One year later.

The world knew her now.

Serena Moretti-De Luca.
Best-selling author of Ink and Blood — a novel that tore open the underworld with poetic truth and a blade’s edge.

Some thought it was fiction.
Others whispered it was a confession.

But Serena didn’t care.

She had moved far from the city’s chaos, now living in a quiet coastal villa where the waves crashed like memories and the ink never ran dry.

Luciano rarely spoke about the past.

He didn’t need to.

Because every scar on his body, every soft glance he saved only for her, was a conversation he never dared to have with anyone else.

One afternoon, while cleaning out the back drawer of her old notebook case, Serena found it:

A sealed envelope.
Her name, scrawled in familiar handwriting.
Adrian’s.

Her heart stilled.

She hadn’t heard from him since the cathedral.

Luciano had let him live—barely.

Her fingers trembled as she tore the seal.

Inside was a single page.

Serena,

I deserved worse.
And I know I’ll carry that truth until my last breath.

But I wanted you to know the why.

I didn’t betray you for power.
I betrayed you to protect the one person who ever believed I could be more than a ghost in someone else’s story.

Lorenzo had my sister. He said he’d make it look like a car accident. I cracked under the pressure. I made a deal with a devil I thought I understood.

But I never stopped believing in you.

You were always the author, Serena.

The one person who didn’t just survive the chaos—you rewrote it.

So I leave you with this:
Keep writing.
Keep burning pages if you must.
But never let the world silence your voice.

Because that voice?
It saved more than just yourself.

It saved people like me.

—A

Serena folded the letter and placed it inside a locked drawer.

Not to forget it.

But to remember that even in a world soaked in violence,
some truths still mattered.
Some stories still deserved to be written.

Later that night, she curled into Luciano’s side, listening to the sound of the sea.

He kissed her temple.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

Serena smiled faintly.

“That maybe… this wasn’t just a love story.”

He looked down at her. “No?”

She whispered against his skin:

“It was a war story.
And we survived.”

The End.