Justice is served, " he said softly, and stepped into a long shadow.

He could see faint streaks of light as if the man left behind prints. They didn't appear like footprints, there were more faint bluish lights, more of a blob-line than a print, but every person left them behind and from shadows he could see them. He couldn't spot the imaging once out of tube, but the shadows acted as if he was seeing through a thermal lens.

He breathed away all the anger, all emotions, cloaking himself with Grace and everything in him settled, once more allowing complete control.

She looked down onto his face. So gorgeous. It wasn't just his beautiful, very masculine features, it was the way he was inside. "I'm in love with you. There isn't anything that you can tell me that is going to change that.

He'd always had his family, his brothers and sister, and they had formed a unit so strong, when he was younger, he hadn't thought he would ever need anyone else. Loneliness taught him otherwise.

Grace had filled those lonely places, replacing them with laughter and conversation. She'd given him the purpose he needed there in his home to maintain his balance in a world of stark duty.

She didn't want to be that girl, the one curled up in a little ball. The one under the covers in the fetal position. She'd been there hundreds of times and every single time she'd told herself to stand up. This time, win or lose, if she just stood up, she had the very real opportunity, which would never come again, to be with a man she'd dreamt of.

Vittorio Ferraro was the most extraordinary man she'd ever meet and she would forever regret being a coward if she didn't give what had been growling between them a chance.

She didn't want the mask he wore around others. She wanted the true intamacy he had given her, the real Vittorio, the real man. He had offered her that man and she'd been so afraid she'd rejected him.