He’s the one giving Gregori your shipment schedules.”
She pointed a shaking, plump finger at the final highlighted line. “And Lorenzo—he gave Gregori the security codes to the Red Hook warehouse. The shipment coming in tonight. It’s an ambush.”
Lorenzo stood up. The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. The raw, unfiltered violence in his eyes was terrifying. But for the first time, none of it was directed at her.
“Get dressed,” Lorenzo commanded, chambering a round into his pistol. “Dark clothes. Flat shoes.”
“Me? Why do I have to go to a mafia shootout?” Bea squeaked, her panic returning full force.
“Because if Gregori’s men are there, they’ll be using scrambled radio frequencies. I need ears on their comms.” He stepped close, cupping her soft, round face in his rough hands. “And Beatrice—I am not letting you out of my sight. Ever again.”
ACT SIX — The Ambush
Two hours later, the air inside the Red Hook warehouse was thick with the smell of saltwater, motor oil, and impending death.
Lorenzo and his men—heavily armed and cloaked in shadows—had infiltrated the catwalks above the main floor. Down below, millions of dollars in untraceable weaponry were packed into wooden crates.
Bea was pressed flat against a steel girder on the catwalk, a bulky tactical headset clamped over her ears, a tablet in her lap. She was terrified. Sweating profusely through her dark sweater. But her mind was laser-focused.
Below them, the massive cargo doors groaned open. Black SUVs rolled in. Gregori’s heavily armed Bratva soldiers poured out, sweeping the room. Among them, looking nervous and sweating, was Vincent.
Lorenzo raised his hand, signaling his snipers to wait. He looked at Bea.
Bea pressed the earpiece tighter. She could hear the Russian tactical chatter bleeding through the decrypted frequency.
“Sektor Alpha chist.” A voice crackled in Russian. “Zhdyom italiyanskuyu tsel.”—Sector Alpha clear. Awaiting Italian target.
Another voice: “Oni ustraivayut ubiystvennuyu korobku u vostochnykh vykhodov.”—They’re setting up a killbox near the east exits.
Bea whispered to Lorenzo, her voice barely a breath. “Twelve men. Heavy armor. East exits.”
Lorenzo nodded, his jaw tight. He raised his rifle.
Suddenly, a massive spotlight flared on from a crane above them, washing the catwalk in blinding white light. One of Gregori’s men had spotted a reflection off a sniper’s scope.
“Nabalyudayetsya! Na balkone, ogon’!”—Contact! On the balcony, fire!
The warehouse erupted into deafening chaos.
Bullets tore through the steel grating, pinging dangerously close to Bea’s head. She screamed, dropping flat on her stomach, her large body seeking any cover the metal beam could provide. Lorenzo’s men returned fire. The noise was apocalyptic. Wood splintered. Glass shattered. The smell of cordite burned Bea’s throat.
Through the chaos, Bea heard the Russian radio chatter escalate into a frantic scream. The commander was calling for reinforcements to flank Lorenzo’s position via the north stairwell. If they made it up those stairs, Lorenzo and his men would be trapped.
Panic seized Bea. But it was quickly replaced by a desperate, ferocious instinct to survive.
She looked at the heavy two-way radio Lorenzo had left by her tablet—the one synced to the Russian frequency. Bea snatched the radio. She hit the transmission button. She didn’t just speak Russian. She summoned the deepest, most guttural authoritative Moscow dialect bark she could muster, mimicking the cadence of Gregori’s elite guard.
“Otboy! Otmena!” Bea screamed into the radio. “Zasada na severnoy lestnitse! Vsem podrazdeleniyam otstupit’ k yuzhnym vorotam! Nemedlenno!”—Abort! Abort! Ambush on the north stairwell! All units fall back to the south gates! Immediately!
Down on the floor, the Russian tactical team hesitated. The commanding voice on their encrypted channel was absolute. Believing they were walking into a trap, the squad that was about to flank Lorenzo abruptly turned and sprinted toward the south exit.
“They’re falling back to the south gates!” Bea yelled to Lorenzo over the gunfire.
Lorenzo didn’t hesitate. He signaled his heavy gunners. As the clustered Russian squad funneled toward the south exit, Lorenzo’s men unleashed a devastating crossfire, effectively neutralizing Gregori’s elite strike force in seconds.
Silence fell over the warehouse. Broken only by the groans of the wounded and the hiss of a punctured steam pipe.
Down on the floor, Vincent was on his knees, weeping, a gun held to the back of his head by one of Lorenzo’s men. Gregori was nowhere to be seen. He’d likely sent his men to do the dirty work.
Lorenzo lowered his rifle. He was covered in drywall dust, a shallow, bloody graze across his cheekbone. He walked over to where Bea was slowly pushing herself up from the metal grating, her knees trembling violently.
She looked up at him, her wide brown eyes filled with tears, her hair a wild, frizzy mess, her clothes covered in dirt.
Lorenzo dropped his rifle. It clattered loudly against the steel. He fell to his knees in front of her, his hands gripping her thick waist, pulling her flush against his chest.
“You magnificent, brilliant woman,” Lorenzo breathed, his voice thick with an emotion Bea had never heard from him.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent over the gunpowder.
“You just saved my life again.”
“I—I think I need to stress-eat a very large pizza,” Bea sobbed, wrapping her plump arms around his broad, muscular shoulders, burying her face in his chest.
Lorenzo pulled back, his dark eyes burning with fierce, uncompromising possession. He framed her soft face with his calloused, bloodstained hands.
“You can have whatever you want, Beatrice. The whole city is yours. Because from this night forward, you are no longer just my translator.”
He leaned in, capturing her lips in a bruising, desperate, hungry kiss that tasted of danger and absolute devotion.
“You are my consigliere,” he whispered against her mouth. “You are my queen.”
ACT SEVEN — The Queen
The months that followed were unlike anything Beatrice Gallagher had ever imagined. She’d gone from delivering pastrami sandwiches to orchestrating the most sophisticated criminal network in North America. Her linguistic genius made her invaluable. Her strategic mind made her indispensable. And her growing confidence made her unstoppable.
Lorenzo kept his promises. She had a penthouse. A wardrobe that celebrated her curves instead of hiding them. A private chef who understood that a woman of her size needed nourishment, not deprivation. And a security detail that treated her like royalty.
But more than the material comforts, she had purpose. She was no longer invisible. No longer overlooked. No longer apologizing for the space she took up.
She sat in on every major negotiation, her voice translating not just words but intent, not just threats but opportunities. She decoded encrypted messages, exposed traitors, and brokered deals that made the Moretti syndicate richer and more powerful than ever.
And through it all, Lorenzo was there. Present. Protective. Unfailingly devoted.
He never made her feel small. Never made her feel like she didn’t belong. He touched her like she was precious, looked at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and treated her like the queen he’d promised she would be.
“I love you,” he told her one night, in the penthouse, with the Manhattan skyline glittering behind them. “I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect you. But I love you, Beatrice. Every inch of you.”
Bea looked at this man—this dangerous, powerful, impossibly handsome man—and felt tears prick her eyes.
“I love you too,” she whispered. “Even though you’re terrifying.”
He laughed, pulling her into his arms. “Good. Because I’m never letting you go.”
She smiled against his chest. “I know. I don’t want you to.”
FINAL ENGAGEMENT QUESTION:
Have you ever been underestimated because of how you look—only to prove that true power comes from what’s inside?