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“I just want to make him proud,” I say, a moment of honesty coming out in the whispered words. His eyes go soft, a hand moving to my cheek.
“Do you really think he’s not already unbelievably proud of you? Of all you’ve done? All you’ve endured?”
“I haven’t really done much, not yet,” I say, revealing my deepest thoughts as only Dante seems to be able to make me do.
“I’m proud of you,” he whispers, straddling me now, a hand to each side of my face. “Do you know how fuckin’ proud I am of you, fiorella?” My throat closes, my nose itching, tears forming in the backs of my eyes. “No. None of that. Not for you. Not anymore. You don’t cry anymore, not unless they’re happy tears.”
“Dante, you can’t—” I start with a laugh.
“No, you don’t understand, Delilah. I can, and I will. That’s my job now. You don’t cry because you’re sad anymore. You cry when you marry me again in front of five hundred fucking people. You cry when you tell me you’re carrying my kid. You cry when we name a little boy after your dad or a little girl after my mother. You don’t cry because of what they took from you. You cry because of what I give you.”
My eyes are watering again and honestly, I’m not sure if that fits into his guidelines.
“What if I’m crying because you’re just too fuckin’ sweet and I don’t know who to thank for putting you in my path?” He smiles.
“I’ll let that pass,” he says with a whisper before pressing his lips to mine again. I roll my eyes at him through the kiss, shaking the tears off before I move, trying to roll so I’m on top of him.
He lets me have that, helping to roll me until I’m straddling his stomach before I say, “Okay, my turn,” and start to lift his shirt off. I struggle, tugging and giggling as I do before finally, finally, his shirt is off, tossed onto the floor, and I’m looking through plastic wrap at Dante’s chest.
“What . . . ,” I say, the words drying up on my tongue.
On his chest is the letter D in some kind of bold, Old-English font.
But it’s not the letter that has my fingers tracing the plastic, dying to touch his skin to test if it’s real.
It’s the ivy creeping along the entirety of it that stops my breath.
“Covered in you,” he whispers, and my eyes instantly start to water. “I’ll let that slide, too,” he adds, but I don’t have it in me to slap at his chest for making me cry again.
Because a conversation we had what feels like an eternity ago runs through my mind.
“Good thing I’m not allergic to poison ivy then, huh?”
“I guess so. Be careful. You get too close, I might start growing on you, too.”
“Baby, I don’t think you know what I would give to be covered in you.”
I continue to trace the letter and the vines, my fingers shaking a bit as I do. “What are these?” I ask in a whisper, pointing to tiny pink and purple flowers.
“Fiorella,” he says in a whisper, moving, rolling until I’m under him once again. “My little flowers.” I scrunch my nose, trying not to let the tears burning for the third time tonight come to fruition. “Well, they’re actually belladonna,” he says, moving hair back from my face as he balances on his hands over me. As much as I want to look at him, see the emotions there, my eyes don’t move from the tattoo hidden beneath plastic.
“Why do I know that?” I ask, my mind turning the word over and over, trying to remember what it is.
“They’re deadly. They make berries which look like a tasty treat but one or two will kill you.” I look at his face finally and see he’s smiling. “Just like you.”
My fingers keep moving over the plastic, tracing the letter, the vines, the flowers.
“On your chest?” I ask. He has theCarluccio family insignia on the inside of one arm, a tattoo that is sucha closely held tradition, there was no record for me to find back in the days when I was researching the family. I remember I once asked him about his only other ink in the shadowed dark of my apartment, tracing the design similarly to how I am now on his chest. I asked him why it was there, such a strange place.
He told me it was close to his heart but not on it.
“If I could tattoo you on my soul, Delilah, I’d do just that. This will have to do for now.”
THIRTY-FOUR
-Lilah-
“Hey, Paulie, I have a quick question for you,” I say, walking into the games room of the compound later the next week.
