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I believe him. Salvatore has admitted to me he hates being out of control. It can’t be easy for him, putting himself in the humiliating spotlight like this.
“Give me a chance to make it right. To fix it. Having you back in that house, in that room—that’s not what I want. I could have you within arm’s reach, and still not have you back in the way I need.”
I feel what he means so keenly: I felt it most in that last full day we spent together. Such a grim, hard day, but one that let me look into a future where we were right for each, where we were the doses of each other’s medicine. I’ve thought back on it over and over since we’ve been apart. I wonder if he has, too.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life—even if that’s just the next five minutes—trying to get you back.
You said I wasn’t ready to accept this, and you were right. I didn’t know how to be loved, or what the hell I was supposed to do with it. But I know I won’t make that mistake again.”
I gaze down at him, finding it hard to breathe, as if he has slipped his hand between my ribs and taken my heart in a vice. I ache to forgive him. To collapse into his arms, kiss this all away, go right back to that moment before all this happened. I hold my ground against the urge, digging my feet in.
“…Is there a question in there somewhere, Salvatore?”
His eyes shift, hesitance hardening his expression. He smiles grimly.
“A room full of men who want to kill me, and I haven’t been nervous until this moment.”
I wait, refusing to rescue him from the moment. It goes against his instincts to ask.
“Will you be my wife, Tessa?”
I wonder what would happen if I said no.
“Considering the mess you’ve made of all this, everything you’ve done…”
Salvatore’s face hardens, bracing himself for the killing blow.
“I will. God knows it might take you fifty or sixty years to make this up to me…”
For the first time all evening, I see a glimpse of him—my Salvatore—somewhere in the relief behind his dark eyes. The ring slides back on my finger, where it belongs. My hand finally feels whole again.
“Then I better start now.”
He rises finally, and I pull him into a desperate kiss: a message for him and my family both. He clutches me to him. Though I would never know it by looking at him, I feel the despair in him, the tightness of his fingers and the tremble of his breath. The man has skirted so close to ruin.
When our lips finally part, I mutter, “You can start with the hostages.”
Salvatore obeys.
I see the mixed reactions in the faces of my family—the suspicion, the terror, the bitterness. I keep myself between him and the crowd.
“Everyone here has witnessed that I am going with Salvatore Mori voluntarily. If my father tries to send anyone to retrieve me, they are sending him to die. I beg you not to make that mistake again. Please inform my father that I am, in fact, still engaged, and thank him for the engagement party. It was very kind of him to host this on our behalf,” I say, stepping back to slide my arm through Salvatore’s.
Salvatore arranges it so that hostages will be walked down to the main level, though I negotiate that only Donny should have to walk. Dario is in a worse state, and I leave him with my family to take care of. It’s practical, kinder, and it will keep many of them busy as we leave.
“Wait,” someone calls out, desperate and brave, before we can make our exit. The room bristles a second time. “Where did the men go into the corridor? They left us, and they never came back. What did he do to them?”
I glance back toward the empty corridor I had tried to follow them through. They never did return.
“You’ll find your men locked in the fire stairs,” Salvatore says. “The shots were to draw them out, get them trapped. We didn’t hurt anything except their egos.”
Though I believe him, I know my family will not.
“How do you lock someone in a fire stairwell?” I ask.
“By having the keys,” Salvatore says. At my confused stare, he adds, as if it is the simplest truth in the world, “I bought the building.”
…Of course he did.
