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“No.”

I kneel between his knees and open his belt, and he says my name again like a prayer and a threat at the same time. When I take him in my mouth, the whole chair creaks under his grip. I go slow. I make him wait, the way he made me wait in his bed with my wrists in his hand, and every time his hips lift, I stop, and he swears in Italian and puts himself back down.

“Please,” he finally says.

I’ve never heard Enzo Accardi say that word. I sit back on my heels just to listen to it.

“Again,” I tell him.

“Please, tesoro.”

I stand, turn my back to him, and lower myself into his lap, guiding him into me inch by slow inch until I’m full and shaking. Like this, I can see us both in the mirror: the masked man in the chair, his knuckles white, and me on top of him, the ring on my hand flashing every time I move.

I ride him slow and deep, my hands braced on his knees, and I set every second of it. He doesn’t touch me. He holds that chair like it’s the only thing keeping him from coming apart, and I take him right to the edge and keep him there.

“Now,” I say. “Touch me now.”

His hands are on me before the word is finished, one splayed hot across my belly to pull me down onto him, the other between my thighs, and he thrusts up into me so hard I see stars. The control I had snaps clean in half, and I don’t want it back.

“Mine,” he says into my shoulder. “My wife.”

“Not yet.”

“Mine,” he says again, and makes me come so hard I cry out loud enough for the whole Velvet Room to hear it. He follows me over a heartbeat later, buried deep, his arms locked around me, my name breaking in his throat.

For a long time, neither of us moves.

Then I reach back and pull the mask off his face. His eyes are wet. He doesn’t hide it.

“No more masks,” I say.

He kisses the back of my neck, and then my hand, the finger where the ring is.

“I love you, tesoro,” he says.

“And I love you.”

EPILOGUE

STEVIE

The twins are four months old on the day I marry their father, and they give me the best wedding gift a couple of babies can give, sleeping through the ceremony.

Eleven months ago, I told him in his new office at Accardi Holdings, forty floors above the city, holding a glass of champagne I hadn’t touched. I said the breakfast table was too small. It took him almost a full minute to understand. Then the great Enzo Accardi, who has faced down guns and elders and Luca Santini, sat down on the edge of his own desk like his legs had quit, and laughed until he couldn’t breathe. The pill, my doctor told me afterward, is ninety-nine percent effective. Enzo has decided this is the most Accardi thing that has ever happened.

On paper, the man I’m marrying today is very boring. Accardi Holdings builds things and owns things and files its taxes on time. I run its foundation, which pays for lawyers and apartments for women walking away from men like Luca. Every man in this city still crosses the street when Enzo comes down it. Nobody believes the paper. That’s the point.

Pyke and Serafina, our babies. Pyke, with his father’s dark hair already coming in, and those Accardi dark eyes that Enzo, Matthew, and Michael all have. And maybe I’m imagining things, but it seems like he already has that Accardi watchful stillness, where he notices everything.

And Serafina, Fina, as we call her, named for Enzo’s late mother. She came out looking like no one had expected, with a head of fuzzy, pale blonde hair and gorgeous blue eyes. The first Accardi in generations to look like the mother’s line, Michael had said.

The wedding is in the garden, not a ballroom or a grand cathedral, but our garden. My idea. I wanted a simple and small but beautiful ceremony. And that’s just what I got.

No one is giving me away today. I was clear about that. Nobody gives me away because I’m not anyone’s to give.

So I walk in myself.

Well, almost myself. Matthew’s with me, dressed in an adorable powder-blue suit he picked out, with Marta’s help, naturally. Matthew’s carrying the rings on a tiny white pillow, an adorably serious expression on his face. He keeps glancing down at the rings, making sure they haven’t bounced off.