Page 44 of The Bond

I felt her hand on my chest, right over my heart.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” she said. “He was going to use me as bait to get you to the warehouse. He wanted to blow it up. I didn’t know what to do. All I did was talk. I just tried to keep him talking as if that would help.”

“It did help,” I said, taking her chin gently so that I could get her to look into my eyes. “You bought me time. You saved me.”

“And you saved me. I love you.” She leaned against me, her eyes fluttering closed as sleep took her.

It must have been the shock that put her to sleep. But I didn’t sleep that night. Not when I was getting a chance. The chance to live the rest of my life with the woman who held my heart. We’d delayed our honeymoon for long enough.

Epilogue

Valentina

One year later

“Happy anniversary!” I said before kissing Enzo.

He pulled me closer and out into the bright tropical sunlight.

“Got you an anniversary present,” he said, walking hand-in-hand with me out of the villa towards the pool.

“I thought this was the present,” I said, gesturing to our beautiful surroundings. It was my first time in the Seychelles and that was more than enough for me.

We sat down under a huge umbrella by the swimming pool, prepared to start eating our anniversary breakfast.

“A man can get his wife more than one gift,” he said, grinning.

Over the past year, Enzo had been spoiling me. Filling our new house with flowers, taking me on trips just because, feeding me the most delicious cuts of beef. The beef thing had been because we had decided to start trying for our first baby. According to him, the beef would bless our child. Maybe that was an Italian superstition, but I suspected it was more of an Enzo thing. Not that I minded. Every moment with my husband was a joy. Both in and out of the bedroom.

“Very true. That’s why you have several gifts waiting for you when we get home,” I said.

“What did you get me?”

I started listing them off. “Let’s see, a new state-of-the-art grill, gourmet meat spices, a new knife set—”

“Damn, I love you,” he said, cutting me off to press a kiss to my lips.

“I’m not done,” I said.

“It’s already too much,” Enzo said with a laugh.

“I got you a truck to haul everything,” I continued.

“Holy shit, you got me a truck?" he asked, sounding both pleased and surprised.

I nodded. “That way you can haul whatever you want to and from the butchery.”

Over the past year, Enzo and I had been hard at work on our new life. We had been doing everything to go legit, opening a set of chain butcher shops in New York so that we could stand on our own. We weren’t going to let our immunity deal go to waste. We were going to make the most of the second chance that most criminals never got.

With me and Enzo going legit, we had severed our finances from our parents. Enzo’s parents had understood, the pair of them so grateful that we had survived several attempts on our lives that they would deny us nothing. Which was why they had moved to New Jersey, to give us the space to truly live away from the mafia’s clutches.

Meanwhile, my father had been so stunned by immunity deal and so full of regret over refusing to name the man he’d hired, that he had initially offered to step down and let me take over the business. I had refused. I was done with that life. What I wanted was a bright future for my kids and a way to atone for my family’s sins.

When I had finally revealed Daniel Payton‘s full story to my parents, my father had decided that he was through with the mafia business. He too was working on going legitimate, horrified by his mistakes and the lives our war had ruined.

The past year had been both wonderful and painful. We’d worked on tracking down the bystanders we had hurt. A lot of people didn’t want to be found because they still feared us, but those who had come forward had gotten money from us. We had paid off debts, mortgages, donated to college funds. Everything we could to do to try to make things right where we could.

What had been hardest to deal with was what to do with Daniel Payton, the man who had come after us in an act of revenge. The government had decided to put him in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Enzo and I had no way of knowing if he was really crazy, but I could see how grief and hate could drive a person to do terrible things. So while I judged Payton for murdering a defenseless man and for hurting Enzo, I didn’t judge him for coming after me specifically.