The kid looks up at the balcony. White. Shaking. Still standing.
Raffaele nods once.
“Welcome to the family.”
It happens again across the courtyard. And again. Victor’s men proving they’re Raffaele’s now, one execution at a time, the traitors paying for tonight in the same gravel where Victor’s head is already lying.
These men were starving for a real boss. Victor was never going to be that, and some part of every one of them knew it.
Now they’ve got one.
Raffaele turns away from the railing.
He looks at me.
I’m in the doorway in a towel with my hair dripping, and I’ve just watched the man I’m going to marry run a loyalty trial by execution from a balcony. I should feel some way about that, but I’m so relieved he’s alive that there isn’t room for anything else. I’ll deal with the rest later. Tonight there isn’t any rest. Tonight there’s just him and me. Us.
He walks toward me. Slowly, deliberately.
“Bea.”
“What?”
He stops in front of me. He takes my hand.
“I’ve spent my whole life running empires for other people.” A pause. “I never knew what it was for.”
“Raffaele—“
“I do now.”
My heart fills to capacity.
“Everything I’ve done. Everything I’m about to do. It’s for you. That’s the only reason.”
And then he drops to one knee.
On the terrace. In a towel.
“Marry me.”
I stare at him.
This man. This monster. This whatever he is now—king of two families as of about twenty minutes ago, kneeling on the cold stone in front of a woman in a borrowed towel.
“You don’t have a ring,” I say.
“I’ll buy you a hundred.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“I’ll wash it off. Again.”
“You just threw a man’s head off a balcony.”
“I’ll throw a hundred more if you ask me to.”
I’m laughing. I’m also crying. Both at once. This is what this man does to me.
