“Take Off The Wedding Dress,” The Mafia Boss Ordered Coldly — “This Marriage Was Only Revenge”

The medical clinic inside St. Jude’s was small, smelling faintly of antiseptic and lavender. Audrey sat Sebastian down on a stainless-steel examination table, stripping off his ruined jacket and tearing open the blood-soaked linen of his dress shirt.

"Stay still," she ordered, her hands surprisingly steady as she pulled a bottle of iodine and cotton swabs from a glass cabinet.

Sebastian grunted as the antiseptic stung the deep trench left by the bullet across his shoulder muscle. He watched her face—the fierce concentration, the slight tremble of her chin that she was trying so hard to hide.

"You should be terrified," Sebastian murmured, his voice low in the quiet room. "You were nearly killed."

"I’ve been terrified since the day you bought my family’s debt, Sebastian," Audrey replied, wiping away the blood with careful, precise strokes. "A bullet is fast. Waiting for a ruthless man to decide how he wants to ruin your life takes much longer."

Sebastian reached out with his uninjured arm, catching her wrist. Her pulse thrummed fast against his fingers.

"I don't ruin things, Audrey," he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous rumble. "I take what is mine, and I protect it."

"Is that what I am to you? A possession?" Audrey looked down at him, her dark eyes clear and piercing. "You married me for revenge because you thought I took Catherine from you. Now you find out I was protecting her, and you don't know where to put your anger."

Sebastian didn't let go of her wrist. "Catherine died in your arms. She should have died in mine."

"She didn't want to die in a warzone, Sebastian!" Audrey’s voice cracked, emotional exhaustion finally breaking through her composed exterior. "She spent her whole life watching you build an empire out of fear! She loved you, but she was terrified of what you were becoming! In the end, she wanted to remember her brother as the boy who used to build wooden boats with her on the lake, not the monster who controls the city's underworld!"

Sebastian went completely still. The words hit him harder than the bullet had.

The boy who used to build wooden boats.

No one had called him that in fifteen years. Not since his father was assassinated in a parking garage and Sebastian took up the mantle of the Ror family, carving out his kingdom with blood and iron.

"She... she remembered that?" Sebastian asked quietly, his chest tightening in a way that had nothing to do with his wound.

"She spoke of it every day," Audrey whispered, her hands softening as she placed a sterile bandage over his shoulder. "She kept a small wooden boat on her nightstand until her last breath. She told me to give it to you when the time was right."

Audrey stepped back, opening a drawer near the desk. She pulled out a small, roughly carved piece of pine, no larger than her palm, weathered and smooth from years of handling. She held it out to him.

Sebastian stared at the little wooden boat. Slowly, hesitantly, he raised his hand and took it. As his thumb brushed the worn wood, a flood of memories—summer days, the smell of lake water, Catherine’s laughter before the world grew dark— hit him with crushing force.

A single tear escaped his eye before he could stop it. He turned his head away, but Audrey saw it.

She didn't mock him. She didn't press her advantage. She simply turned around and began cleaning up the bloody bandages, giving him the dignity of his grief.