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This is perfect.
I tuck my nose into Elio’s chest. He laughs softly at the movement, a noise that rumbles through my chest like a large cat purring. “You are unharmed?”
“Yeah. I really am. I mean I might be a little sore…”
“From me,” he rumbles.
It’s a statement and a question.
I glance up at him. “From you, Elio. Always you.”
Forever you.
He’s quiet for a minute. I let my hands roam along his skin, tracing patterns on the scars and tattoos on his chest. After a minute, Elio sucks in a huge breath, and lets it out.
Like he needs the courage to proceed.
Mere moments later, I find out why.
Elio opens his mouth to say something, and I look up at him.
“I love you, Caterina.”
The words shake me.
I pop up from where I’ve been laying on his chest, and my eyes go wide.
His lips tilt in a half-smile that squeezes my heart. “I don’t expect you to love me, not after all I’ve put you through. All I’ve done to you and your brothers. The things I assumed of you… I was wrong.”
He pauses and I can’t do anything except stare at him.
Elio continues. “I have learned that you are nothing like the girl I met all those years ago. The woman you are is one that I cannot live without.
“You are smart, and strong in a way I am not. You are grace and mercy, and you are also vengeance when you have the right to be.
“You, Caterina, are everything I want to be when I think of my future.
“I have been an idiot before. But I love you. If I have to spend the rest of my life begging you to forgive me I will.
“Marry me, in your heart as well as in the law. Be my wife, my partner, my companion for all the challenges ahead.
“I am who I am, and this is the life I will lead, but I can’t imagine a world without you in it. Marry me, for real this time,” he finishes.
The air between us crackles with energy.
There’s so much left unsaid.
For all I know, Dino is still bleeding in the basement.
Marco is still missing.
There’s so much that’s still going to happen to us, in this crazy life. I know what I’m signing up for.
I’ve lived with the mafia my whole life, and I’m under no illusions that this is going to be a path full of things that frustrate me, enrage me, and things that I generally could do without as far as lifestyle goes.
But Elio?
Elio, I can’t live without.
